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

[Archwizard]

180 potency on 1 target versus 80 potency on multiple targets. Better than F1 on 3 and better than F4 on 4. Most jobs do this kind of math when choosing single target vs. multitarget abilities on non-massive pulls.

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.

Nothing hamfisted about it. There's an obvious gap in the fire spellset (an AoE that swaps you to AF3 with your mana pool intact) and a longstanding AoE fire spell that falls out of use long before level 80. It's a match made in heaven!
The B2/Freeze stuff is a bit questionable but making F2 effectively an area of effect F3 is a slam dunk.

I don't agree that flare consuming umbral hearts when cast out of ice mode is an oversight. If Fire 2 simply didn't exist at all, I could see using Flare as the swap-to-AF spell as well as your heavy-hitting AF AoE, but given that F2 needs a home there's no reason to change Flare's behavior in that way.

• 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.

Making sure every spell is useful at level 80 is more important to me than making sure every spell is useful for every level in the entire progression

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?

but like I said, you could just make Freeze cost 0mp by default, regardless of aspect, (Flare costs All, so Freeze costs None, see?) and fix even this issue.

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.