Blizzard II, Scathe, Freeze, and Sleep, do they have a purpose anymore

I think I might have a slight idea to make Freeze a bit more valid. Taking some inspiration from the recent SMN changes to Tri-Bind; cause that's another issue, lol. But why not add a trait that makes Freeze act like Flare but instead of using all your MP, you have to have no MP. For instance, you do your Fire rotation and end in Flare, you have no MP left and no way to get it back but to use transpose to enter Umbral Ice. But with a new trait, casting Freeze would allow to enter Umbral Ice and continue using your AoE on the mobs. This would avoid the odd second or too between MP ticks that sometimes can occur. It's just a thought. Freeze doesn't have to get a boost in power or anything like that it just allows you to maintain your rotation easier and gives Freeze a use. Maybe make it level 54?

a mock-up
Sub Zero Lv. 54 When MP is reduced to zero, the next cast of Freeze will cost no MP and grant Umbral Ice III

I think Freeze would need a potency boost even with that change to be useful. UI3 in AoE is mainly useful for the F3 speed boost to get back to brass tacks, as between T4 and B4 you'll have enough MP for two fire 2s and flares by the time everything finishes and you go back into AF.

Scathe on the move or when things at 1%, dont feel like casting for an hour till something comes off and it will die before i cast anyway (unless it's raid bosses)

Yeah I like that a lot, in fact, Freeze can only be used at zero MP and grants you Umbral III, and if it also granted you Umbral Hearts post-level 58 then that would solve the Blizzard IV casting dilemma during AOE rotation.

How about this?

Sub Zero Lv. 54: When MP is reduced to zero, the next cast of Freeze will cost no MP and grant a full stack of Umbral Ice
Enhanced Umbral Heart Lv. 68: Successful usage of a Sub Zero proc grants three Umbral Hearts

Even pre-68 the beauty there would be you'd NEVER be waiting on an MP tick and you could get a bigger tick back with the full Umbral Ice stack rather than the one stack from Transpose.

Great thinking, Eloah, I'm totally putting this in the other massive BLM suggestion thread :3

Freeze gaining special properties at exactly zero mp (maybe even a low enough percentage of MP, like whenever you’re below Flare’s minimum cost) is a great idea.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

Great thinking, Eloah, I'm totally putting this in the other massive BLM suggestion thread :3

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Yay I helped, XD. Now I hope the Mods/Devs semi look at this and think about it, cause if they do something to this effect it would be awesome.

I mean we finally got Bahamut, and a "larger" pet, though that was a mixed bag, lol. But on on an unrelated note, have you seen how cute tiny Bahamut is, XD

Back to the topic: to be fair, Freeze could just provide Umbral Ice III or some Umbral Hearts and the spell would be used without becoming broken. SMN's buffs made them have more AoE than BLM so buffing BLM's area damage in some way shouldn't be an issue.

On the visibility of our complaints to Devs: Just make sure to keep posting about it, also like posts that you agree with. That's how we can get ideas or insatisfaction on this Forum to be seen by them. Keep make noise.

Freeze could just give UI 3 base and then eenhanced umbral hearts trait could make freeze grant UH idd, Technically speaking it's an ancient magic it should be able to be a bit more mh noticeable let's say

In regards to Repose/Sleep/Bind.
These three skill types are called "Crowd Control". They are used to prevent the tank from being overwhelmed by too many enemies and being unable to survive or hold agro. They are the third part of the 'Trinity' in MMOs, Tanks/Heals/Control.
I'll skip the full history lesson/analysis, but a long time ago encounter designers stopped making 'control' a requirement to survive and the 'dps race' was born as a bunch of classes no longer had anything tactical to do with their time. The new paradigm became a duopoly, Tanks/Heals. Tanks no longer had the threat of being overwhelmed or having to use player skill to hold agro on multiple enemies.
Some MMOs have tried to play to the 'dps race' by attempting to make 'damage' the new third role, with mixed results. The key here is that the Tanks and healer can only last a short time under the weight of a full strength encounter before their resources run out, so damage has to kill the highest priority targets in order to lessen the incoming damage and secure the victory, you occasionally see this behavior in FFXIV (Bees Final Sting or 'Enrage Timers' come to mind) but it's less of a full time Tactic than a gimmick.
So the only realistic way to bring those abilities, and by extension the Control Role, back into play would be to put the Tanks in danger again and move back to a 'kill priority' system instead of pushing AE capabilities. There are no shortage of ways to incorporate these designs and concepts into FFXIV, but I doubt any of them would be well received by the current tanks (who would see it as a nerf) or the 'Damage Role' which would rebel against the greater responsibility for the groups survival (if the concept of the 'damage role' even survived at all)

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

WHM Repose and BLM Sleep can go die in a fire since the devs don't make them useful for anything but low level solo questing. I'd rather see them removed altogether.

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The problem is the dev team is to scared of making these things useful because of fear that a particular strat might then make a blm an essential party slot in order to sleep group's of adds.

It's been the same since arr first launched and has been why stuns and silences were only ever used as a small ogcd dps boost on virtually all jobs that had them.

The only notable exceptions from my experience that springs to mind was actually needing to silence high voltage in early coil. And requelling mist in mhach witch could be stunned or silenced by anyone of 24 players.

The general game is built around just burn everything down in aoe. So crowd control is absurdly useless in every single form.