Chad Mages What else would you want right now for our class

[Ferrinus]

Just for a moment I invite you to consider, that when all is said and done with your plan:
1) Blizzard 2 is still equally forgotten after we get Freeze. We only need one transition tool and Freeze already covers that, and we ideally won't spend enough time in UI to spam anything anyway.
2) Best case scenario, all you've accomplished for Fire 2 by endgame is having it replace Fire 3 as a transition tool in AoE scenarios, since we still wouldn't spam it after getting Flare.
3) You've introduced a penalty to Freeze -- a skill we use in end-game -- in order to advance another skill that will still largely get phased out during the leveling process, just slower. Congrats?

The problem is, you can't really have B2 become Freeze and F2 become Flare because the former's a strict upgrade while the latter isn't - F2 doesn't cost all your mana and take 4 seconds to cast. Also, that leaves the quirk in our AoE rotation where using F3 to swap to astral on 5+ targets is actually a dps loss. So, I think giving F2 F3-like functionality actually works really well - it lets you swap while maximizing the damage of both your cycle's flares and works as more conventional spammable AoE in earlier levels.
B2 ends up much more marginal (as does B1, which is like... a way to keep UI going if you have a single GCD left and want to add a teeny bit more damage? This is where making F1 and B1 both instant casts and getting rid of Scathe all together really appeals) but I'd prefer that to it vanishing all together.

If it was feasible, I'd love for Freeze to also do 260 potency to one target and 40% less to the rest, except it would end up replacing B3!

[Tint]

Sooo much text... well, I'll just comment on your first post:

I kind of wish either that Despair had a 2.8s cast or even that F4/B4 had 3.0s casts so that optimal use of Triplecast was a little more flexible.

Aside from that, I want to see more fire/ice symmetry, especially with AoEs:

Fire2 and Blizzard2 are both targeted, 80 potency AoEs with 2.5s cast times and 800mp casting costs. A late-game trait makes them grant three stacks of their respective buff on hit, just like F3/B3, so B2 becomes the go-to way to recover stacks post-death or after some other loss while F3 shifts to fire mode during your AoE rotation.

Meanwhile, Freeze gets a 4.0s base cast time like Flare so spamming it isn’t attractive.

Well I don't agree that they should change Despairs or F4 / B4 cast times, but you are right that it would make the optimal use of Triplecast more flexible.

But the whole change to F2 / B2 and Freeze? Hell no, you try to fix more than what it broken.

Especially when your Blizzard 2 is just a worse version of the Freeze we already have. And your change to Freeze is unnecessary when Fire 2 grants full AF stacks. The reason that spamming Freeze is more effective than using Fire 2 is because we lose too much damage when we single target switch with Fire 3 into AF. Fire 2 (under AF3) does more damage than Freeze.

All what is needed is a way to build AF3 with an aoe skill wich doesn't burn away all your mana. And Fire 2 could become that skill. With that simple change the 35-50 Freeze spam would end.


And trying to Make Blizzard 2 viable is a waste of time, because there is just no need to fit a weak extra skill into UI. When we have a slow mana tic we already can use another Freeze, a Thundercloud Procc or a Foul.

Blizzard 2 becomes the go-to way to recover stacks after a death? With only 80 potency? Sorry, but even the Freeze we have now with it's 100 potency is weaker than Blizzard 3, except when you can hit more than 1 target of course. And even in AoE it would still be better to start with Freeze, even at a 4 second cast, because you will need the Umbral Heart for double Flare afterwards.

Just upgrade Blizzard 2 into Freeze so we can get rid of that useless extra button.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't get why we don't just solidify the fundamental aspects of the job.

