Quote Originally Posted by Archwizard View Post
That hardly matters if it's still an upgrade to PPS and overall PPM. You might have had a point if there was ever a time where you would have both and use both -- spamming F2 in AoE and ending in Flare for instance -- but as it stands Fire 2 is completely phased out before you even get Flare, so the effective upgrade is still viable.
But, it wouldn't be if its cast time and MP cost were reduced to F1's. In that case, F2 would be useful for AoE before level 68.

Define "actually a DPS loss", since a loss means there is something to compare to. Compared to just spamming Freeze and never getting Flare out? Compared to hitting Transpose and rebuilding before Flare?
Compared to using Flare to swap from Umbral to Astral. You know, the "cold flare" AoE rotation that's technically superior to using F3 when you've got 5+ targets? If F2 could work as, effectively, an AoE F3, it would have a place at level 68+.

One other thing I failed to point out as a flaw with your design: We don't just go straight into using half-cast Freezes to transition until we get Aspect Mastery. Before that point we have to Transpose after Flare, which goes back to "you just gave Freeze a 4-second cast time in UI phase".
You'd be able to use it to transition to Umbral from Astral after AoEing a bunch of targets from levels 35 to 49, or after doing a Flare -> Convert ->F2 between levels 50 and 67. I could see going farther and giving Freeze, specifically, a 0 base MP cost or something as a mirror to Flare's "all" MP cost, but even if nothing of the sort happens Freeze falling out of use for 17 levels is acceptable given that it still ends up with a place at level 68 and higher.