Do something with Freeze, please...

[Jonnycbad]

BLM already has Sleep and Break, no need for another crowd control spell. The damage is rather weak (just used below 50 as a Blizzard 2 replacement) and it's never used at 70. I propose it's turned into either an oGCD damage spell (like Contre Sixte) or made into a targeted ground AoE puddle DoT like Shadow Flare that slows or weighs down things in the circle.

[Sylvain]

One of the most populat request is usually to turn it into some sort of Ice verdion of flare. Cost no mana (instead of taking all of it) and putting you back on with 3 umbrql heart immedialty to hqce a ness clunky aoe rotation

[Llugen]

One heart would be all that is needed to do the double Flare rotation and I think that would be much more reasonable than all three hearts, but yes.

Let me copypaste the full suggestion (originally not my own but tweaked according to how I'd like to see it play out):

Freeze Lv 35: Deals ice damage with a potency of 100 to a target and all enemies nearby (no longer ground targeted, and they can add their trademark potency dropoff if they so choose)
Enhanced Freeze Lv 40: Freeze grants Umbral Ice III and removes Astral Fire
Sub-Zero Lv 50: Upon reaching zero MP (after Flare) your next Freeze will cost zero MP (and have no cast time, if they so choose) Duration 10s
Enhanced Umbral Heart Lv 68: Freeze grants one Umbral heart

This would solve the following issues:
-Pre-50 you can use Freeze to get back to Umbral Ice III immediately after draining out Fire IIs for faster recharge for higher potency than Blizzard III (assuming 3 targets or more)
-Post-50 you no longer have to rely on MP tick from Transpose to continue casting AOE spells (which especially at level 70 and higher is seemingly ridiculous that the class STILL relies on that)
-Speeds up the BLM AOE rotation by letting you get a fast-cast Fire III out of recharging MP and gives you more in one tick
-At level 68, you no longer need to cast Blizzard IV in a massive mob to prepare for double Flare, tightening up the BLM AOE rotation significantly
-You no longer have a useless spell in your toolkit. Conglaturation! A winner is you!


It amazes me that even after the "button bloat reduction" of 4.0 Freeze remains useless. The developers have buffed its potency no less than four times, without using logic to realize that no matter how much potency they give it, it will either outweigh Fire II and therefore be broken or be outweighed by Fire II and therefore be useless, to say nothing of the elimination of crowd control in normal content.

Due to the hardcasting nature of BLM, having it be off-GCD would be unwise, and although I wouldn't be super opposed to it being a ground-targeted AOE spell like shadowflare, that's already the domain of SMN/SCH and for the sake of the differing feel of jobs I personally think it should stay that way.

[Seraphor]

^ I like this, however to tie it more into an AoE rotation, and not risk it finding its way into the single target meta rotation somehow...

Enhanced Freeze Lv 40: Freeze grants an Umbral Ice stack for each target it hits.
Enhanced Umbral Heart Lv 68: Freeze grants one Umbral heart if it hits three or more targets.

[Llugen]

The potency of Freeze is significantly lower than the potency of Blizzard III so to use it single target would be a pretty big waste, unless you mean hardcasting flare single target but there would have to be a pps analysis there and I'm lazy.

One heart vs three would always be a loss single target.

[Seraphor]

The potency of Freeze is significantly lower than the potency of Blizzard III so to use it single target would be a pretty big waste, unless you mean hardcasting flare single target but there would have to be a pps analysis there and I'm lazy.

One heart vs three would always be a loss single target.

Well I mean specifically instant cast UI3 plus a heart, when that would typically require 2 GCDs, so I dont know, that might technically be more efficient.
The "charge per target hit" makes it clears its for AoE use.

[Jonnycbad]

One heart would be all that is needed to do the double Flare rotation and I think that would be much more reasonable than all three hearts, but yes.

Let me copypaste the full suggestion (originally not my own but tweaked according to how I'd like to see it play out):

Freeze Lv 35: Deals ice damage with a potency of 100 to a target and all enemies nearby (no longer ground targeted, and they can add their trademark potency dropoff if they so choose)
Enhanced Freeze Lv 40: Freeze grants Umbral Ice III and removes Astral Fire
Sub-Zero Lv 50: Upon reaching zero MP (after Flare) your next Freeze will cost zero MP (and have no cast time, if they so choose) Duration 10s
Enhanced Umbral Heart Lv 68: Freeze grants one Umbral heart

This would solve the following issues:
-Pre-50 you can use Freeze to get back to Umbral Ice III immediately after draining out Fire IIs for faster recharge for higher potency than Blizzard III (assuming 3 targets or more)
-Post-50 you no longer have to rely on MP tick from Transpose to continue casting AOE spells (which especially at level 70 and higher is seemingly ridiculous that the class STILL relies on that)
-Speeds up the BLM AOE rotation by letting you get a fast-cast Fire III out of recharging MP and gives you more in one tick
-At level 68, you no longer need to cast Blizzard IV in a massive mob to prepare for double Flare, tightening up the BLM AOE rotation significantly
-You no longer have a useless spell in your toolkit. Conglaturation! A winner is you!


