Astral Fire/Umbral Ice timers are actually bad mechanics at a meta level.

[zcrash970]

There are boss ultimate attack cutscenes that last 30s or more, and railed movement in some dungeons that are longer than 15s, e.g., the dragon ride in the last MSQ dungeon, and multiple spots in the Copied Factory, one of which, annoyingly, is a 15s ride that you don't have time to Soul after. Dropping Aspect during these is absolutely the job's fault. You can't plan for them, properly or otherwise.

So literally when everyone gets an hard reset on their rotation. BLM isn't the only loosing out.
Twinsnakes, disembowel, storms path, cards, literally almost every job gets this

[Rongway]

So literally when everyone gets an hard reset on their rotation. BLM isn't the only loosing out.

None of those suffer nearly as much as BLM.

Twinsnakes

Reapplied on second GCD, activation time two GCDs

disembowel

Reapplied on second GCD, activation time two GCDs

storms path

You mean Eye, but reapplied on third GCD, activation time three GCDs

cards

No big loss here. Draw a card immediately after the thing finishes? Activation time 0s because you'll either have time to draw before the boss is targetable again or you'll draw in your first weave window.

literally almost every job gets this

BLM has to

(a) hardcast Blizzard III, which takes twice as long to to cast outside of Astral Fire III, and then delay their next cast by activating Enochian outside of a weave window;
(b) Swiftcast Blizzard III which takes almost as much time as hardcasting it but gives a weave window for Enochian,
or (c) substitute Freeze into a single target rotation losing damage but gaining a heart, that's nice I guess.

then spend another two or more GCDs getting back into fire phase before they can cast Fire IV again. EW will remove the Enochian activation time, but Aspects will still need to be reapplied and BLM loses a Paradox every time Aspect drops.

This is not something "every other job" has to deal with.

[Absolution]

None of those suffer nearly as much as BLM.


Reapplied on second GCD, activation time two GCDs


Reapplied on second GCD, activation time two GCDs


You mean Eye, but reapplied on third GCD, activation time three GCDs


No big loss here. Draw a card immediately after the thing finishes? Activation time 0s because you'll either have time to draw before the boss is targetable again or you'll draw in your first weave window.


BLM has to

(a) hardcast Blizzard III, which takes twice as long to to cast outside of Astral Fire III, and then delay their next cast by activating Enochian outside of a weave window;
(b) Swiftcast Blizzard III which takes almost as much time as hardcasting it but gives a weave window for Enochian,
or (c) substitute Freeze into a single target rotation losing damage but gaining a heart, that's nice I guess.

then spend another two or more GCDs getting back into fire phase before they can cast Fire IV again. EW will remove the Enochian activation time, but Aspects will still need to be reapplied and BLM loses a Paradox every time Aspect drops.

This is not something "every other job" has to deal with.

Good point.

A fix would just be to make Umbral Soul freeze UI timer, granting 3 UI and either, 3 Umbral Hearts outside of combat or 1 while in combat.

It will still cost a GCD. You will still always want to use B4 over US. But it helps with downtime and those long travel phases.

[Taranok]

None of those suffer nearly as much as BLM.


Reapplied on second GCD, activation time two GCDs


Reapplied on second GCD, activation time two GCDs


You mean Eye, but reapplied on third GCD, activation time three GCDs


No big loss here. Draw a card immediately after the thing finishes? Activation time 0s because you'll either have time to draw before the boss is targetable again or you'll draw in your first weave window.


BLM has to

(a) hardcast Blizzard III, which takes twice as long to to cast outside of Astral Fire III, and then delay their next cast by activating Enochian outside of a weave window;
(b) Swiftcast Blizzard III which takes almost as much time as hardcasting it but gives a weave window for Enochian,
or (c) substitute Freeze into a single target rotation losing damage but gaining a heart, that's nice I guess.

then spend another two or more GCDs getting back into fire phase before they can cast Fire IV again. EW will remove the Enochian activation time, but Aspects will still need to be reapplied and BLM loses a Paradox every time Aspect drops.

This is not something "every other job" has to deal with.

