Quote Originally Posted by Taranok View Post
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.