Black Mage Level 100 Spell (Flare Star) SUCKS!

Am I the only one disappointed by the new Level 100 Skills? At least for Black Mage, Flare Star only offers a potency of 400 and can only be activated after casting Fire 4 and/or Flare SIX times without swapping Astral Hearts to Umbral. The timing takes some getting used to, but the issue is that it takes such an extended effort just to cast the spell ONCE with such little reward, not to mention its long cast time! Fire 4 already has a potency of 320, so why should I change out my rotation? It makes no sense! The level 70 and 80 spells (Foul and Xenoglossy) have a potency of 600 and 800 respectively, and at Level 100 I can cast them up to 3 times in a row...

IMO Flare Star should have a potency of 1000+

TLDR; Flare Star takes too much effort to pull off for such a low amount of reward (an additional 60 potency compared to Fire 4), Potency should be increased to 1000+

Thoughts???

The problem is they don’t really care what flare stars potency is as long as it’s higher than despair because flare star was never meant as an actual super flashy new skill it was just made to enforce you to press 6 fire 4’s on your rotation to kill non standard lines


Flare star’s actual potency is 957 so it is technically the strongest attack in BLM’s arsenal but still yeah it’s basically just there to enforce a particular rotation

You seem to be making a very understandable mistake; every fire element spell that BLM has has its damage multiplied because of the passive damage boost of Astral Fire. Because of that, Flare Star is actually stronger than nearly as strong as Xenoglossy. Test it out in the game and you'll see the difference in the damage numbers (be sure to account for critical and direct hits).

the potency of the spell is already high,
but yes they could slightly increase its damage or guarantee a crit/dh,
only the damage of the spell is not particularly the problem,
the problem is that the spell very clearly deserves a rework.

Good point - I did not think of that - But its still a frustrating spell that is difficult to pull off, especially when dodging AOEs

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

You seem to be making a very understandable mistake; every fire element spell that BLM has has its damage multiplied because of the passive damage boost of Astral Fire. Because of that, Flare Star is actually stronger than Xenoglossy. Test it out in the game and you'll see the difference in the damage numbers (be sure to account for critical and direct hits).

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Good point - I did not think of that - But its still a frustrating spell that is difficult to pull off, especially when dodging AOEs

Careful, Flare Star's potency is in no way higher than Xenoglossy's.
Even taking into account the 1.8 AF3 multiplier and enochian. Xenoglossy's would be about 1170 potency and FS around 957 as pointed earlier.
This "finisher" is in no way BLM's hardest hitting spell although it can do numbers close to a Xeno

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Originally Posted by AzaelOrunitia

Careful, Flare Star's potency is in no way higher than Xenoglossy's.

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Oops, I used the wrong multiplier and did math bad. You're right, Flare Star's single-target potency is indeed less than Xenoglossy. That's messed up considering how much more work it is to achieve Flare Star in your single-target rotation.

So yeah, hopefully they can make the Astral Gauge more forgiving (let it persist thru Umbral Ice, cowards!) which will then allow them to pump some more damage into our current "ultimate" spell without making an even bigger damage loss when players don't squeeze out 6 Fire IV's in a single Astral Fire phase.

Be glad they don't make it higher, you'd feel even worse for having to swap to UI early or miss a fire spell...

( yeah this design sucks alright )

It's funny to see people complain in the same breath that Flare Star is so strong it's impossible to adjust one's rotation but so weak that it's not worth the effort to cast.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

It's funny to see people complain in the same breath that Flare Star is so strong it's impossible to adjust one's rotation but so weak that it's not worth the effort to cast.

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I mean, the problem is that it is technically worth casting, it'd be a massive failing on SE's part to make it so underpowered that using a few seconds to cast it is actually sub optimal compared to just casting something else, but with how the mechanic to actually cast it works, it's damage doesn't feel worth all the hassle, even though mathmetically you should be doing it to maximize your damage. It feels like a meal you have to spend hours making only to realize when you finish and actually eat it you really don't like it, but you're stuck eating it anyway.

