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

[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.