Firestarter, and other on-ability procs

[Rongway]

The mechanic reminds me of on-hit procs in World of Warcraft, and the fluid way they worked.

In World of Warcraft:
Upon gaining a Firestarter buff, you may finish casting another Fire I and then immediately chain a Fire III, using the buff before that Fire I's proc is calculated.

This is no better; it shifts the timing fuzz from the end of a cast to the beginning of the next cast, and for the vast majority of actions in the game, this would be a very bad thing. It would prevent the next action from benefitting immediately.

If you want a very real example of a job that already gets screwed over by buff application timing, see RDM. Dualcast application happens so late that it's very sensitive to latency. A small amount of lag will start your next spell slowcasting with a 5s cast time instead of an instant cast.

Firestarter is unique in its mechanical implications because BLM is 1) the only job with cast times 2) where such a proc would dictate what their next action should be. Other jobs with procs are either instant action jobs that have another 2.2s-ish after the proc to realize they got the proc, or they would have followed with the same action regardless of the proc.

The easiest fix is increasing max Firestarter stacks to 2, but honestly it's not worth prioritizing a fix because the only place it really matters is syncked Lv50 raid/trial content, and if you're doing syncked Lv50 raid/trial content you should be practiced enough at BLM that you can keep track of the buff timing or work around it by using an available Thundercloud after Fire to avoid the possibility of double Firestarters.

Another nice feature is to have graphics that show you have procced things like Firestarter on the HUD, situated somewhere around the centre of the screen where you're likely to see it in your peripheral vision without having to look for it.

Your Status Effects bar can be split into Enhancements, Enfeeblements, and Other (FC buffs, mounted status, etc) and each part can be positioned separately.

Everyone should put the Enfeeblements bar right in the middle of the screen at max size.

Jobs that need to keep track of procked buffs should have Enhancements in a similar position or an enlarged spare hotbar with just procked actions. Not everyone can spare a hotbar, but everyone can blow up the Enhancements UI element.