1. Give each stack 20% off cast times and mana cost of the opposite element while increasing Fire damage by 20% per AF stack and UI tick strength by 20% per UI stack. (Adjust initial UI strength to compensate, or even just increase the base MP rate uniquely for BLMs, and just have UI affect that.)
2. UI ticks follow their own timer, which continues progressing through AF (just locked out of actually finishing the tick), so your first tick is always instant, meaning you're never completely locked out of any and all actions. Swapping to UI3 will already grant access to any action from the initial tick alone, while UI1 will at least grant access immediately to all Ice spells. No need for Aspect Mastery; the issue's already solved at level 1.
3. Give each Fire and Blizzard spell the same potencies as their counterpart (this really just means increasing the Fire potencies to compensate for going from 40/60/80 to 20/40/60 and then buffing the Ice spells to match). Blizzard II is now target-based alike to Fire II. Simple, intuitive.
4. Don't exempt Flare from the stack bonuses. Flare would normally cost all of your MP. Now, Flare will cost 40% of your maximum MP (100%-60%=40%). Freeze continues to shift you to UI3, alike to Flare. Voila, you have an AoE 3-stack-shift for either one as of level 50. Again, simple, intuitive.

It's... not hard.

[Ferrinus]

That's the vacuum of the one spell against single-target spells. How about comparing its impact to just using Flare during AF3, in the context of the AoE rotation as a whole?
It's the same way we came out with the numbers that Freeze spam was more potent than a mixed rotation with F2, comparing their rotations' average potency-per-second rather than each spell's potency-per-cast.
So show me the numbers on this ideal rotation and compare them to what we have before you tell me it's better, because your changes amount to more F2s (not stronger, just more) and the last time that math was done, more F2s brought that average down.

The reason that happens is F2’s 3.0s cast time and huge MP cost.

My Fire 2 would be 144 per target per 2.5s. Flare is 292.5 on one target and 175.5 on the rest per 2.5 seconds, so it’s still flatly superior to F2. A “hot Freeze” is 70, and a 2.5s Freeze is 100.

So, you’re level 50, just swapped to AF3 and have 9500 MP and three targets. You can cast five F2s, then Flare. That’s 1.8[240*5 + (260 + 156 + 156)] = 3189.6 over 16.5 seconds. Then you cast hypothetical always 0 mp Freeze (210 total potency, 2.5s), B2 (filler to regen MP, no lag before the cast since it’s free in UI3) for 240/2.5s, T2 (more filler to get your MP up and keep the dot ticking, minimum 450 potency/2.5s), now your MP is full so you can cast F3 for 168/2.5s and GOTO START.

That’s 3189.6 + 210 + 240 + 450 + 168 = 4257.6 potency over 26.5 seconds -> 160.6 pps.

Forget F2! We’re just going to cast Flare, then hypothetical 0 mp Freeze, then B2, then T2, then F3! So 1096/4s followed by the 210+240+300+168 over 10s. 2014 total Potency over 14s becomes 143.8 pps, not as good, and the more targets there are the better relative to Flare non-Flares become.

Okay, what if we didn’t even bother with the B2 filler or even T2 and instead just mashed the F3 key, waiting for our first mana tick? Well that’s an average 1.5s lag time,
so 1096/4s + 210/2.5s + 168/~4s. 140.38 average.

I think I may have cracked it - this is a sensible sub-68 AoE rotation!

• There's already an AoE that gives you AF3. Aspect Mastery reads without ambiguity, and I quote, "Accumulating full stacks of either Astral Fire or Umbral Ice then casting a spell of the opposite element will consume no MP" -- yet Flare is the one unmentioned exception to this, whether or not you have Umbral Hearts. You want a match made in heaven, fix that interaction and marry those two, because you're going to have a very hard time convincing me that the new trait is meant to ignore it in the same expansion that specifically changed Freeze to make Flare usage smoother.
• "If Fire 2 simply didn't exist at all" is quite amusing justification in this case, considering you're attempting to retool it into a completely different ability -- Fire 2 as you wish it to be doesn't exist. You're tuning more than just the potency, but the overall cast rate and its impact on the rotation, creating a new tool with an old name, used in a completely different way from its namesake.
  Even the existence of what we have (as with Blizzard 2) has been considered an "oversight" from level 50 on. But again, this is literally why I stated that they should simply upgrade to Flare and Freeze, as your behavior with regards to AoE is rather permanently affected either way.
• I find it quite curious that you advocate creating more parallels in the positions of our Fire and Ice spells, yet also want Fire 2 to carve out a spot as the parallel to Freeze for the purpose of swapping phases in AoE. You also haven't really covered how you intend to rescue its actual counterpart B2 from its status as a bloat skill.
  Because, and I can't seem to stress this enough, that's what Fire 2 and Blizzard 2 are: bloat skills. Ones you're attempting to justify as more than that for niche purposes, but bloat all the same.

