Quote Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare View Post
You didn't read the full proposal for the two skills? Freeze would become the Umbral Ice "Fire II/Flare," and would build to Umbral Ice II/III while still providing good AoE coverage. After all, in the ideal situation of using it, Flare would wreck your opportunity of having Umbral Ice III ready for Blizzard IV then Fire III, since you'd be forced to Transpose into UI.
The UI3 might make it worthwhile, but I'm too lazy to do the math. Assuming it stayed 3.whatever cast speed, I think that might have it be slightly better than just prioritizing B4/T4 and then going straight into AF3.

Though, if the math showed it coming out as neutral or better, the other issue it presents is that it might simply be better to just stay in UI3 for Freeze Spam. That's the primary reason B2 got nerfed, because at 100 potency, the quicker cast, infinite spam B2 outpaced F2.

Strictly speaking, while Ice phase not having high damage options is pretty meh, I'd rather Fire be grossly higher than Ice, and Ice serving to set up / buff that phase.