Quote Originally Posted by Archwizard View Post
I'm glad you asked!

So thanks to the buff Freeze received this expansion and its sub-GCD cast time, under current circumstances, at 35+ the math is that you get more value out of just spamming Freeze (and Thundercloud) for your entire AoE rotation than you get from using the standard "spam F2 until you run low on MP then swap to ice phase to recover", partly due to the damage lost on F3. At best you get more situational burst out of F2, but at the cost of PPS over the entire encounter.

So from 35-49, you spam Freeze. You get Flare at 50, but F2 has not become more appealing or gained any value so it's best to just skip it still (just going Freeze, F3, Flare, Transpose ad nauseum until a TC proc or Manafont gives an extra Flare -- bearing in mind Flare scales its cost so you can swap elements after 1 MP tick in UI this way, which equates to more burst that F2s would only dilute), and you shouldn't be stopping to B4 during your AoE, making an Umbral Heart calculation moot until Freeze gains the ability at 68 (at which point you get a second Flare, so F2 is still moot) and Aspect Mastery at 72 (at which point you skip Transpose, making it only marginally less "clunky").

So in short: F2 is equally dead weight after 35, so there's zero reason not to swap it out later on.
The fact that it maintains symmetry with the suggestion for B2 to upgrade to Freeze is a happy accident.
F2(A3) potency is 144 on a 3s cast and Flare(A3) is 187 (for the additional targets) on a 4s cast. Freeze is only 100 potency and you still need to wait over 2.2s because of the GCD (at level before aspect mastery). If you add the extra time for the mana uptick, the fact you'll have to use F3 more often to come back to do your single flare... What you're proposing neither feel good nor give you more DPS