Aspect Mastery is written misleadingly but behaves in a consistent way. It reduces the MP requires to cast spells of the opposite aspect to zero. However, it doesn’t change those spells’ EFFECTS. Flare is best understood as a spell that COSTS 400mp (doubled to 800 under AF3) but, in addition to dealing damage to enemies, burns away all your MP (or just burns away a portion of your MP if you have any Hearts) on-hit.

I also don’t actually want Flare to be your free-to-cast AF3 swapper; it’d make the AoE rotation feel more samey and leach some of Flare’s identity as a devastating but costly finishing move. No more cold flares!

As I’ve mentioned, you can’t have F2 simply upgrade into Flare because Flare isn’t strictly better - it casts more slowly and eats more MP.

And what was your justification for nerfing the cast time of Freeze in the first place, again? "Making Freeze spam less attractive than Fire 2" wasn't it, which is only a problem while leveling?

Then we end up with the humorous possibility of Flare returning to its original form, meaning saving Swiftcast for Flare in single-target to burn out the last of our MP as a prototype of Despair -- before we even have Aspect Mastery -- and then using Freeze in place of Blizzard 3. If the numbers happen to support that possibility now then it'll cascade to Flare and Freeze being nerfed in prevention.

4.0s Freeze would prevent it from being spammed to the exclusion of fire spells at lower levels and also mean that a hypothetical UI3-granting B2, rather than Freeze, could be used to rapidly recover UI3 and hence all your mana post-death or stance fumble.

[Archwizard]

-snip-

I hardly know where to begin unraveling this.

First of all, who uses Blizzard 2 as a filler during UI phase post-Freeze? At UI3 our MP recovers quickly enough we can get effectively one cast out before capping -- kind of a big problem with Blizzard IV's place in single-target, there's hardly time for it -- and that's largely going to be Thunder 2/4 until you learn Foul. Hell, thanks to Flare scaling its cost to our current MP, we don't even need to wait to be capped on MP before swapping back in AF, which actually increases our burst.
The idea of Blizzard 2 otherwise retaining a place for "rapidly recovering MP post-death" is unfathomably niche, not to mention redundant within the kit. We already rez with enough MP to cast B3, heaven forbid we need even less reason to use LD.

If Flare was meant to be purely a "costly finishing move", why oh why does it give you AF3 long before you get Aspect Mastery? Refreshing AF is one thing, capping it in a scenario when you can't possibly gain any benefit at cap (especially since you're forced into Transposing for about 18 more levels) is quite another. Sure there's always Manafont, but that's still a 3 minute cooldown versus an ability you're otherwise going to use every 20-30 sec.
And let's be honest here, I would rather have a one-stop shop for swapping and dropping than add an even more niche Fire 3 clone (I mean hey, Fire 3 at least has Firestarter) to the job. Adding another button for a task we already can do doesn't create more nuance or complexity, it's just another button. If the idea is "symmetry" between phases, then I invite you to consider that within our AoE rotation, Freeze as a combo of Blizzard 3 and 4 (swaps and generates Umbral Hearts) is opposed to Flare as a combo of Fire 3 and 4 (swaps and filler).

As I’ve mentioned, you can’t have F2 simply upgrade into Flare because Flare isn’t strictly better - it casts more slowly and eats more MP.

"Can't"? Unless and until the devs get around to buffing F2 so it has a contemporary position, Flare is strictly better because it gives more PPS. If it wasn't "better" we wouldn't be ignoring F2 now, would we?

At present, there is nothing keeping F2 and B2 from upgrading to Flare and Freeze -- as Kabooa said, they're just superior AoE options.

4.0s Freeze would blahblahblah

Yes, congratulations, you've managed to make your idea sound comparatively attractive by throwing mud on what we already have, we're talking in circles at this point.

[Kabooa]

I hardly know where to begin unraveling this.

Flare started as a finisher. Its design hasn't changed, it's additional traits that have expanded its use.

