Suggested changes to BLM

1. We need umbral ice paradox back.
2. Casting xenoglossy during fire phase can result in less than 6 runes for star flare.... Or casting non standard lines. So starflare can be made so it can still be cast but at a diminished potency for 3 runes. And slightly higher for 4 runes etc and max potency for all 6 runes.
Sort of like a dancer steps.
3. Having 3 poly doesn't help because it takes an eternity for it to refill. That hasn't changed. Either grant 1 poly every time you enter ice phase or let the 2 min abilitythat grants you 1 poly (I forgot the name) grant 2 polys instead of one.

1. Revert almost everything back to Endwalker Black Mage. Umbral Ice's increased passive MP gain, Sharpcast and Thunder, Hard cast Paradox and instant Ice Paradox, (I only say that non-guaranteed Fire 3 procs should come back because it adds a fail-state to Sharpcast management. Without it, you'd just hit it every time you cast thunder, and it lasts until your next one.)
2. keep Retrace, and the third polyglot stack.
3. Rework Flare Star entirely. I'd rename it to Astral Star. Instead of having a whole new gauge, it would just add red Astral Hearts to the existing gauge when you use Fire 4 with no Umbral Hearts. As long as you have at least one, Astral Star is usable. It's a long cast that can only be used when at full MP, Meant to be used in Ice Phase, but can be carried over (reaching full MP with any Astral Hearts grants a buff that lets the spell become usable. so you don't need to worry about accidentally wasting it by casting Blizzard 4 out of muscle memory)
4. AOE. High Fire is so weak that it's only purpose is to swap to fire phase. Up it's damage a lot, and you can even keep the idea that Flare builds to Flare Star (Astral Star in this example) The rotation would go something like: 1 HF to swap to fire, 2 HF to use up two umbral hearts, Flare uses up all Umbral Hearts to cut down the MP cost, so use it when you've got one left. Then another to finish off your MP pool, and instantly grant three Astral Hearts. Then High Blizzard to swap to Ice. Freeze to refresh MP and Hearts, and finally Astral Star.

What's funny is that my biggest issues with the class before this was the leveling experience, and the fact that Scathe is worse than useless. Otherwise, the class was pretty much perfect.

1) Not needed. But, could be nice. Whe can make the same effect with Umbral Soul, but dont make any dmg with it. If whe want to hold ice phase longer.

2) Xeno giving runes dont make sense. It doesnt use fire and with that, is it not fitting to fill it from the lore.
Instant, should all fire spells be able to fill it. (Ok, its not to hard fill it with help if paradox/fire3).
Given more option to fill it, is at last nice quality of life.

3) it takes time to fill all 3 slots, that is correct. But having 3 stacks is nice, because i even overfill them.
Maybe, at a new spell, that use 2 or all 3 of them, but has a longer CD, to not come into conflict with Xeno.

I think i have a decent solution to "fixing" BLM without altering what they tried to achieve with the update
1. Remove astral soul, flarestar isnt the issue, the stacks are, even if you can carry them in ice you will be force to use flarestar at 6 stacks and its gonna feel really bad having it randomly during AF
2. Make Flarestar a 40 or 60 sec cooldown with two charges, and have Fire IV reduce its cooldown by 3 seconds or something like that (this imo would fix the short fire lines issue, it would be less punishing so they could buff it to feel better to press and allow for some skill expression) maybe allow it to refresh AF, or make it instant but as a BLM i kinda wanna cast so id pref refresh AF
3. Just add back ice paradox and make it give a little mana back, just for the sake of flexibility (like 5000 or 6200 the equivalent of 1 tick prior to changes)
Maybe there are some flaws i have yet to see with this ideas so feel free to complete

I think you could just make Flare Star activate as soon as your MP drops to 0 in fire phase.

To make it a bit more restrictive, you could also have every blue umbral heart spent by F4 or Flare turn into an orange astral heart instead, and Flare Star spends those three hearts upon being cast. Or flare star could just cost three astral hearts and otherwise not care about your MP at all, so you could put it anywhere in the back half of your astral cycle you please but still can't skip B4.