Well, if it was stronger, you'd lose even more potency from failing to cast it (either on purpose or by accident), while if it was weaker, you'd feel less rewarded for managing to complete a full astral cycle without having to cut it short, so there's really no way to win.

After all, if Flare Star didn't exist, the reward for casting your sixth Fire IV would be even smaller, so it would feel even more pointless to do all that work, and, yet, it would still represent a small average potency increase, so we feel like we have to do it, so now we're complaining about Fire IV #6, wishing we only had 8400 max MP, etc.

I personally think it'd be neat if casting flare star gave a blizzard 3 proc. It is a small dps gain to save f3 proc for after transpose, so I think if flare star also provided a proc like that for entering ice and skipping a weak b3 it could be a tiny bit of optimization without making flare star "too op" by itself. It would mean that if you find yourself in a situation where you have to use your f3 proc in AF you can still get a gain on transposing and if you manage your resources well you get to double transpose 2 weak spells.

The playerbase min/maxes everything. If it makes sense to cast Flare Star, they will do so. If it makes sense to skip it and keep a certain rotation so other things line up, they will do so.

Let's clarify that 400 potency is a bit fake, given that to cast it you are in AF3 + Enochian IV.
Bear in mind that it is a spell that is used after managing to cast 6 F4 in AF3. Making it too powerful would be really punishing if for any reason you don't succeed.
In my opinion its ok(?) because there is dps gain and still pushes you to optimize, but if for any reason you can't cast 6 F4 you don't want to throw yourself out of the arena unless you're parsing.

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

I personally think it'd be neat if casting flare star gave a blizzard 3 proc. It is a small dps gain to save f3 proc for after transpose, so I think if flare star also provided a proc like that for entering ice and skipping a weak b3 it could be a tiny bit of optimization without making flare star "too op" by itself. It would mean that if you find yourself in a situation where you have to use your f3 proc in AF you can still get a gain on transposing and if you manage your resources well you get to double transpose 2 weak spells.

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"Icefinisher" procs are a cute idea.

Also they're kind of stuck as far as FS potency goes. It has to be stronger than Despair otherwise what's even the point of having a level 100 capstone, but also they cannot really increase it's potency all that much.
No idea as to what the limit would be but increasing FS's potency could eventually open the door to double Flare->FS lines, and I think we all witnessed the war they're waging on any lines that aren't strictly standard Fire IVs...
So yeah if they do listen again to people's complaints, I'm curious about what they'll do with FS. The spell itself and Astral Souls need a complete overhaul...

What will make flare star less worst is making it insta cast

I don't mind removing cast the animation all together

It doesn't feel good as xeno

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

Well, if it was stronger, you'd lose even more potency from failing to cast it (either on purpose or by accident), while if it was weaker, you'd feel less rewarded for managing to complete a full astral cycle without having to cut it short, so there's really no way to win.

After all, if Flare Star didn't exist, the reward for casting your sixth Fire IV would be even smaller, so it would feel even more pointless to do all that work, and, yet, it would still represent a small average potency increase, so we feel like we have to do it, so now we're complaining about Fire IV #6, wishing we only had 8400 max MP, etc.

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There is a way to win: not force people to cast 6 F4 to cast it, which is the real reason behind its introduction in conjunction with the systematic demolition of non standard or even just early ice swaps for mechanical reasons.

Else the reason such skills as current Flare Star work on other jobs is because they don't necessarily rely on cutting short their rotation half way like BLM can.

Perhaps not losing stacks when swaping to Ice would help it immensely for starters. Could even bring some funky optimization of double flare stars in some astral fire windows, but we wouldn't want people to have some depth to their job right?

