Chad Mages What else would you want right now for our class

[Archwizard]

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.

Have you crunched the numbers on that or are you just crossing your fingers?

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+.

So you want to hamfist in an ability that's dead to the community for a technicality, in lieu of an option like, say, just patching Flare to actually be affected by Aspect Mastery so you still have Umbral Hearts after a Cold Flare (which I think we can agree is a massive oversight that it doesn't already)?

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.

Are you aware of the difference that that 17 levels makes? That's all of the post-ARR content, the entirety of Heavensward and most of Stormblood, for a first-time leveler that's nearly a month and even for someone with Armory bonus that could be weeks. Compare that to the gap from 35 to 50, which is like... A day? Three tops?
Not to mention how incredibly disjointed it is to get a spell you use for 14 levels, ignore for 17 and then recover for 12 more.

[Shurrikhan]

So you want to hamfist in an ability that's dead to the community for a technicality, in lieu of an option like, say, just patching Flare to actually be affected by Aspect Mastery so you still have Umbral Hearts after a Cold Flare (which I think we can agree is a massive oversight that it doesn't already)?

Neither option should come in lieu of the other. There's no point in adding and then leaving a skill that has zero place past level 56. Though, neither do I like that a seemingly obvious use of the another skill is exempt on a technicality. Both are awful.

Are you aware of the difference that that 17 levels makes? That's all of the post-ARR content, the entirety of Heavensward and most of Stormblood, for a first-time leveler that's nearly a month and even for someone with Armory bonus that could be weeks. Compare that to the gap from 35 to 50, which is like... A day? Three tops?
Not to mention how incredibly disjointed it is to get a spell you use for 14 levels, ignore for 17 and then recover for 12 more.

I'd rather avoid both gaps, but, yes, I'd certainly take 15 quickly-progressed levels over 17 of the slowest, especially if taking, leaving, and then again taking it.

[Ferrinus]

Have you crunched the numbers on that or are you just crossing your fingers?

180 potency on 1 target versus 80 potency on multiple targets. Better than F1 on 3 and better than F4 on 4. Most jobs do this kind of math when choosing single target vs. multitarget abilities on non-massive pulls.

So you want to hamfist in an ability that's dead to the community for a technicality, in lieu of an option like, say, just patching Flare to actually be affected by Aspect Mastery so you still have Umbral Hearts after a Cold Flare (which I think we can agree is a massive oversight that it doesn't already)?

Nothing hamfisted about it. There's an obvious gap in the fire spellset (an AoE that swaps you to AF3 with your mana pool intact) and a longstanding AoE fire spell that falls out of use long before level 80. It's a match made in heaven! The B2/Freeze stuff is a bit questionable but making F2 effectively an area of effect F3 is a slam dunk.

I don't agree that flare consuming umbral hearts when cast out of ice mode is an oversight. If Fire 2 simply didn't exist at all, I could see using Flare as the swap-to-AF spell as well as your heavy-hitting AF AoE, but given that F2 needs a home there's no reason to change Flare's behavior in that way.

Are you aware of the difference that that 17 levels makes? That's all of the post-ARR content, the entirety of Heavensward and most of Stormblood, for a first-time leveler that's nearly a month and even for someone with Armory bonus that could be weeks. Compare that to the gap from 35 to 50, which is like... A day? Three tops?
Not to mention how incredibly disjointed it is to get a spell you use for 14 levels, ignore for 17 and then recover for 12 more.

Making sure every spell is useful at level 80 is more important to me than making sure every spell is useful for every level in the entire progression, but like I said, you could just make Freeze cost 0mp by default, regardless of aspect, (Flare costs All, so Freeze costs None, see?) and fix even this issue.

[Archwizard]

180 potency on 1 target versus 80 potency on multiple targets. Better than F1 on 3 and better than F4 on 4. Most jobs do this kind of math when choosing single target vs. multitarget abilities on non-massive pulls.

That's the vacuum of the one spell against single-target spells. How about comparing its impact to just using Flare during AF3, in the context of the AoE rotation as a whole?
It's the same way we came out with the numbers that Freeze spam was more potent than a mixed rotation with F2, comparing their rotations' average potency-per-second rather than each spell's potency-per-cast.
So show me the numbers on this ideal rotation and compare them to what we have before you tell me it's better, because your changes amount to more F2s (not stronger, just more) and the last time that math was done, more F2s brought that average down.

Nothing hamfisted about it. There's an obvious gap in the fire spellset (an AoE that swaps you to AF3 with your mana pool intact) and a longstanding AoE fire spell that falls out of use long before level 80. It's a match made in heaven!
The B2/Freeze stuff is a bit questionable but making F2 effectively an area of effect F3 is a slam dunk.

I don't agree that flare consuming umbral hearts when cast out of ice mode is an oversight. If Fire 2 simply didn't exist at all, I could see using Flare as the swap-to-AF spell as well as your heavy-hitting AF AoE, but given that F2 needs a home there's no reason to change Flare's behavior in that way.

• There's already an AoE that gives you AF3. Aspect Mastery reads without ambiguity, and I quote, "Accumulating full stacks of either Astral Fire or Umbral Ice then casting a spell of the opposite element will consume no MP" -- yet Flare is the one unmentioned exception to this, whether or not you have Umbral Hearts. You want a match made in heaven, fix that interaction and marry those two, because you're going to have a very hard time convincing me that the new trait is meant to ignore it in the same expansion that specifically changed Freeze to make Flare usage smoother.
• "If Fire 2 simply didn't exist at all" is quite amusing justification in this case, considering you're attempting to retool it into a completely different ability -- Fire 2 as you wish it to be doesn't exist. You're tuning more than just the potency, but the overall cast rate and its impact on the rotation, creating a new tool with an old name, used in a completely different way from its namesake.
  Even the existence of what we have (as with Blizzard 2) has been considered an "oversight" from level 50 on. But again, this is literally why I stated that they should simply upgrade to Flare and Freeze, as your behavior with regards to AoE is rather permanently affected either way.
• I find it quite curious that you advocate creating more parallels in the positions of our Fire and Ice spells, yet also want Fire 2 to carve out a spot as the parallel to Freeze for the purpose of swapping phases in AoE. You also haven't really covered how you intend to rescue its actual counterpart B2 from its status as a bloat skill.
  Because, and I can't seem to stress this enough, that's what Fire 2 and Blizzard 2 are: bloat skills. Ones you're attempting to justify as more than that for niche purposes, but bloat all the same.

Making sure every spell is useful at level 80 is more important to me than making sure every spell is useful for every level in the entire progression

And what was your justification for nerfing the cast time of Freeze in the first place, again? "Making Freeze spam less attractive than Fire 2" wasn't it, which is only a problem while leveling?

but like I said, you could just make Freeze cost 0mp by default, regardless of aspect, (Flare costs All, so Freeze costs None, see?) and fix even this issue.

Then we end up with the humorous possibility of Flare returning to its original form, meaning saving Swiftcast for Flare in single-target to burn out the last of our MP as a prototype of Despair -- before we even have Aspect Mastery -- and then using Freeze in place of Blizzard 3. If the numbers happen to support that possibility now then it'll cascade to Flare and Freeze being nerfed in prevention.