You will always finish with Flare, just as you always finish with Despair, and both of those 'finishers' maximize AF so there's no chance of dropping AF before going to UI. In every expansion prior to Shadowbringers, Flare also had small windows where it could be a finisher in single target rotations.

F2/B2 have phased out of usefulness, but they still have purposes when leveling. A trait upgrade to phase them out is no less viable than simply making them have a relevant place moving forward.

Example: F2 increasing the damage of the next spell that hits targets damaged by F2.

B2 giving the Black Mage a damage shield scaling for each enemy hit.

[Archwizard]

Flare started as a finisher. Its design hasn't changed, it's additional traits that have expanded its use..

Sure, additional traits like Improved Umbral Heart that specifically expand Flare's position in the rotation to allow for multiple casts in a row. It may have started as a finisher, that does not mean the devs consider it to be one now or continue to design accordingly.

F2/B2 have phased out of usefulness, but they still have purposes when leveling. A trait upgrade to phase them out is no less viable than simply making them have a relevant place moving forward.

Completely agreed, which has been my position since the beginning. I have largely been noting that the specific case Ferrinus has been suggesting has required imposition on our existing skills in order to force a relevant place for those skills, while existing tools already have perfectly set up a means to comfortably phase them out.

Example: F2 increasing the damage of the next spell that hits targets damaged by F2.

B2 giving the Black Mage a damage shield scaling for each enemy hit.

I apologize if what follows comes as nitpicking for off-handed suggestions, though I am trying to stay on track for vetting the value of these abilities.

The large issue with this specific example, however, is that Fire 2 consumes Umbral Hearts much as Flare does. Unless we take into account Ferrinus' suggestion to have Fire 2 also grant AF3 as a means of transitioning, then we won't be able to retain UH for casting Flare and will render the Improved trait functionally worthless.

Meanwhile, a damage shield in AoE scenarios is impractical for BLM for a number of reasons -- we aren't meant to tank packs, the purpose overlaps with Sleep in the overworld, etc. While a barrier (like... Manaward) would be practical in a scenario like absorbing a boss' group-wide damage pulses, against one target we are likely facing the issue of not having the means to generate a large enough shield to be worthwhile.
That said, I am a fan of the idea of UI spells largely being more utilitarian with regards to mobility, recovery and survivability, to make it seem as less of a punishment for not maintaining a lengthy AF phase -- which is a big part of why I advocate making Blizzard 1 take the place of Scathe as our go-to instant attack, besides a general aid to Enochian cycling. If you do everything right in AF phase between Triplecast, Xenoglossy, Firestarter, Thundercloud and all that jazz you can skip it, but otherwise, not completely screwed in lengthy movement. Maybe even give instant B1 a low chance to generate UH for that niche, though I suppose that kinda overlaps Umbral Soul.

[Ferrinus]

I hardly know where to begin unraveling this.

First of all, who uses Blizzard 2 as a filler during UI phase post-Freeze? At UI3 our MP recovers quickly enough we can get effectively one cast out before capping -- kind of a big problem with Blizzard IV's place in single-target, there's hardly time for it -- and that's largely going to be Thunder 2/4 until you learn Foul. Hell, thanks to Flare scaling its cost to our current MP, we don't even need to wait to be capped on MP before swapping back in AF, which actually increases our burst.

As I have shown, before 68, simply swapping directly back to Flare is worse than using an (actually good) F2 and then finishing with Flare.

The reason we follow Freeze with hypothetically-actually-good B2 (before level 70) is that ice spells cost 0 MP in UI3 and we are starting with 0 MP. As you know, MP regen ticks are 3 seconds long, and it’s effectively random whether our GCD lines up with them. Best case, we get one immediately and can skip B2. But, worst case, one hits right before Flare resolves, and we sit there hammering our T2 button for 3 full seconds while our mana bar remains resolutely empty.

Good news, though - all our ice spells are free! So we can cast (long range, 80 potency) B2 and get some damage in. 240 potency over 2.5s beats 0 potency over 1.5s on average - you can plug it in to my numbers and see. And, in the real world, that average 1.5s of dead time is going to be even worse for us in relative terms because our GCD is probably shorter than 2.5s.

The idea of Blizzard 2 otherwise retaining a place for "rapidly recovering MP post-death" is unfathomably niche, not to mention redundant within the kit. We already rez with enough MP to cast B3, heaven forbid we need even less reason to use LD.

