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

[Archwizard]

There’s really no need to be hostile.

Regardless, my point is that you've developed a system where your proposal only seems like the best option on the grounds that you've also simultaneously proposed nerfing every alternative into the ground first. Bearing in mind that adding more buttons is no smoother or more nuanced, nor does it necessarily net more damage since with such a grandiose restructuring, our potencies would have to be tuned around the changes anyway.

The reason we follow Freeze with hypothetically-actually-good B2 (before level 70) is that ice spells cost 0 MP in UI3 and we are starting with 0 MP. As you know, MP regen ticks are 3 seconds long, and it’s effectively random whether our GCD lines up with them. Best case, we get one immediately and can skip B2. But, worst case, one hits right before Flare resolves, and we sit there hammering our T2 button for 3 full seconds while our mana bar remains resolutely empty.
Good news, though - all our ice spells are free! So we can cast (long range, 80 potency) B2 and get some damage in. 240 potency over 2.5s beats 0 potency over 1.5s on average - you can plug it in to my numbers and see. And, in the real world, that average 1.5s of dead time is going to be even worse for us in relative terms because our GCD is probably shorter than 2.5s.

A difference of a half second is frankly nothing for "recovering", particularly when you consider your MP is continuing to grow in UI or out of phase, and the raw potency you'd be losing over it. You state that B2 would be worse than Freeze for that purpose, but there is no reason to nerf Freeze out of that position -- yet you seem resigned to it.

But I do admit that the need to wait for that first tick on some invisible timer is a (separate) lingering issue, one which affects our single-target as well, which could be resolved a multitude of ways -- those that give instant means to cast B4 and/or Thunder without clipping your MP recovery being chief among them, such as by having your transitional spell generate instant starter MP, or as Shurri has suggested before, just synching the MP tick timer with personal phase alignment rather than server ticks. At the going rate though, with Thundercloud procs drawing out AoE, we already have pretty consistent Polyglot charges every rotation which could at least buy time for MP; don't really need another spammable ice GCD to pace that rotation out, really just 1-2 GCDs in total (... such as the free transitional skill that Aspect Mastery claims we're due).

Flare’s ability to swap you into fire mode but leave you with mana is new, and it’s also clearly marginal and unintended

They literally feed us two separate traits at level 68 to make that possible, and it remains one of only 3 spells (with Despair) that gives AF3, so how can you say that's "clearly unintended"? If the devs wanted Flare to be purely a finisher move, they would have had it go the way of Despair long ago and barred its use during Umbral Ice -- and then we would never have noticed that Flare is the weird exception to nearly every phase-crossing nuance of our rotation.

Umbral Hearts are fundamentally designed to reduce Fire spell costs during Astral Fire, which is why you don't lose any for popping Fire 3 during UI phase -- but Flare is the sole exception to that, consuming them even in Umbral Ice.
Aspect Mastery is designed to remove the cost of transitioning between phases, which lets us squeeze that little more damage out of AF phase in single-target -- but Flare is the sole exception to that, too, continuing to have the same cost (even up to all of our MP) regardless.

If anything seems "clearly unintended," I would think it would be the lack of consistency in our core mechanics, particularly the ones they've added each expansion.

Ultimately, it’s lame to have to cast a mixture of weak, crappy flares and powerful, explosive flares.

And it's any less lame to be forced to cast the wet noodle that is Fire 2 at its absolute crappiest, for a job it already shares with two other spells?
Why do you think that level of redundancy and additional bloat would feel any better for the kit, than having us exclusively use our most powerful AoEs -- Flare, Freeze, Foul and T4 -- to call down disaster and do the jobs they do best?

And, even if we’re okay with watering down such an iconic spell’s identity, we still have the problem of a totally extraneous F2 on our bars because... [Flare]'s not STRICTLY better. It’s just... better. But if you need to deal AoE damage in excess of 100 potency in only 3 seconds, and want to stay in fire mode to be able to follow up immediately with a Flare or F4 or Despair on a different target or something, you can only do that with F2, not Flare.