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Originally Posted by AzaelOrunitia

Also they're kind of stuck as far as FS potency goes. It has to be stronger than Despair otherwise what's even the point of having a level 100 capstone, but also they cannot really increase it's potency all that much.
No idea as to what the limit would be but increasing FS's potency could eventually open the door to double Flare->FS lines, and I think we all witnessed the war they're waging on any lines that aren't strictly standard Fire IVs...
So yeah if they do listen again to people's complaints, I'm curious about what they'll do with FS. The spell itself and Astral Souls need a complete overhaul...

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This would actually be hilarious so I calculated it

Standard line

Blizzard 4 (320 2.5 seconds)->paradox (500 2.5 seconds)->fire 3 (392 2.5 seconds)->high thunder (750 2.5 seconds)->3* fire 4 (1728 9 seconds)->paradox (500 2.5 seconds)->3* fire 4 (1728 9 seconds)->despair (630 3 seconds)->flare star (720 3 seconds)

Total rotation time 36.5 seconds total potency 7268

Hypothetical double flare line

Blizzard 4 (320 2.5 seconds)->paradox (500 2.5 seconds)->fire 3 (392 2.5 seconds)->high thunder (750 2.5 seconds)->flare (432 4 seconds)->paradox (500 2.5 seconds)->flare (432 4 seconds)->flare star (720 3 seconds)

Total time 23.5 seconds total potency 4046

Standard line potency per second 199
Double flare line potency per second 172

Double flare potency discrepancy 27 potency per second. Flare star would need to gain 635 potency after astral fire or 352 before for a final potency of 752

Hahaha thank you for calculating it!
Ok so they have more room than I thought! Though with triple cast I imagine they don't have that much since Flare's recast time is 2.5... also I wonder about 3 Fire IV + flare lines with would only need a swiftcast..
That is not to ask for another calculation hahaha I'll go do it on my own using your examples! But they won't upgrade it by that much anyway

What makes Flare Star feel "stuck" at this point is that the requirements to cast it are possible but very easy to entirely fail, and because of that Flare Star's potency needs to be limited to make sure that failure doesn't result in a devastating loss of damage output.

The easy solution to that is to just mitigate the possibility for such extreme failure. One easy way to do that would be to just let the Astral Gauge persist through Umbral Ice. Now instead of losing ALL of your Flare Star progress because you couldn't get that last Fire IV off during an Astral Fire phase, you only lose 1/6 of your Flare Star progress. By making imperfection less punishing and allowing players to keep their progress, you can now send Flare Star's potency to the moon without causing a drastic disparity between sub-optimal play and optimal play.

And as a bonus, now less skilled players get to dependably cast Flare Star, which they'll enjoy because it's their big boom...they'll just be casting it less often than their more skilled peers. And hey, now your Astral Fire phase doesn't have two finishers, because Flare Star can be held over to the beginning of your Fire Phase; as a BLM, I like having more flexibility.

(And as a side-note, Flare Star shouldn't be able to be assigned to the hotbar; Fire IV should become Flare Star when your Astral Gauge is full, since there's no sensible reason to cast Fire IV at that time.)

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Originally Posted by Valence

There is a way to win: not force people to cast 6 F4 to cast it, which is the real reason behind its introduction in conjunction with the systematic demolition of non standard or even just early ice swaps for mechanical reasons.

Else the reason such skills as current Flare Star work on other jobs is because they don't necessarily rely on cutting short their rotation half way like BLM can.

Perhaps not losing stacks when swaping to Ice would help it immensely for starters. Could even bring some funky optimization of double flare stars in some astral fire windows, but we wouldn't want people to have some depth to their job right?

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It doesn't matter; your sixth Fire IV would still increase your potency per second, which means you would lose potency for cutting it, which means you are forced to cast it, which means you are punished for cutting your fire cycle short. The same incentives remain in effect.