A couple things to add:

Burning swiftcast to restart your opener means you burn a critical movement skill exclusively to bring the classes rotation back. Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence that dropping AF/UI also drops Paradox, and there's evidence it might actually be saved. Notably, in this video, he simultaneously loses AF/UI but Paradox isn't instantly interrupted. It finishes casting, and isn't put into a stance. Which means Paradox can also get trapped to burn MP, do 20% (percentage points) less damage, and potentially make it more difficult to get into a stance if you accidentally overburn your MP.

Also, quick addition, Storm's Eye doesn't lock out your rotation for want of it. In fact, none of these lock out your core rotation. You want to maintain it, and it's part of your skill ceiling to maintain these class buffs, but that's the important thing. BLM has no core rotation without AF/UI. A warrior simply loses out on ~9% of its total damage until it gets storm's eye up. Which is annoying and should be considered to be looked into, but is not as serious a problem as, say, dumping their entire stack of rage while simultaneously setting back the cooldown of Inner Release, which is what dropping AF/UI is practically doing. In comparison, a Monk in the same situation has its core rotation seriously hindered due to a loss of GL3. DRG has its entire main loop completely reset when BotD is forced to drop as it often is at present. These are both being, or have been, removed.

Good point.

A fix would just be to make Umbral Soul freeze UI timer, granting 3 UI and either, 3 Umbral Hearts outside of combat or 1 while in combat.

It will still cost a GCD. You will still always want to use B4 over US. But it helps with downtime and those long travel phases.

I can't help but think of all of the mechanics the devs kept adding to Monk to fix the problem of Greased Lightning being dropped, which was often just as disastrous to MNK's rotation as it is to BLM to drop AF/UI due to the timers, before the devs finally acquiesced and removed GL3, and found out the class was better with its removal than with it as a major part of the class. At a certain point, you're really just bending over backwards to justify poor design while claiming it's good design. In a broad, general sense. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth as I'm very much editorializing based on trying to fix a problem by creating silly asinine workarounds instead of dealing with the problem directly.

[Absolution]

I can't help but think of all of the mechanics the devs kept adding to Monk to fix the problem of Greased Lightning being dropped, which was often just as disastrous to MNK's rotation as it is to BLM to drop AF/UI due to the timers, before the devs finally acquiesced and removed GL3, and found out the class was better with its removal than with it as a major part of the class. At a certain point, you're really just bending over backwards to justify poor design while claiming it's good design. In a broad, general sense. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth as I'm very much editorializing based on trying to fix a problem by creating silly asinine workarounds instead of dealing with the problem directly.

AF and UI doesn't take forever to reapply though. It only takes one to one and a half GCD to go back to UI3 or AF3. Currently, Enochian only adds a level of punishment for that but that's getting a QOL update next expac hence I understand why they turned that into a trait.

But the timers on AF and UI aren't the "problem" here. Playing BLM optimally, you will always want to switch to the other aspect even before the timers expire anyway. The problem I was keen on was that forced cutscenes and transitions longer than 16s will drop you out of your aspect. There is no way around this. Umbral Soul was already a way to maintain it during passive downtime, why can't we just adjust it to cover all downtimes?

In the end, I wanted to grasp what you, kind sir, really want out of this post. If you think this mechanic is bad, then how would you change it? AF and UI are just passive now? Or are they just modes you transition into like Diurnal Sect/Nocturnal Sect?
When you spawn into an instance, is it unaspected? Or are you always on Umbral Ice at the start of any instance? How will polyglots interact with a passive UI/AF? And so on...

I'm not trying to say you're wrong. You have a point. It sucks to have to drop AF and UI on unskippable boss cutscenes longer than the timer. But the fix would be to:
a) design boss fights such that there are no transitions and cutscenes longer than the timer.
b) redesign the engine such that you CAN Umbral soul in transitions and cutscenes longer than the timer.
c) Rework and redesign the entire job so that it works with a passive UI/AF
d) Just extend the Umbral Soul function to freeze UI.

As much as I'm being critical of your post, I would find it interesting if SE went for option c. But for now, I would be fine with just option d. It doesn't make sense to rework the entire job when it works well on almost all fights save for those with long animation locks.

