fair enough, but again, being fully blind for 13 seconds can be solved by stalling and mild bits of running. Also, that’s with a skyburst which is the highest potency, and those are sort of small (also you can sometimes accidentally hit yourself, and 10 esca is annoying as all hell to get)
you are seriously underestimating how disorienting it would be to suddenly have the colour change, not to mention how hard it is to aim when everything is gray/covered in black fire/blue fire obscures everything
soil piles? On my lightning savant, I got a crap ton of volcanic crystals from destroying rock clusters, the things ppl farmed for gems. Are those actually soil?