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

[IruruCece]

That's the second time in this thread you've failed to provide a counterpoint or add a meaningful rebuttal to something someone's said.

That is my counterpoint, because your point sucks.

Summoner is RIGHT THERE if you want a standardized Caster that offers no real stress or worry. Go play that or literally anything else in the game. Not every job needs to fit my preferences. I don't start up threads for a job I am not enjoying demanding that everything I hate be changed, despite wide spread disagreement from people who main the job, and then act surprise when I get increasingly flippant responses to my incessant and unreasonable demands that Dancer should in fact play more like 3.0 Monk, and so should all other jobs.

[Ferrinus]

A dungeon QoL fix that could apply prior to Umbral Soul's unlock could just be for the astral and umbral timer to pause out of combat by default. I'm fairly sure this wouldn't break anything.

[Raikai]

Now that they've given you the option to lock your ground-targeting cursor within ability range and instantly use the ability by just pressing its hotkey again I agree, but I suspect that Shukuchi on a 10s cooldown might be a liiiiittle too strong for BLM or indeed any job.

You know what would be cool, if LeyLines would leave some "aetherial residue" on the spot that you activated it, and you could use Between the Lines (obviously adding a longer cooldown) to come back to it. It would certainly add a new layer of strategy by using LeyLines.

[BokoToloko]

The reasoning about the high skill floor with no skill ceiling on top becomes flawed by the same principles of punishment posited in the original post. You can overcome those punishments and still get a subpar rotation that doesn't match the "core" rotation. An extreme example is forgoing any cast of Fire IV or Ice IV favoring only Ice and Fire 1 (or 3, lol). You can adhere to ABC, use triple/swift on those spells to be able to cast in movement AND you will keep Polyglot stacks rolling. But it's not the optimal rotation. BLM rotation, ever since HW has been one of high risk, high reward and the timer (more specifically, the AF timer) merely sets the interval on which you balance how much time you can risk blasting F4 before having to refresh uptime. If said high rewards results in average damage, then the issue fall completely on tuning, because BLM hinges exclusively on its damage, in lieu of providing additional support like RDMs and SMNs do.

Also, regarding some previous guy statement about timers being outdated mechanics: How is a mechanic outdated? What old references that can be translated to BLM mechancis? How does being outdated relate to timers? What is a timer mechanics (because any buffs and CDs could be essentially regarded as timers too and they constitute the bread and butter of pretty much every class in FFXIV)? What constitutes a modern mechanic?. In all this thread, none of these questions is clarified . Mentioned timers fail to translate to the case in point: Blood of the Dragon and GL were buffs maintained through all of their melee combos, while AF is completely the opposite and needs the rotation to accomodate the means to keep it up. This difference is what made SE delete the first two, as they essentially required no additional input and, in GL case, the downtime punished players by a significant lot.

The only issue is the inconsistency in BLM rotations throughout the leveling experience, which is far worse for new players than the timers mechanics will ever be. Only few changes I would want for BLM is for Scathe to work as a pre-90 Xenoglossy, thus introducing Polyglot earlier in the game, and I could concede for at least Umbral Ice to not have a timer, since the impact would be null and it would spare the Umbral Soul spam. The Aspect Mastery issue was already addressed in EW (smoothing out the rotation on all levels by a lot) and Eno-chan spells are obtained during HW, which should be early enough.

[OtakuSempai]

Yeah so lets change the last well designed job in the game that has any manner of skill ceiling or finesse required to execute and turn into a mindless 1 button spam fest like SMN.

I know that's not what's being asked here, but when Sylphies come into the forums complaining about how something requires brain cells this is what the devs to do to the jobs.

[Flatopia]

Introduction
Quote

Has to be bait, don't fall for it everyone.

[IruruCece]

I'm still flabbergasted anyone from WoW wants any other game to be more WoW-like, when WoW has regularly refused to learn anything from the competition AND is in such a state that it is actively driving players to literally every other MMO currently running, this game included. What next? Should we get FFXIV Tokens for our subscriptions?

[smol_cofe]

Well, now the BLM changes are out.

The only thing that feels bad right now IMO is our potencies are too low. Ironically, those low lvl spells have slipped into end game rotations as well lol

[Daralii]

-Remove Thunder entirely
-Remove every part of the job gauge but the Polyglot timer
-Fire 3 grants 6 charges of Fire 4 Ready
-Blizzard 3 instantly gives 10,000 MP and reduces the cast time and cost of the next Fire 3.

There, BLM is "fixed" and requires as much thought as MCH/MNK/SMN/etc.

[VentVanitas]

-Remove Thunder entirely
-Remove every part of the job gauge but the Polyglot timer
-Fire 3 grants 6 charges of Fire 4 Ready
-Blizzard 3 instantly gives 10,000 MP and reduces the cast time and cost of the next Fire 3.

There, BLM is "fixed" and requires as much thought as MCH/MNK/SMN/etc.

You forgot to make everything except Fire 4 instant cast :^)