[Grimoire-M]

None of those suffer nearly as much as BLM.


Reapplied on second GCD, activation time two GCDs


Reapplied on second GCD, activation time two GCDs


You mean Eye, but reapplied on third GCD, activation time three GCDs


No big loss here. Draw a card immediately after the thing finishes? Activation time 0s because you'll either have time to draw before the boss is targetable again or you'll draw in your first weave window.


BLM has to

(a) hardcast Blizzard III, which takes twice as long to to cast outside of Astral Fire III, and then delay their next cast by activating Enochian outside of a weave window;
(b) Swiftcast Blizzard III which takes almost as much time as hardcasting it but gives a weave window for Enochian,
or (c) substitute Freeze into a single target rotation losing damage but gaining a heart, that's nice I guess.

then spend another two or more GCDs getting back into fire phase before they can cast Fire IV again. EW will remove the Enochian activation time, but Aspects will still need to be reapplied and BLM loses a Paradox every time Aspect drops.

This is not something "every other job" has to deal with.

Sure, if you consider 30s+ jump phases to not necessitate a full-on reopener in the first place, which is even more punishing for jobs that have a much longer pre-pull setup than BLM has. NIN gets screwed hard by needing to set up their Mudras and has to actively alter their rotation going into and coming out of that window in order to be able to refresh Huton in those situations currently and loses a full on Mudra to a mid-setup Suiton. Dancer screws up their Standard Step timing in a similar manner. Dragoon can drop a whole eye window if they can't compensate for it ahead of time while Summoner can get stuck with back-to-back Demis and Devotion realignment if Bahamut's forced to be held going-in. Monk doesn't want to start without a form buff up at all but has to do so anyways and loses DoT uptime. Red Mage seems like a breeze by comparison but I know you're familiar with how bad it mucks with their mana management. Really only Healers, Tanks, and Bard/Machinist seem mostly unaffected by it as far as I can tell. Most other jobs lose about equally as much, but Black Mage can choose to push a fast AF rotation going in and stockpile Polyglot stacks knowing they won't be charging it anyways.

Really the problem that's begging to be solved here is giving Polyglot the 'in combat only' clause of Lilies and Sage's Aetherflow now that Enochian won't have a button anymore. That's it.

[Taranok]

AF and UI doesn't take forever to reapply though. It only takes one to one and a half GCD to go back to UI3 or AF3. Currently, Enochian only adds a level of punishment for that but that's getting a QOL update next expac hence I understand why they turned that into a trait.

But the timers on AF and UI aren't the "problem" here. Playing BLM optimally, you will always want to switch to the other aspect even before the timers expire anyway. The problem I was keen on was that forced cutscenes and transitions longer than 16s will drop you out of your aspect. There is no way around this. Umbral Soul was already a way to maintain it during passive downtime, why can't we just adjust it to cover all downtimes?

In the end, I wanted to grasp what you, kind sir, really want out of this post. If you think this mechanic is bad, then how would you change it? AF and UI are just passive now? Or are they just modes you transition into like Diurnal Sect/Nocturnal Sect?
When you spawn into an instance, is it unaspected? Or are you always on Umbral Ice at the start of any instance? How will polyglots interact with a passive UI/AF? And so on...

I'm not trying to say you're wrong. You have a point. It sucks to have to drop AF and UI on unskippable boss cutscenes longer than the timer. But the fix would be to:
a) design boss fights such that there are no transitions and cutscenes longer than the timer.
b) redesign the engine such that you CAN Umbral soul in transitions and cutscenes longer than the timer.
c) Rework and redesign the entire job so that it works with a passive UI/AF
d) Just extend the Umbral Soul function to freeze UI.

As much as I'm being critical of your post, I would find it interesting if SE went for option c. But for now, I would be fine with just option d. It doesn't make sense to rework the entire job when it works well on almost all fights save for those with long animation locks.

