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

[Archwizard]

But, it wouldn't be if its cast time and MP cost were reduced to F1's. In that case, F2 would be useful for AoE before level 68.

Have you crunched the numbers on that or are you just crossing your fingers?

Compared to using Flare to swap from Umbral to Astral. You know, the "cold flare" AoE rotation that's technically superior to using F3 when you've got 5+ targets? If F2 could work as, effectively, an AoE F3, it would have a place at level 68+.

So you want to hamfist in an ability that's dead to the community for a technicality, in lieu of an option like, say, just patching Flare to actually be affected by Aspect Mastery so you still have Umbral Hearts after a Cold Flare (which I think we can agree is a massive oversight that it doesn't already)?

You'd be able to use it to transition to Umbral from Astral after AoEing a bunch of targets from levels 35 to 49, or after doing a Flare -> Convert ->F2 between levels 50 and 67. I could see going farther and giving Freeze, specifically, a 0 base MP cost or something as a mirror to Flare's "all" MP cost, but even if nothing of the sort happens Freeze falling out of use for 17 levels is acceptable given that it still ends up with a place at level 68 and higher.

Are you aware of the difference that that 17 levels makes? That's all of the post-ARR content, the entirety of Heavensward and most of Stormblood, for a first-time leveler that's nearly a month and even for someone with Armory bonus that could be weeks. Compare that to the gap from 35 to 50, which is like... A day? Three tops?
Not to mention how incredibly disjointed it is to get a spell you use for 14 levels, ignore for 17 and then recover for 12 more.