Yeah, but B3 has a 3.0s cast time. Right now, Freeze is our recovery move, and frankly 2.5s B2 is going to be worse than 2.5s Freeze was because it deals less damage and doesn’t generate any hearts so I’m not super crazy about it, but it IS a way to give B2 a (niche) use and the F2 thing is definitely a buff.

If Flare was meant to be purely a "costly finishing move", why oh why does it give you AF3 long before you get Aspect Mastery? Refreshing AF is one thing, capping it in a scenario when you can't possibly gain any benefit at cap (especially since you're forced into Transposing for about 18 more levels) is quite another. Sure there's always Manafont, but that's still a 3 minute cooldown versus an ability you're otherwise going to use every 20-30 sec.
And let's be honest here, I would rather have a one-stop shop for swapping and dropping than add an even more niche Fire 3 clone (I mean hey, Fire 3 at least has Firestarter) to the job. Adding another button for a task we already can do doesn't create more nuance or complexity, it's just another button. If the idea is "symmetry" between phases, then I invite you to consider that within our AoE rotation, Freeze as a combo of Blizzard 3 and 4 (swaps and generates Umbral Hearts) is opposed to Flare as a combo of Fire 3 and 4 (swaps and filler).

Flare was always a costly and cumbersome finishing move and its swapping you to AF is a drawback. It takes away all your MP and traps you in a stance that locks out MP regen. Back when Transpose had a 10 or 12 second cooldown this could leave you in serious trouble if you fumbled or sequenced abilities incorrectly. Flare’s ability to swap you into fire mode but leave you with mana is new, and it’s also clearly marginal and unintended - the percentile difference between hot flare and cold flare is verrrry small on five targets, for instance, and there’s no simple or intuitive way to determine that breakpoint.

Ultimately, it’s lame to have to cast a mixture of weak, crappy flares and powerful, explosive flares. All your flares should be devastating haymakers. And, even if we’re okay with watering down such an iconic spell’s identity, we still have the problem of a totally extraneous F2 on our bars because...

"Can't"? Unless and until the devs get around to buffing F2 so it has a contemporary position, Flare is strictly better because it gives more PPS. If it wasn't "better" we wouldn't be ignoring F2 now, would we?

At present, there is nothing keeping F2 and B2 from upgrading to Flare and Freeze -- as Kabooa said, they're just superior AoE options.

Can’t, because it’s not STRICTLY better. It’s just... better. But if you need to deal AoE damage in excess of 100 potency in only 3 seconds, and want to stay in fire mode to be able to follow up immediately with a Flare or F4 or Despair on a different target or something, you can only do that with F2, not Flare.

This is like how Bio (40 potency for 18s) used to “Upgrade” to Bio II (30 potency for 30s). Better? Yes. Strictly better? No. All numbers need to stay steady or improve if you’re going to literally lose a button and gain a replacement.

Yes, congratulations, you've managed to make your idea sound comparatively attractive by throwing mud on what we already have, we're talking in circles at this point.

There’s really no need to be hostile.

[Archwizard]

There’s really no need to be hostile.

Regardless, my point is that you've developed a system where your proposal only seems like the best option on the grounds that you've also simultaneously proposed nerfing every alternative into the ground first. Bearing in mind that adding more buttons is no smoother or more nuanced, nor does it necessarily net more damage since with such a grandiose restructuring, our potencies would have to be tuned around the changes anyway.

The reason we follow Freeze with hypothetically-actually-good B2 (before level 70) is that ice spells cost 0 MP in UI3 and we are starting with 0 MP. As you know, MP regen ticks are 3 seconds long, and it’s effectively random whether our GCD lines up with them. Best case, we get one immediately and can skip B2. But, worst case, one hits right before Flare resolves, and we sit there hammering our T2 button for 3 full seconds while our mana bar remains resolutely empty.
Good news, though - all our ice spells are free! So we can cast (long range, 80 potency) B2 and get some damage in. 240 potency over 2.5s beats 0 potency over 1.5s on average - you can plug it in to my numbers and see. And, in the real world, that average 1.5s of dead time is going to be even worse for us in relative terms because our GCD is probably shorter than 2.5s.