The problem is, while AF/UI is down, you are locked out of doing your core rotation. You are stuck into a very low PPS re-opener that either resets you into your lowest DPS phase without any way to speed up the process, or you burn a ton of MP, lose even more potency, and are regardless stuck paying a 1000+ potency bill in lost potencies off losing the timer, just in the cost of losing fire 4s and despairs.

It's "not a lot of time," but it's astronomical in cost.

And if you want to see what I could see the rotation looking like without it, I'd direct you towards this post. https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5689833 Basically, drop the skill floor out from under BLM, restructure the rotation to be fundamentally exactly what the devs already want it to be anyways (so don't change the core rotation), and remove the threat of dropping the rotation to smooth out the class, fix transitional issues, etc.

Sure, if you consider 30s+ jump phases to not necessitate a full-on reopener in the first place, which is even more punishing for jobs that have a much longer pre-pull setup than BLM has. NIN gets screwed hard by needing to set up their Mudras and has to actively alter their rotation going into and coming out of that window in order to be able to refresh Huton in those situations currently and loses a full on Mudra to a mid-setup Suiton. Dancer screws up their Standard Step timing in a similar manner. Dragoon can drop a whole eye window if they can't compensate for it ahead of time while Summoner can get stuck with back-to-back Demis and Devotion realignment if Bahamut's forced to be held going-in. Monk doesn't want to start without a form buff up at all but has to do so anyways and loses DoT uptime. Red Mage seems like a breeze by comparison but I know you're familiar with how bad it mucks with their mana management. Really only Healers, Tanks, and Bard/Machinist seem mostly unaffected by it as far as I can tell. Most other jobs lose about equally as much, but Black Mage can choose to push a fast AF rotation going in and stockpile Polyglot stacks knowing they won't be charging it anyways.

Really the problem that's begging to be solved here is giving Polyglot the 'in combat only' clause of Lilies and Sage's Aetherflow now that Enochian won't have a button anymore. That's it.

I mean, if we're talking about Ninja, they're getting a button exclusively to fix the problem of needing to spend ninjutsu to regain Huton. Which begs the question of why they feel they need to keep Huton anymore. It's very expensive to drop, hence adding the button, and at this point the only reason to justify keeping it is to keep Armor Crush in the rotation. They could remove AC, turn AE into a directionlesss attack, and make Bhava have a flank requirement to compliment TA, and the class wouldn't need 2 buttons (AC, Huton refresh in EW), while freeing up an entire Mudra finisher for some other unknown skill that would actually be used at literally any point in end-game EW outside of the opener.

As for making Enochian just be an in-combat thing, that would punish the class mid-pull in dungeons and whatnot, which isn't necessarily a problem outside of just taking away something beneficial the class already has, and doesn't address that dropping AF/UI is still a pretty massive potency loss. You're still talking about losing all remaining Umbral Hearts, have to go from what would probably be F4 spam at 540 potency per 2.8s (300 * 1.8, so ignoring maim and mend, ignoring enochian's potency increase, 192.8 pps), dropping to a flat 240 potency skill that takes .7 seconds longer to cast (68.7pps), and probably dropping into UI again because otherwise you'll be burning at least an entire fire 4 by itself to restart the rotation. Or you burn swiftcast to get into it faster, burning an important movement tool while still incurring all the knock-on problems. Comparing this to Ninja's Huraijin, I wish restarting BLM's rotation cost a mere...127 potency in opportunity cost, give or take (baseline AE rotation, technically would be more because it's a slower GCD but I don't want to math it out entirely.)

All of this to justify a timer that exists to structure the AF3 rotation, does a very poor job of actually structuring it, makes the class much more confusing to understand as a new player, doesn't impact the skill ceiling at all because it's the baseline requirement to play the job as expected, and it could be removed without destroying the rotation provided you structure the rotation using other tools already present.