Well in such a fictitious scenario that fits your oddly specific narrative, it's probably a DPS check which a good player would most likely have prepped Umbral Hearts or saved cooldowns for, including Swift/Triplecast and Manafont.
Unless you didn't mean that Flare is supposed to be a big, powerful add-finishing move after all? Since "we need adds dead, NOW" seems exactly the scenario Flare is made for in your mind?
Well, in that case -- and here's my favorite part! -- you could still get more potency out of Cold Flare than AF3'd Fire 2. Even with your upgrades.

That isn't at all the reason F2 is still on our bar, and you know it. For those of us who didn't throw it aside long ago, it only remains for the purposes of level syncing -- which goes back to my original suggestion of having it upgrade!

I do not know how else to say this to you:
It. Doesn't. Matter. If Flare consumes all your MP and Fire 2 doesn't.
So long as Flare amounts to at least a sidegrade, to the point of Fire 2's exclusion (such as, oh, the present reality), it could easily be treated as a functional upgrade -- there is zero rule imposed upon the devs that says every replaced ID needs to be a strict "X becomes X+1" bonus, and you literally showed Bio II as a precedent for such accepted behavior on their drawing board.

If I seemed hostile earlier, it's because to my eyes, the only one imposing such a narrow-minded limitation on the definition of "advancement" is you.

[Ferrinus]

Regardless, my point is that you've developed a system where your proposal only seems like the best option on the grounds that you've also simultaneously proposed nerfing every alternative into the ground first. Bearing in mind that adding more buttons is no smoother or more nuanced, nor does it necessarily net more damage since with such a grandiose restructuring, our potencies would have to be tuned around the changes anyway.

Yes, obviously. I mean, if Freeze dealt 750 damage to each target then we could delete every other spell BLM has. This would, you have to admit, cut down on button bloat. However, it would also be bad. The job is much more fun to play when different spells are good for different things and you need to use your memory and analytical spell to determine which one is appropriate when. So, I'm perfectly happy to cut functionality out of some spells to give it to others. That said, my proposal for modifying Fire 2 is strictly a buff - the spell would cast faster and more cheaply and be able to do Fire 3's job on AoE pulls.

A difference of a half second is frankly nothing for "recovering", particularly when you consider your MP is continuing to grow in UI or out of phase, and the raw potency you'd be losing over it. You state that B2 would be worse than Freeze for that purpose, but there is no reason to nerf Freeze out of that position -- yet you seem resigned to it.

But I do admit that the need to wait for that first tick on some invisible timer is a (separate) lingering issue, one which affects our single-target as well, which could be resolved a multitude of ways -- those that give instant means to cast B4 and/or Thunder without clipping your MP recovery being chief among them, such as by having your transitional spell generate instant starter MP, or as Shurri has suggested before, just synching the MP tick timer with personal phase alignment rather than server ticks. At the going rate though, with Thundercloud procs drawing out AoE, we already have pretty consistent Polyglot charges every rotation which could at least buy time for MP; don't really need another spammable ice GCD to pace that rotation out, really just 1-2 GCDs in total (... such as the free transitional skill that Aspect Mastery claims we're due).

First, it's a difference of 1.5 seconds on average potentially a difference of up to 3 seconds. That's quite bad, and, like I said, if you go and do the math - replace 240/2.5s with 0/1.5s - you'll find that it's a dps loss even on three targets to just wait for a mana tick rather than immediately cast an AoE ice spell, even one that only deals 80 potency/target.

That said, you seem to be confusing my example of a level 50 AoE rotation (one in which it would actually make sense to use a buffed F2 as a workhorse/filler spell, and in which your umbral phase is low enough on options that you'd probably need B2 as filler) with general/max-level BLM AoE in which, as you say, there are so many things proccing that you're pretty much never strapped for options during the umbral cycle. At level 50, a ranged 80 potency AoE B2 would probably get cast at least once per umbral cycle. At level 80, probably not, unless you were in the weird situation of entering umbral without polyglot or thundercloud. Currently, Freeze fills this extremely marginal role role, but if Freeze cast more slowly and B2 hit a bit harder it could do the same.

They literally feed us two separate traits at level 68 to make that possible, and it remains one of only 3 spells (with Despair) that gives AF3, so how can you say that's "clearly unintended"? If the devs wanted Flare to be purely a finisher move, they would have had it go the way of Despair long ago and barred its use during Umbral Ice -- and then we would never have noticed that Flare is the weird exception to nearly every phase-crossing nuance of our rotation.

