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

[PyurBlue]

The mechanic is strictly a skill floor mechanic, not a skill ceiling mechanic. Failing the timers mechanic locks you out of your core rotation, and the reward for success is...your core rotation.

That's the intention. It's perfectly fine. Punishment for failed execution is OK.

At its most severe, it turns the class into the only class in the entire game as of Endwalker that is severely punished simply because the devs want to add gaols, stuns, or cinematic cutscenes to boss encounters.

My problem here is with the latter. They're annoying even without resources to disrupt and don't tend to add anything interesting to content. Give us continual control over our characters and everything is fine.

[Taranok]

That's the intention. It's perfectly fine. Punishment for failed execution is OK.


My problem here is with the latter. They're annoying even without resources to disrupt and don't tend to add anything interesting to content. Give us continual control over our characters and everything is fine.

Punishment by itself isn't a problem. The class is pretty punishing just from dropping a GCD. If you drop a Fire 4 at 2.1 seconds, it can cost you over 648 potency in lost damage both from the failed GCD and clipping into the next GCD. That is, literally, the single strongest punishment any class has.

The timers, on the other hand, are the third layer of punishment. They aren't even necessary for maintaining the level 90 rotation. But all I know is, after getting BLM to 90, and playing it in the EXs: If the timers were removed, the class would only get better. It'd have the same rotation, but the freedom of removing the timers would do an absolute ton towards freeing up the class to do something new and interesting down the line.

Just like removing Greased Lightning allowed Monk to have Masterful Blitz added, and that mechanic feels pretty great (rest of the class needs some minor tweaking still), when you tear out old, outdated, awful mechanics, you make way for new, sleaker, better designed ones.

BLM is the least popular caster by a mile. Its skill ceiling is fine but could stand to come down a touch. But its skill floor is way, way too high, and dropping out the floor would only do the class better. Literally every time the devs dropped the skill floor on a class, provided the ceiling didn't also drop out, the class has always improved. It's time for BLM to get the QoL patch it desperately needs.