Now, casting Flare Star is fun, so making it easier to cast might be a good idea (I do not agree with making astral stacks carry over to ice but there are plenty of other ways to do it). But this has nothing to do with the supposed rigidity it imposes, because all those same complaints technically apply to Despair as well as every other fire spell you cast.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

It doesn't matter; your sixth Fire IV would still increase your potency per second, which means you would lose potency for cutting it, which means you are forced to cast it, which means you are punished for cutting your fire cycle short. The same incentives remain in effect.

Now, casting Flare Star is fun, so making it easier to cast might be a good idea (I do not agree with making astral stacks carry over to ice but there are plenty of other ways to do it). But this has nothing to do with the supposed rigidity it imposes, because all those same complaints technically apply to Despair as well as every other fire spell you cast.

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I'm generally in favor of Astral Souls carrying over for a few reasons.

1) It lessens the rigidity by a small amount and you are punished less if you can't hit 6 F4s for any reason.
2) It creates a soft overcap limit of up to 6 F4s per fight before you "Lose" a Flarestar, similar to how other job gauges have lost technically no dps from gauge surpluses that aren't a multiple of their lowest consumer.
3) It creates another avenue of risk-reward GCD swapping of reducing Paradox AF refreshes in order to generate more souls via using Firestarter as the sole refresher instead, though this is admittedly limited to Manafont restores.

I would also combine this with Flarestar being an AF refresh because this compounds with 3) The more you can push AF refreshes off of Paradox, the more F4 and thus the more Flarestars you can cast, but the gain for doing so should be easily lost if not played well around.

The thing about perpetual astral stacks is that they would immediately cause Flare Star drift (as in, you would basically never cap off a cycle with it if you use the largely standard F3 opener) and also do nothing about "rigidity", a word I am increasingly suspicious of being meaningless, because you would always have to cast Flare Star the moment you reached six stacks before proceeding with F4 spam or else lose a fractional Flare Star. The result is that you are still compelled to cast six F4s per cycle, but your Flare Star comes after the second rather than the last. Also, if you make any mistake that changes which F4 you need to chase with FS, for the rest of the fight, until you make another mistake. Not great!

My favorite idea for giving BLMs more choice as to where to place FS and less of a punishment for cutting the astral cycle short was put forward by someone in a different thread: astral souls only go up to 3, you only need 3 to cast Flare Star, and you only get astral souls by consuming umbral hearts. Boom, one Flare Star per B4/Manafont, a little more variety in where that Star can go (although triplecast-despair-flarestar-transpose-blizz3 probably remains optimal), and, most importantly, no separate "astral gauge". Astral souls can just live on the regular elemental gauge, replacing umbral hearts one by one.

I think that this spell should be instant and follow Despair, i mean, despair/flare becomes flarestar, rather than all that crap of the astral souls.

Flare star is a really really mid skill, feels like something that would be given to you mid levelling in a previous expansion instead of a capstone spell.
Well the only change I really want is for it to transform fire 4 into flare star when it's available, I really don't think it needs it's own button it's nothing special.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

It's funny to see people complain in the same breath that Flare Star is so strong it's impossible to adjust one's rotation but so weak that it's not worth the effort to cast.

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Because that is the irony of flare star. It is both too strong, and too weak.

Too strong to justify skipping, too weak to really feel impactful.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

It doesn't matter; your sixth Fire IV would still increase your potency per second, which means you would lose potency for cutting it, which means you are forced to cast it, which means you are punished for cutting your fire cycle short. The same incentives remain in effect.

Now, casting Flare Star is fun, so making it easier to cast might be a good idea (I do not agree with making astral stacks carry over to ice but there are plenty of other ways to do it). But this has nothing to do with the supposed rigidity it imposes, because all those same complaints technically apply to Despair as well as every other fire spell you cast.

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Cutting short astral fire early has never been a problem before provided you'd use non standard setups, and yet, here we are, so no, it matters quite a lot actually.

I do agree that the solution you mentioned about 3 gauge stacks from umbral hearts is also interesting though.