Umbral Hearts are fundamentally designed to reduce Fire spell costs during Astral Fire, which is why you don't lose any for popping Fire 3 during UI phase -- but Flare is the sole exception to that, consuming them even in Umbral Ice.

Aspect Mastery is designed to remove the cost of transitioning between phases, which lets us squeeze that little more damage out of AF phase in single-target -- but Flare is the sole exception to that, too, continuing to have the same cost (even up to all of our MP) regardless.

If anything seems "clearly unintended," I would think it would be the lack of consistency in our core mechanics, particularly the ones they've added each expansion.

It's clearly unintended because unlike Fire 3, Flare eats 2/3rds of our MP and all of our hearts if we try to use it to change from umbral to astral. Also, using Flare to stance change on 3 or 4 targets rather than using F3 (the spell that's traditionally always done it) is a dps loss. It's only a DPS gain on 5 targets by the thinnest of percentages. Does anything in our kit scream "use Flare instead of F3 on five targets" specifically? No.

Remember, Improved Umbral Heart dates back to Stormblood. As far as I'm aware, it was never correct to use Flare to swap aspects back then - your AoE rotation, leaving T4s and Fouls aside for a moment, was F3 Flare Flare B3 B4. F2 was actually a damage gain on something dumb like 11+ targets, though I forget the specifics. It might have been optimal to leave out F3, but in that case you'd be using Transpose to cast a "warm flare" followed by a hot flare - Flare's swapping/refreshing AF3 is pure downside/aesthetic consistency, not utility.

To reiterate, I don't think you're correct that Flare works inconsistently with Aspect Mastery (well, technically it does since Aspect Mastery should affect its MP minimum, though this is a minor issue) - this is a phrasing/tooltip translation issue. The game should just specify that Flare/Despair have an MP cost (800, unaffected by any traits) and then a on-hit effect (a truckload of damage, but also the incineration of all remaining MP).

And it's any less lame to be forced to cast the wet noodle that is Fire 2 at its absolute crappiest, for a job it already shares with two other spells?
Why do you think that level of redundancy and additional bloat would feel any better for the kit, than having us exclusively use our most powerful AoEs -- Flare, Freeze, Foul and T4 -- to call down disaster and do the jobs they do best?

This is like complaining that it's lame to be forced to cast the wet noodle that is Fire 3 in order to swap to astral mode, or the wet noodle that is Fire 1 in order to maintain AF3 in the middle of your cycle. In a way, it is lame to have to use weaker, more basic spells in order to set the stage for stronger and flashier spells. However, it's also the heart of BLM's design and gameplay challenge.

You could retool BLM so that the only two spells it has are Xeno and Foul, and just tweak the potencies on those so that they equal the average potency of a BLM doing their single target or AoE rotations under the current regime, and then we'd get to cast our strongest spells all the time! Wowee! But be careful what you wish for.

Well in such a fictitious scenario that fits your oddly specific narrative, it's probably a DPS check which a good player would most likely have prepped Umbral Hearts or saved cooldowns for, including Swift/Triplecast and Manafont.
Unless you didn't mean that Flare is supposed to be a big, powerful add-finishing move after all? Since "we need adds dead, NOW" seems exactly the scenario Flare is made for in your mind?
Well, in that case -- and here's my favorite part! -- you could still get more potency out of Cold Flare than AF3'd Fire 2. Even with your upgrades.

No, this doesn't work, because the current round of still-alive enemies are on low HP but the next round is going to come in fresh and need to be hit hard. If you flare these guys it'll be overkill, and then you'll find yourself in umbral mode and having to swap back to astral (maybe even waiting for a mana tick if you have no procs and want to flare immediately rather than swap back with F3) before you can start actually outputting max damage. Because you received an (extremely advantageous) sidegrade rather than an upgrade, you have lost options.

That isn't at all the reason F2 is still on our bar, and you know it. For those of us who didn't throw it aside long ago, it only remains for the purposes of level syncing -- which goes back to my original suggestion of having it upgrade!