A difference of a half second is frankly nothing for "recovering", particularly when you consider your MP is continuing to grow in UI or out of phase, and the raw potency you'd be losing over it. You state that B2 would be worse than Freeze for that purpose, but there is no reason to nerf Freeze out of that position -- yet you seem resigned to it.

But I do admit that the need to wait for that first tick on some invisible timer is a (separate) lingering issue, one which affects our single-target as well, which could be resolved a multitude of ways -- those that give instant means to cast B4 and/or Thunder without clipping your MP recovery being chief among them, such as by having your transitional spell generate instant starter MP, or as Shurri has suggested before, just synching the MP tick timer with personal phase alignment rather than server ticks. At the going rate though, with Thundercloud procs drawing out AoE, we already have pretty consistent Polyglot charges every rotation which could at least buy time for MP; don't really need another spammable ice GCD to pace that rotation out, really just 1-2 GCDs in total (... such as the free transitional skill that Aspect Mastery claims we're due).

Flare’s ability to swap you into fire mode but leave you with mana is new, and it’s also clearly marginal and unintended

They literally feed us two separate traits at level 68 to make that possible, and it remains one of only 3 spells (with Despair) that gives AF3, so how can you say that's "clearly unintended"? If the devs wanted Flare to be purely a finisher move, they would have had it go the way of Despair long ago and barred its use during Umbral Ice -- and then we would never have noticed that Flare is the weird exception to nearly every phase-crossing nuance of our rotation.

Umbral Hearts are fundamentally designed to reduce Fire spell costs during Astral Fire, which is why you don't lose any for popping Fire 3 during UI phase -- but Flare is the sole exception to that, consuming them even in Umbral Ice.
Aspect Mastery is designed to remove the cost of transitioning between phases, which lets us squeeze that little more damage out of AF phase in single-target -- but Flare is the sole exception to that, too, continuing to have the same cost (even up to all of our MP) regardless.

If anything seems "clearly unintended," I would think it would be the lack of consistency in our core mechanics, particularly the ones they've added each expansion.

Ultimately, it’s lame to have to cast a mixture of weak, crappy flares and powerful, explosive flares.

And it's any less lame to be forced to cast the wet noodle that is Fire 2 at its absolute crappiest, for a job it already shares with two other spells?
Why do you think that level of redundancy and additional bloat would feel any better for the kit, than having us exclusively use our most powerful AoEs -- Flare, Freeze, Foul and T4 -- to call down disaster and do the jobs they do best?

And, even if we’re okay with watering down such an iconic spell’s identity, we still have the problem of a totally extraneous F2 on our bars because... [Flare]'s not STRICTLY better. It’s just... better. But if you need to deal AoE damage in excess of 100 potency in only 3 seconds, and want to stay in fire mode to be able to follow up immediately with a Flare or F4 or Despair on a different target or something, you can only do that with F2, not Flare.

Well in such a fictitious scenario that fits your oddly specific narrative, it's probably a DPS check which a good player would most likely have prepped Umbral Hearts or saved cooldowns for, including Swift/Triplecast and Manafont.
Unless you didn't mean that Flare is supposed to be a big, powerful add-finishing move after all? Since "we need adds dead, NOW" seems exactly the scenario Flare is made for in your mind?
Well, in that case -- and here's my favorite part! -- you could still get more potency out of Cold Flare than AF3'd Fire 2. Even with your upgrades.

That isn't at all the reason F2 is still on our bar, and you know it. For those of us who didn't throw it aside long ago, it only remains for the purposes of level syncing -- which goes back to my original suggestion of having it upgrade!

I do not know how else to say this to you:
It. Doesn't. Matter. If Flare consumes all your MP and Fire 2 doesn't.
So long as Flare amounts to at least a sidegrade, to the point of Fire 2's exclusion (such as, oh, the present reality), it could easily be treated as a functional upgrade -- there is zero rule imposed upon the devs that says every replaced ID needs to be a strict "X becomes X+1" bonus, and you literally showed Bio II as a precedent for such accepted behavior on their drawing board.