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Originally Posted by Bacillus

I think that this spell should be instant and follow Despair, i mean, despair/flare becomes flarestar, rather than all that crap of the astral souls.

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Like all those 120s buttons on other jobs that turn into another without any thought or input? Thanks but no thanks.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

The thing about perpetual astral stacks is that they would immediately cause Flare Star drift (as in, you would basically never cap off a cycle with it if you use the largely standard F3 opener) and also do nothing about "rigidity", a word I am increasingly suspicious of being meaningless, because you would always have to cast Flare Star the moment you reached six stacks before proceeding with F4 spam or else lose a fractional Flare Star. The result is that you are still compelled to cast six F4s per cycle, but your Flare Star comes after the second rather than the last. Also, if you make any mistake that changes which F4 you need to chase with FS, for the rest of the fight, until you make another mistake. Not great!

My favorite idea for giving BLMs more choice as to where to place FS and less of a punishment for cutting the astral cycle short was put forward by someone in a different thread: astral souls only go up to 3, you only need 3 to cast Flare Star, and you only get astral souls by consuming umbral hearts. Boom, one Flare Star per B4/Manafont, a little more variety in where that Star can go (although triplecast-despair-flarestar-transpose-blizz3 probably remains optimal), and, most importantly, no separate "astral gauge". Astral souls can just live on the regular elemental gauge, replacing umbral hearts one by one.

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I mostly like this idea. It also combats another side-effect of a permanent Astral Gauge that wasn't mentioned here, which is that if you can just hold it forever, Flare Star ends up feeling less like a "reward" for doing something in your Astral Fire phase, and more like another resource you can just stock like Polyglots. Ever since the Umbral Soul changes, in the open worlds it's become normal to start every single boss FATE with a full reserve of Xenoglossies, and I can imagine that if I could save up a Flare Star as well that it would lose a bit of the magic it has.

While I like the elegance of the suggestion to trade Umbral Hearts for a 3-sized Astral Gauge, the one part I'm not a fan of is that it only requires 3 Fire IV casts. There is a minor sense of accomplishment that comes from getting 6 Fire IV's within your Astral Fire phase, and I think that would be entirely lost if we went as low as 3. Because at that point Flare Star won't feel like a reward for doing something, it will just feel like the spell I cast at a specific point in my Astral Fire phase, since somehow managing to cast 3 Fire IV's all but inevitable for the majority of players. And I don't think Flare Star will feel as good if it feels inevitable. I would like a design that still makes Flare Star feel like something that was meaningfully "earned", just not with the exact degree of "strict and punishing" that it is now.

So I was actually thinking along the same lines as this suggestion; specifically, keep the fact that the Astral Gauge empties outside of Astral Fire, and simply make the Gauge require 5 Astral Fires to fill. Which is to say, keep how punishing the Astral Gauge is when it doesn't get filled, but lower the difficulty of filling it to give more wiggle room. The main thing I dislike with this tactic is that from a UI perspective, the current UI would show a single tick in the Astral Gauge when you did 6 Fire IV's, and that feels potentially misleading and a bit sloppy. So maybe tying the ability to start filling the Astral Gauge to Umbral Hearts would be needed, or maybe you can't fill it unless you have some new resource like an Umbral Tongue that gets spent alongside Flare Star, etc. But whatever the case, I think 3 Flare Stars is too few and thus would undercut the good feeling my brain sends me when I've built up and cast a Flare Star.

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Originally Posted by LilyPendragon

Because that is the irony of flare star. It is both too strong, and too weak.

Too strong to justify skipping, too weak to really feel impactful.

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That doesn't actually make sense, though. Like I said, at level 99, Fire IV #6 is also too strong to justify skipping, and, yet, it is no stronger than Fire IVs #1 through 5. If you've got two mutually contradictory complaints about something your actual problem is probably a third thing, to whit:

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Originally Posted by Valence

Cutting short astral fire early has never been a problem before provided you'd use non standard setups, and yet, here we are, so no, it matters quite a lot actually.

