For the record, I would still prefer to see more changes to the class in the direction of instant cast abilities like more guaranteed firestarters and thunderclouds. Just as I feared, the change to Fire IV becoming 300 potency makes movement even more punishing, and when there is extremely tight movement timing in places like Final Omega you're guaranteed to lose uptime, which again, high damage (read: uptime) is the ONLY reason to bring BLM due to zero utility.

Further still, adding in the "need" for addle and apoc only makes this problem worse. Breaking it down, if you don't get a firestarter or a thundercloud (dig up Sfia's old thread about the state of BLM for my suggestions on the matter) during your astral phase you have to go an entire 18+ seconds before you can use an off-GCD without clipping (to say nothing of potentially losing a Fire IV for that phase, which again since the buff means an even bigger loss). Needless to say this has ominous implications for timings of those buffs, let alone attempting to keep using your main buffs so they don't get pushed WAY behind. The same thing goes for Aetherial Manipulation; it's a great movement tool hands down but unless you get lucky enough to have a proc for it you ARE losing uptime, which as I said, is the only thing you bring to the group. It is this design that is poorly thought out about the class.

I really hope this gets through to the battle team before 5.0 decisions are finalized, which... it's probably already too late now.