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

Since you seem to have missed it, I'll point you to my first post in response to Rongway on this:

I have to somewhat agree with Rongway's conclusion that Fire IV would need something else gating it to make this work. My issue is more with the framing of AF/UI as being bad for having the tension they do. It would be difficult to maintain the same level of forethought that the timers do encourage you to have once you start accounting for how some of your mobility options come into direct conflict with them. Particularly when you factor in that it also rewards you for gearing into spell speed and using Leylines in particular. My overall interpretation of the job is that the reason it's a successful turret mage is because the timers allow for some level of flexibility while still putting some rails on how you handle things, and Polyglot and Fire IV both were ways to reward you for maintaining those timers (Fire IV more for Enochian, specifically in regards to HW). And then you get into edge cases. Manafont doesn't work unless you have a timer. Firestarter and Fire I/Paradox have no explicit purpose without that timer. Some of the value of Triple/Swiftcast is lost without those timers. It adds tension, sure, but not excessively so, because it doesn't ask that you juggle a bunch of secondary resources. Astral Fire and Umbral Ice are the core, including the timers themselves. At some point you have to ask, "Does taking this away add anything?" And judging by the hoops Rongway jumped through to get it to work without it, I'd say no, which is distinctly different from how Monk was handled previously. And honestly new Summoner gets punished more than Black Mage ever has by downtime, which isn't something I ever thought I'd say given where both were back in 2.0.

What I think I missed that's more pertinent here is that 'tension' I'm referring to is consequence. Yes, the AF/UI timer is an explicit punishment mechanic. That's the point. It's designed to keep you on the rails and guide players towards the core rotation and the ways in which you're allowed to flex around it. MP is not enough to enforce that. The consequence for screwing up your AF management is you lose your partially charged Polyglot. The Fire IV loss from Enochian is being removed in Endwalker, and you know what the punishment for that used to be? Dropping Enochian's buff itself, which was its own timer that couldn't be refreshed consistently, creating even less flexibility compared to now.

And unlike other mechanics that set your rotation on rails (Combos, Buffs/Debuffs with 100% uptime, Long cooldown GCDs) it still allows as much flexibility as the timer itself allows. BLM has a priority rotation where your goal is to cast as many Fire IVs as possible and the timer is the only thing that prevents you from doing that. You have to build in an entire new mechanic in order to justify its replacement, that's harder to explain, and even harder to implement with the same level of flexibility and readability. And for what, exactly? Not being able to drop it during downtime?

Well, really, what it's actually there to prevent is Chad McThunderhax from spamming Thundercloud a potentially infinite number of times in a row while maintaining AF3 the entire time. While the obvious use of the timer is it forces you to use F1 and potentially Sharpcast/Firestarter F3 to maintain your Fire IV access in the first place, it also serves as check on unecessary nonsense like that. Sure, that particular scenario is unrealistic and the numbers are worse than Ice Mage in practice, the fact is it serves as a guide to the core priority rotation and all of its variations.

To look at it from another perspective, since you're focused on downtime, we could ask "Why don't we just fix the downtime instead?". Imagine that in Endwalker all instances of Down for The Count and similar debuffs freeze your rotation timers for their duration. Cooldowns. Buffs, debuffs, whatever. All of it on-pause. What happens then? Well, the consequence of that is you're not losing anything during the cutscene, while the jobs that gain an advantage from downtime no longer gain that advantage. You might be hurrahing that you finally can cut your losses, but I see that as a net negative. Precisely because it equalizes jobs rather than allowing situational advantages and quirks. One of BLM's advantages is it has the highest potential DPS in the game. And the costs of that is its floor is one of the lowest if you don't understand it. The AF/UI timer is only one facet of that, but it makes micromanaging its movement more interesting and rewarding without being too difficult to understand. I'd argue all the Ice Heart, AF stacks, Paradox, and Polyglot nonsense clogging up their Job Gauge is what causes it to be 'difficult', but the more accurate term is bloated.

All in all, while I understand the sentiment, I do not think removing the timer is good for mechanical diversity nor from a design elegance standpoint. And, frankly speaking, we already are struggling for that in multiple jobs across the board. If you don't like it, I'd advise you play a different class that gets something from downtime in instances that make that uncomfortable for you. I for one will level the job, suck at it, and listen to my static enjoy it for what it is content in the knowledge it doesn't need that kind of reductive attention.