I do not know how else to say this to you:
It. Doesn't. Matter. If Flare consumes all your MP and Fire 2 doesn't.
So long as Flare amounts to at least a sidegrade, to the point of Fire 2's exclusion (such as, oh, the present reality), it could easily be treated as a functional upgrade -- there is zero rule imposed upon the devs that says every replaced ID needs to be a strict "X becomes X+1" bonus, and you literally showed Bio II as a precedent for such accepted behavior on their drawing board.

If I seemed hostile earlier, it's because to my eyes, the only one imposing such a narrow-minded limitation on the definition of "advancement" is you.

It actually does if, by leveling up and learning new magic, you somehow lose options you had before. For instance, here's a button consolidation idea: imagine if Scathe ugpraded into Xenoglossy when you had a Polyglot proc? Match made in heaven, right? ...unless you want to, say, instantly knock away a bomb or otherwise "pop" a target that only requires a single hit while saving your Xeno for the actual boss.

Now, if Scathe were to be literally deleted entirely, I wouldn't shed a tear. But for Scathe to randomly become unavailable as part of a putative upgrade would be very bad.

[Archwizard]

-snip-

Most of your post reads as nonsequitur, honestly. Obviously there is a difference between minimizing the kit down to one or two buttons to spam over and over, and streamlining it so tools with redundant functions don't bloat the kit.

We don't need extra "options" for every niche case, like 2 targets or 3-second burst or "freshly raised" recovery periods. Those are scenarios that an experienced player would anticipate and tools they would either only pull out a fraction of the time or go out of their way to avoid using in the first place, much as we avoid Scathe now so long as we have alternatives. Tools specifically designed for those become (at best) safety nets for bad play, and (at worst) buttons we feel penalized having to push.
We just need tools for practical purposes -- focus-fire, and multi-target -- and the ability to use them unimpeded. If they also happen to cover the niche cases, even better, but it shouldn't be their core justification for existing, and as a friend of mine once said, "failure to improve a ridiculous circumstance doesn't nullify [a tool's] benefit across all reasonable extents and circumstances."

If your argument from the beginning had been "I want Flare to return to purely being a finisher across all levels, so here's my proposal to use Fire 2 until a certain percentage of our MP where we Flare, and some adjustments that would make Fire 2 a useful filler before the final burst, much like our single-target rotation with Despair," I might still have disagreed with you but I would at least have respected your opinion and efforts.
Instead, you argued for Fire 2 and Blizzard 2 to gain redundant functions in end-game, not for the purposes of expanding or smoothing out the kit (quite the opposite, in fact, since you nerfed the smoothing tools we have to push tools we don't need!), but wholly in order to justify their continued bloating of the hotbar. All of this because you "don't want" to use Flare as a transition tool because it "feels bad", but still "want" symmetry with the ice rotation obliging you to keep Blizzard 2 as long as Fire 2 exists, while using fictitious examples as empirical data. Well, with the way our phase transitions work something will "feel bad" either way, and what you want is about as valid as what anyone else wants -- which in my case is in direct opposition to you -- so let's just cut to the chase and call that argument unproductive.
And now you're trying to use the line "confusing examples" between mid- and end-level rotations when you literally said you don't care what our rotation becomes at mid-level? Reads like backpedaling to me.

You've repeatedly stated that Flare is working as intended, but the only actual verification of that is... the way things currently work in-game, which is the definition of circular reasoning, and solves nothing when "the way things work" is in direct opposition to "the way their tooltips say they should."
The devs have never said "Flare doesn't actually cost all of your MP, but rather burns a percentage of your MP as a separate effect on cast, which is why it's unaffected by Aspect Mastery" -- no, Flare lists "all" of your MP as the Cost, and if that's the intended effect then that should be a corrected tooltip that needs fixing yesterday.
Either things aren't working as intended because they defy the tooltips, or the tooltips are wrong and players are using spells in unintended ways, and I have zero reason to trust another player pushing their own agenda to tell me it's the latter.

I have no problem with buffing B2 and F2 for the leveling process, but if they're still phased out by end-game, they don't need to exist in end-game. A trait upgrade will not only allow them to live on in spirit, but save us bar space and/or the trouble of going back into our A&T menu whenever we level sync. Don't overcomplicate it.