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That's quite a big "provided" you've slipped in there! Obviously, cutting astral fire short after having cast Blizz4 to stock up on umbral hearts was a problem. But, additionally, cutting a non-standard setup short was also a problem. Like, if you did all the weird transpose+mana tick required to expurgate some combination of B3, B4, and whatever else from your rotation, entered AF3 with just enough time and MP to cast F4-F4-F4-Despair... but the could only cast F4-F4 before a boss mechanic forced you to move, you had to cut your intended fire cycle short and lose damage! Ahhh, the non standard setup is so rigid, it forces you to cast as many F4s as possible (which was 3 or 4 or something, I forget the numbers) or else it's suboptimal, I can't stand it.

The actual thing that's changed is that BLM's transition and resource-stockpiling spells are no longer skippable. But it was never actually good to fail to cast as many F4s as you possibly could given your AF3 start conditions. You always lost damage unless you squeezed every last cast you could out of your MP and elemental gauge.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

While I like the elegance of the suggestion to trade Umbral Hearts for a 3-sized Astral Gauge, the one part I'm not a fan of is that it only requires 3 Fire IV casts. There is a minor sense of accomplishment that comes from getting 6 Fire IV's within your Astral Fire phase, and I think that would be entirely lost if we went as low as 3.

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I'm sympathetic to this and I'd actually be fine if it still required the full complement of six to cast; my biggest priority is just removing the extra gauge, which I feel like only serves to clutter my HUD. We could have each umbral heart replace itself with an astral heart, and then each astral heart start glowing and crackling with power as it transforms into an astral soul, or something like that.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

That's quite a big "provided" you've slipped in there! Obviously, cutting astral fire short after having cast Blizz4 to stock up on umbral hearts was a problem. But, additionally, cutting a non-standard setup short was also a problem. Like, if you did all the weird transpose+mana tick required to expurgate some combination of B3, B4, and whatever else from your rotation, entered AF3 with just enough time and MP to cast F4-F4-F4-Despair... but the could only cast F4-F4 before a boss mechanic forced you to move, you had to cut your intended fire cycle short and lose damage! Ahhh, the non standard setup is so rigid, it forces you to cast as many F4s as possible (which was 3 or 4 or something, I forget the numbers) or else it's suboptimal, I can't stand it.

The actual thing that's changed is that BLM's transition and resource-stockpiling spells are no longer skippable. But it was never actually good to fail to cast as many F4s as you possibly could given your AF3 start conditions. You always lost damage unless you squeezed every last cast you could out of your MP and elemental gauge.

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Okay so someone better versed into the whole non standard thing can stop me right there if I'm completely out of touch, but I disagree with this. You got it right on one point though, it tries to eliminate all lower potencies spells as much as possible in order to keep a high pps. If your lines make you cut short F4s early and skip all the low potency stuff it's not a problem as long as the pps stays high enough. Paradox is a gain over F4 (unless F4 is swiftcast/triplecast), and then you have polyglot tools or even thunder (although the current thunderhead idk), which are all better solutions than F4. If you have to skip much of an astral phase for whatever reason and have the resources and the lines to do it, it can be a gain. Now though if you tack in the Flare stacks into the equation, that's another story. It adds a lot more weight behind F4 casts.

There is a reason it murdered most of the old non standard and at the same time, most flexibility. You can say all you like that having to cast 3 F4s is rigid, it's still twice less rigid than 6.

Also non standard had a lot to do with planning. If you entered a non standard line at a specific moment in the fight it was because you knew that was the best option available and you weren't going to be interrupted in this specific line or that it was going to allow you more movement or whatever.
And that's not even taking into account boss timings where they'd disappear and you'd have to squeeze in as much potency as you coul, something non standard allowed for.
Now our planning tools are only present in the form of triple cast, xeno and swiftcast (arguably others but which would result in potency loss) which I hope will be sufficient for whatever boss designs they throw at us next.
And there's next to now way to adapt to a boss entering downtime : use despair earlier than normal, transpose and paradox? That's basically it.