[Taranok]

What I think I missed that's more pertinent here is that 'tension' I'm referring to is consequence. Yes, the AF/UI timer is an explicit punishment mechanic. That's the point. It's designed to keep you on the rails and guide players towards the core rotation and the ways in which you're allowed to flex around it.

I think this is the crux of the issue. AF/UI timers are not a punishment mechanic primarily. They're a structural mechanic. A structural mechanic that makes the class much harder to learn, allows for rotations that are much easier to break (E.G. hypermeme), rotations that the devs very much do not like (Why else would Paradox require UH3 to get after leaving UI3?), and doesn't impact high-skill play meaningfully while massively reducing the enjoyment of the class at low skill play. This lack of enjoyment trickles up into high-end play, where one of 2 kinds of people exist: Those who thrive off the anxiety, and those who see their enjoyment reduced. This doesn't need to be the case, and provided the class has structure in absence of AF/UI timers, the class would be a lot better for the lack of them.

To look at it from another perspective, since you're focused on downtime, we could ask "Why don't we just fix the downtime instead?".

To look at it from another perspective: "Why would you intentionally hamstring the class with a badly thought out mechanic just because you personally don't hate the anxiety it causes, and refuse to recognize the detriments it causes?" A band-aid is just that, a band-aid. You can fix the downtime issue, but you're not dealing with the underlying problem or the severity of it.

Oh, one final thing.

Well, really, what it's actually there to prevent is Chad McThunderhax from spamming Thundercloud a potentially infinite number of times in a row while maintaining AF3 the entire time

People wouldn't do that because T3 by itself, even in proc form, is a pretty huge DPS decrease if it's not allowed to tic. If you literally spent your entire rotation just chaincasting T3 one after another in its proc form, it would be worse DPS than doing the entire AF/UI rotation without a single T3.

The problem is so interesting that a T3 without a proc, unless I flubbed the math, is actually a DPS decrease over the new EW rotation. Fortunately, as it has a pretty high chance to proc (about 57% over 24 seconds) this is rarely an actual problem, but seriously, if it doesn't proc it's a DPS downgrade.

I'm actually wondering if there will be meme strats that completely dump T3 in favor of forcing F3 procs to make the transition back into AF3 literally twice as damaging. I doubt it, because T3 with a proc is a sizeable DPS increase provided the DoT is allowed to tic, but the point still stands. Also, there will definitely be strategies about keeping F3P all through UI3 just to transpose->firestarter the start of the AF phase. Literally ARR strats coming back, only this time intentionally.

[Absolution]

The problem is, while AF/UI is down, you are locked out of doing your core rotation. You are stuck into a very low PPS re-opener that either resets you into your lowest DPS phase without any way to speed up the process, or you burn a ton of MP, lose even more potency, and are regardless stuck paying a 1000+ potency bill in lost potencies off losing the timer, just in the cost of losing fire 4s and despairs.

It's "not a lot of time," but it's astronomical in cost.

And if you want to see what I could see the rotation looking like without it, I'd direct you towards this post. https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5689833 Basically, drop the skill floor out from under BLM, restructure the rotation to be fundamentally exactly what the devs already want it to be anyways (so don't change the core rotation), and remove the threat of dropping the rotation to smooth out the class, fix transitional issues, etc.

Ideally in a fight, you're only going to do your opener once and do your rotation for the whole fight. In some ways, reopeners can have a higher pps depending on the availability of LL, Triplecast, Swiftcast, and Manafont. Even without Manafont and only having those 3 skills, it's still only slightly* less pps.

That is why I'm still in favor of just adjusting Umbral Soul.

Because at the end of the day, if the core rotation is preserved and the rotation is the same, and the class plays the same as well as the class feeling the same, does the class really warrant major reworking for the sake of lower the skill floor?

If SE would rework BLM, I don't want to be doing F4 spam AGAIN. I want it to be something new. Otherwise, it's a waste of resource to put that much development effort into it only for the job to feel the same in the end.
Players starting the job might appreciate this, but the majority of BLM players who already know their rotation wouldn't even notice this.

TLR - BLM is fine save for a few encounters. Asking for a rework to the entire kit is pointless if your intention is to preserve the feel of the original kit.