If I seemed hostile earlier, it's because to my eyes, the only one imposing such a narrow-minded limitation on the definition of "advancement" is you.

[Ferrinus]

Regardless, my point is that you've developed a system where your proposal only seems like the best option on the grounds that you've also simultaneously proposed nerfing every alternative into the ground first. Bearing in mind that adding more buttons is no smoother or more nuanced, nor does it necessarily net more damage since with such a grandiose restructuring, our potencies would have to be tuned around the changes anyway.

Yes, obviously. I mean, if Freeze dealt 750 damage to each target then we could delete every other spell BLM has. This would, you have to admit, cut down on button bloat. However, it would also be bad. The job is much more fun to play when different spells are good for different things and you need to use your memory and analytical spell to determine which one is appropriate when. So, I'm perfectly happy to cut functionality out of some spells to give it to others. That said, my proposal for modifying Fire 2 is strictly a buff - the spell would cast faster and more cheaply and be able to do Fire 3's job on AoE pulls.

A difference of a half second is frankly nothing for "recovering", particularly when you consider your MP is continuing to grow in UI or out of phase, and the raw potency you'd be losing over it. You state that B2 would be worse than Freeze for that purpose, but there is no reason to nerf Freeze out of that position -- yet you seem resigned to it.

But I do admit that the need to wait for that first tick on some invisible timer is a (separate) lingering issue, one which affects our single-target as well, which could be resolved a multitude of ways -- those that give instant means to cast B4 and/or Thunder without clipping your MP recovery being chief among them, such as by having your transitional spell generate instant starter MP, or as Shurri has suggested before, just synching the MP tick timer with personal phase alignment rather than server ticks. At the going rate though, with Thundercloud procs drawing out AoE, we already have pretty consistent Polyglot charges every rotation which could at least buy time for MP; don't really need another spammable ice GCD to pace that rotation out, really just 1-2 GCDs in total (... such as the free transitional skill that Aspect Mastery claims we're due).

First, it's a difference of 1.5 seconds on average potentially a difference of up to 3 seconds. That's quite bad, and, like I said, if you go and do the math - replace 240/2.5s with 0/1.5s - you'll find that it's a dps loss even on three targets to just wait for a mana tick rather than immediately cast an AoE ice spell, even one that only deals 80 potency/target.

That said, you seem to be confusing my example of a level 50 AoE rotation (one in which it would actually make sense to use a buffed F2 as a workhorse/filler spell, and in which your umbral phase is low enough on options that you'd probably need B2 as filler) with general/max-level BLM AoE in which, as you say, there are so many things proccing that you're pretty much never strapped for options during the umbral cycle. At level 50, a ranged 80 potency AoE B2 would probably get cast at least once per umbral cycle. At level 80, probably not, unless you were in the weird situation of entering umbral without polyglot or thundercloud. Currently, Freeze fills this extremely marginal role role, but if Freeze cast more slowly and B2 hit a bit harder it could do the same.

They literally feed us two separate traits at level 68 to make that possible, and it remains one of only 3 spells (with Despair) that gives AF3, so how can you say that's "clearly unintended"? If the devs wanted Flare to be purely a finisher move, they would have had it go the way of Despair long ago and barred its use during Umbral Ice -- and then we would never have noticed that Flare is the weird exception to nearly every phase-crossing nuance of our rotation.

Umbral Hearts are fundamentally designed to reduce Fire spell costs during Astral Fire, which is why you don't lose any for popping Fire 3 during UI phase -- but Flare is the sole exception to that, consuming them even in Umbral Ice.

Aspect Mastery is designed to remove the cost of transitioning between phases, which lets us squeeze that little more damage out of AF phase in single-target -- but Flare is the sole exception to that, too, continuing to have the same cost (even up to all of our MP) regardless.

If anything seems "clearly unintended," I would think it would be the lack of consistency in our core mechanics, particularly the ones they've added each expansion.

It's clearly unintended because unlike Fire 3, Flare eats 2/3rds of our MP and all of our hearts if we try to use it to change from umbral to astral. Also, using Flare to stance change on 3 or 4 targets rather than using F3 (the spell that's traditionally always done it) is a dps loss. It's only a DPS gain on 5 targets by the thinnest of percentages. Does anything in our kit scream "use Flare instead of F3 on five targets" specifically? No.