"Twice less rigid" doesn't really mean anything. The various short fire lines were in fact much more rigid than what standard play looks like right now because in order to skip as many low-potency spells as possible without suffering the kind of rotational collapse those spells are supposed to prevent you had to squeeze the absolute maximum amount of high-potency casts out of the partly-full MP gauge with zero umbral hearts you'd be entering Af3 with. It's not a gain to do some transpose-lucid-paradox-F3 nonsense if the mana ticks aren't on your side or if you end up only squeezing out a single F4 on the other side!

The current design actually allows you to drift your astral cycle's alignment over time based on whether you use F3P under AF3 or save it for transpose into AF1 and by whether you use or skip umbral paradox. At the end of the day, you have to cut short whatever you're doing and cast Despair if the boss is about to leave or otherwise force you to stop casting, but this was always the case. Your "only" option is always going to be the precise sequence of spells that maximizes your potency per second given a fight's constraints. If you don't like that that sequence of spells is harder to perform than before, you're complaining about a difficulty increase.

That means the only way to somewhat adapt to unfortunate timings is to actually sacrifice potency per second throughout the fight ? (Paradox has higher potency per second than a Fire IV and using firestarter in AF3 means casting a weak F3 from ice which is also a loss)
Ignoring spells doesn't sound difficult to mew but only having these two options to adapt to fight duration/boss timings does sound restrictive in my opinion.

Anyway mana regen being gone kills most non standard anyway, it's not just Flare Star's doing. But maybe we should go back to talking about Flare Star (my bad I got sidetracked as well)

I’ll note that yoshi p specifically said that since they gave 100% fire starter chance to paradox and returned ice paradox transpose AF1 F3 is now “expected play” and casting fire 3 from ice is a DPS loss.

You can make it a conditional gain if you use fire starter to avoid dropping astral fire or for movement but it is at baseline a loss because that expectation of use is baked into BLM’s potency calculations

The irony is that they went back to shadowbringers BLM for AoE on the other hand and managed to make their Fire 2 and Blizzard 2 spells totally worthless (probably in line with F3/B3 in idea but..) since you're just doing essentially non standard instead because it's just better. Literally schoolbook non standard Flare(s) > ManaFont > Flare(s) > instant > Transpose > Freeze > Instant > Transpose > back to flares (with the first one being a lukewarm Flare).

The stronger Flare Star is the more punishing it becomes, I don't think there is a problem with the potency. The cast time is easy to negate with Triplecast and Swiftcast too. It's a bit underwhelming and I wouldn't mind it going away. If it stays I don't think it needs major changes. Some way to carry AF stacks into ice is the only thing I'd consider.

Flare Star is at odds with the job's more powerful spell, Xenoglossy, which is built up by maintaining (a now trivialized) flow of Enochian and insta cast. It feels bad to execute and doesn't make sense potency wise. I used to think increasing the potency would fix it, but actually I now think the problem with it is just how the job feels to play when combined with all the other factors. Ice Paradox isn't really enough to make the job feel like it once did.

You also can't just make it crazy potency anyway because of the methods by which you acquire it. It's really a mess imo. Just a poorly designed difficulty increase. I think diffculty is fine, this just isn't what I saw BLM becoming.

Honestly the whole Flare Star concept feels pre Enochian in nature to me, like they just slapped an old idea on bc they were out of ideas after changing the mana regen.

For me, the Black Mage's Flarestar simply needs to be completely reworked.
I know this might not make much sense, but in my opinion,
the only way to fix the problem would be to give us 2 stacks so we can accumulate them, and make it entirely instant-cast.