I mean, it's always felt like dogshit at low-level content. EW mostly fixed the issue of "so for this level range, you just use freeze, for this one, you just use F2, for this one you do B2->Freeze->F2 but you make sure you have enough for B2" and it was workable-enough, beyond that under-60 single-target was a shit-tastic RNG fiesta.
The US change had to be brought in because their fucking around with how the class's regen became tied to B4 (l. 58). Which is to say, they had something that was clunky but worked, and they broke it to make it "easier."
As to how it plays overall, there's a reason people who actually play BLM aren't happy. The core rotation really hasn't changed much and is actually somewhat-improved by guaranteed instant F3s, but the core rotation is also boring and easy. You get punished pretty hard for ever deviating from the extremely rigid 6x F4/cycle requirement, so you now need to autistically memorize the exact positioning for every single encounter rather than having the option of transpose lines for much-improved mobility. And all so that lots of classes with greater utility, picto among them, can do more damage than you.
