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

[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.