Quote Originally Posted by awhitet View Post
Flare star just feels like despair 2.0, doesn't have that much potency and you cannot even carry the stacks into umbral ice.
Agree with all of what you said, but this is really the crux of the issue for me, I could live with maybe most of these changes bar the ones to Paradox even though I don't like them, but flare star takes these new issues and exacerbates them I feel.

A major concern I have is that they'll only see the potency issues with Flare Star and just buff it, but I think that'll just make the core issues of how rigid the rotation is + Astral soul mechanics not being great even worse. The way you lose all astral soul stacks when switching phases makes having to end a phase early feel even worse than before, prior you knew you were already losing dps but at least that was better than losing enochain altogether, losing your big finishing spell because you're trying to adjust for the fast pace of fights does not feel great at all.

You also just lose flare star during any downtime whatsover, I just got to level 100 a few days ago but I already can't count how many times I've lost the spell because a boss leaves/becomes untargetable/goes into a cutscene, the fact that you can't store astral soul stacks at all feels like a huge oversight imo. I also keep accidentally overcapping it because of the manafont buff and I forget to cast it in the midst of a fight while I'm trying to keep AF up, but that may be just a skill issue on my part as I learn to use it.