It amazes me that even after the "button bloat reduction" of 4.0 Freeze remains useless. The developers have buffed its potency no less than four times, without using logic to realize that no matter how much potency they give it, it will either outweigh Fire II and therefore be broken or be outweighed by Fire II and therefore be useless, to say nothing of the elimination of crowd control in normal content.

Due to the hardcasting nature of BLM, having it be off-GCD would be unwise, and although I wouldn't be super opposed to it being a ground-targeted AOE spell like shadowflare, that's already the domain of SMN/SCH and for the sake of the differing feel of jobs I personally think it should stay that way.

This is genius. I hope they do this. And you're right about the oGCD, I hadn't considered that BLM is purely a turret. I just recently hit BLM50 and I never use Freeze and saw that it's never used even at 70, hence this post. I wish they'd rework it because it's a beautiful spell. I wonder if we will get the Thunder ancient magic equivalent "Burst"? Maybe have it be something that consumes all your MP (but also costs 0 MP) and consumes all your AF/UI stacks as well, and does more damage the most stacks you have. Basically to be used right before a boss jumps and uses all your resources/removes enochian.

[Orbus]

As you point out, it clashes with fire2, so it can never really be fixed with just a potency buff since one will always be made useless by the other with just this.
That said, fire2 is in the dumpster right now anyway, once you can get umbral hearts you will never use it again.

I do not feel like freeze was meant to be the umbral equivalent of fire2 anyhow, that's what ice2 is.
It's learned almost twenty levels after fire2, unwieldy ground targeted and with a longer than usual cast time.
It's also a BLM spell specifically which is supposed to be a notch above thaumaturge.
It should absolutely dumpster fire2 in usefulness.

[Llugen]

Well I mean specifically instant cast UI3 plus a heart, when that would typically require 2 GCDs, so I dont know, that might technically be more efficient.
The "charge per target hit" makes it clears its for AoE use.

This is why it should only be one heart and not three. Besides you only need one heart to do double flare, so giving 3 would be "a waste".

Again, feeling too lazy to do a PPS crunch but Blizzard III > Blizzard IV is almost certainly a higher PPS than Flare > Freeze > Freeze > Freeze at least on one target, so I don't think the abuse of that would be a concern. And actually, a swiftcast flare single target again wouldn't be the end of the world, might make the BLM rotation a little more interesting, in fact.


Fine, here's math:

Normal single target recharge rotation:
(120 (Blizzard III in Astral Fire III) + 260 (Blizzard IV)) / (1.75s + 3.5s) = 72 PPS

Proposed Freeze rotation on one target:
(468 (Flare in Astral Fire III) + 100 (Freeze after transpose) + 100 (Freeze) + 100 (Freeze) ) / (4s+3s+3s+3s) = 59 PPS

On two targets:
(468 + 398 (Flare on two targets in Astral Fire III with falloff) + 200 (Freeze on two targets after transpose) + 200 (Freeze) + 200 (Freeze)) / (4s+3s+3s+3s) = 112 PPS

On three targets:
(468 + 398 + 328 (Flare on three targets in Astral Fire III with falloff) + 300 (Freeze on three targets after transpose) + 300 (Freeze) + 300 (Freeze)) / (4s+3s+3s+3s) = 161 PPS


With this proposal, if they really wanted to limit it, they could make it so Freeze always sets your Umbral Hearts to 1 rather than just giving one, that way no matter how many times you cast it you only get the one.

[ChaoticCrimson]

I'm no BLM expert by any means, but if one were to pursue the ground effect idea perhaps it could be used to place a damage-down debuff on enemies standing within its effective area. This could give BLM some much-needed utility, as not only would this be helpful against tankbusters in trials/raids, but also it can help a lot during some of the more troublesome trash pulls in dungeons too. This could also set it apart from SMN's/SCH's Shadowflare and NIN's Doton effects. I feel that this would be more beneficial than the Bind effect, which doesn't bother a great deal of enemies much to begin with. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but it's an idea at least.