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!