Remember, Improved Umbral Heart dates back to Stormblood. As far as I'm aware, it was never correct to use Flare to swap aspects back then - your AoE rotation, leaving T4s and Fouls aside for a moment, was F3 Flare Flare B3 B4. F2 was actually a damage gain on something dumb like 11+ targets, though I forget the specifics. It might have been optimal to leave out F3, but in that case you'd be using Transpose to cast a "warm flare" followed by a hot flare - Flare's swapping/refreshing AF3 is pure downside/aesthetic consistency, not utility.

To reiterate, I don't think you're correct that Flare works inconsistently with Aspect Mastery (well, technically it does since Aspect Mastery should affect its MP minimum, though this is a minor issue) - this is a phrasing/tooltip translation issue. The game should just specify that Flare/Despair have an MP cost (800, unaffected by any traits) and then a on-hit effect (a truckload of damage, but also the incineration of all remaining MP).

And it's any less lame to be forced to cast the wet noodle that is Fire 2 at its absolute crappiest, for a job it already shares with two other spells?
Why do you think that level of redundancy and additional bloat would feel any better for the kit, than having us exclusively use our most powerful AoEs -- Flare, Freeze, Foul and T4 -- to call down disaster and do the jobs they do best?

This is like complaining that it's lame to be forced to cast the wet noodle that is Fire 3 in order to swap to astral mode, or the wet noodle that is Fire 1 in order to maintain AF3 in the middle of your cycle. In a way, it is lame to have to use weaker, more basic spells in order to set the stage for stronger and flashier spells. However, it's also the heart of BLM's design and gameplay challenge.

You could retool BLM so that the only two spells it has are Xeno and Foul, and just tweak the potencies on those so that they equal the average potency of a BLM doing their single target or AoE rotations under the current regime, and then we'd get to cast our strongest spells all the time! Wowee! But be careful what you wish for.

Well in such a fictitious scenario that fits your oddly specific narrative, it's probably a DPS check which a good player would most likely have prepped Umbral Hearts or saved cooldowns for, including Swift/Triplecast and Manafont.
Unless you didn't mean that Flare is supposed to be a big, powerful add-finishing move after all? Since "we need adds dead, NOW" seems exactly the scenario Flare is made for in your mind?
Well, in that case -- and here's my favorite part! -- you could still get more potency out of Cold Flare than AF3'd Fire 2. Even with your upgrades.

No, this doesn't work, because the current round of still-alive enemies are on low HP but the next round is going to come in fresh and need to be hit hard. If you flare these guys it'll be overkill, and then you'll find yourself in umbral mode and having to swap back to astral (maybe even waiting for a mana tick if you have no procs and want to flare immediately rather than swap back with F3) before you can start actually outputting max damage. Because you received an (extremely advantageous) sidegrade rather than an upgrade, you have lost options.

That isn't at all the reason F2 is still on our bar, and you know it. For those of us who didn't throw it aside long ago, it only remains for the purposes of level syncing -- which goes back to my original suggestion of having it upgrade!

I do not know how else to say this to you:
It. Doesn't. Matter. If Flare consumes all your MP and Fire 2 doesn't.
So long as Flare amounts to at least a sidegrade, to the point of Fire 2's exclusion (such as, oh, the present reality), it could easily be treated as a functional upgrade -- there is zero rule imposed upon the devs that says every replaced ID needs to be a strict "X becomes X+1" bonus, and you literally showed Bio II as a precedent for such accepted behavior on their drawing board.

If I seemed hostile earlier, it's because to my eyes, the only one imposing such a narrow-minded limitation on the definition of "advancement" is you.

It actually does if, by leveling up and learning new magic, you somehow lose options you had before. For instance, here's a button consolidation idea: imagine if Scathe ugpraded into Xenoglossy when you had a Polyglot proc? Match made in heaven, right? ...unless you want to, say, instantly knock away a bomb or otherwise "pop" a target that only requires a single hit while saving your Xeno for the actual boss.

Now, if Scathe were to be literally deleted entirely, I wouldn't shed a tear. But for Scathe to randomly become unavailable as part of a putative upgrade would be very bad.