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

[Kabooa]

My issue is not the timers per se, but the fact that losing Enochian for whatever reason completely demolishes your dps on a skill floor level even. The threshold on how that would impact the lower end of dps spectrum shouldn't be as bad, especially on a job that only brings "firepower" to the equation. I'm all for the very high skill ceiling that optimized play might entail though.

Said that, I wonder what lies beyond for the future of BLM... Enochian should pose as a design wall the same way the old Greased Lightning did? How much can you expand the job with the Enochian the way it is?... Honestly one way or another I feel that given how XIV handles vertical progression, a redesign is due sooner or later.

This is frankly no longer a concern.

You always have Enochian because you always have your timer, and you have a bevy of tools to keep your timer. Greased Lightning was never at the level of comfort AF/UI has been, because even in baseline ARR you were only ever one GCD from maximum power.

Seeing as transforming abilities are being experimented more in FF14, I have little concern for black mage moving forward. The next logical step for them is a new transformative skill, likely on Thunder as it's now just a bit too static.

[Raikai]

This is frankly no longer a concern.

You always have Enochian because you always have your timer, and you have a bevy of tools to keep your timer. Greased Lightning was never at the level of comfort AF/UI has been, because even in baseline ARR you were only ever one GCD from maximum power.

Seeing as transforming abilities are being experimented more in FF14, I have little concern for black mage moving forward. The next logical step for them is a new transformative skill, likely on Thunder as it's now just a bit too static.

I feel that there's a misconception with Triplecast (bevy of tools). A lot of people say that BLM basically have 7 insta cast windows, but those are more geared towards planned movement. If you use Triplecast because you "messed up" and can't get out in time, or that you won't have enough time to finish a Despair cast... added with slidecast, you only need in most cases 1 insta cast to avoid losing Enochian. Those remaining casts won't probably matter much in that regard. So there's realistically just 3 opportunities to fix mistakes like that (2 triples and the swift).

However, given that you don't have those available at the time... It is a concern indeed, just because to recover you need to interrupt your rotation with a slow cast spell, to restore Enochian and get back stacks of AF (in case you dropped at that phase).

I'm not suggesting that Enochian should be removed, though, however one small thing would ease up the gap towards the skill floor... Maybe Xenoglossy/Foul could refresh, or add 4 extra seconds to your Enochian timer. Yes, one extra tool to help with Enochian uptime, however this would only affect the skill floor positively while changing little to nothing on the skill ceiling.