Keybindings and Hotbar Setup for Astrologian — Endwalker 6.55

These are my personal hotbars. Most skill placements are fairly arbitrary and heavily influenced by mental associations I have from playing other roles and even other games. The important thing is to pay attention to the logic behind the bars, not necessarily the specific keys themselves.

I play with a US QWERTY keyboard, using WASD for movement and the nearby Q, E, R, F keys for additional hotkeys. By default, Q and E are used for strafing, R is for auto-run, and F is used for "Face Target". In my case, I rebound auto-run to middle mouse and have never felt that the other functions were needed since I use Legacy Type movement (the kind without backpedaling) with auto-face-target enabled.

Shift+F is also bound to "Set/Clear Focus Target" by default, which I changed to G since I use Shift as a modifier. Alt+R, Alt+A, Alt+S, and Alt+F are also the default shortcuts for certain niche chat functions, so you may want to rebind those if you care to use them.

I also use an MMO mouse, but I would actually change very little if I were to convert my hotbars to a keyboard-only layout. I would probably rebind 9, 0, -, = to something like Z, X, C, V and move any skills that are currently on 6 or 8 into those new Z, X, C, V slots. Some other skills would probably be swapped around to reflect the fact that 4-5 are slightly less accessible on a keyboard, but that comes down to personal preference.

If I needed more hotkeys or wanted to use fewer modifiers, I could also use ` (the "grave accent" to the left of 1) as a hotkey. Depending on the shape of your keyboard, you may also find it comfortable to use F1-F4 as hotkeys. For an MMO mouse setup, I could also use the mouse's configuration software to bind the side buttons to numpad keys and use the number row on the keyboard as additional hotkeys.

1. My core GCD, Fall Malefic, is on 2 because it takes less finger movement for me to press 2 than 1, whether I am using my MMO mouse or on my keyboard.
   • Combust III and Redraw are on Shift+2 and Alt+2, respectively. With Draw on Q, I can easily perform my most common card actions and GCDs without moving my finger away from 2 until I use Play, which is directly adjacent on Alt+3.
   • Most of my commonly used oGCDs ( Essential Dignity, Celestial Intersection, Earthly Star, Celestial Opposition, Play) are on buttons that are directly adjacent to 2.
   • Many other commonly used oGCDs ( Draw, Horoscope, Collective Unconscious, Lucid Dreaming) are on Q, E, R, F. When using an MMO mouse for the number keys, these skills are pressed with the opposite hand from the one I use for my core skills. When using the keyboard, they are still pressed with different fingers from the one I use to press 2. In either case, hand movement is minimized and my finger almost always stays on my core GCD button.
2. I use modifier keys like Ctrl, Alt, Shift to limit how many keys I have to use for skills and how far I have to move my hand.
   • When I used a keyboard-only hotbar layout, I never had to reach farther than 5, thanks to using extra keys like Q, E, R, F and modifier keys.
   • On my keyboard, I find Shift and Alt very easy to press, while Ctrl is awkward to reach with my fingers on WASD, so I keep niche and non-combat-related things on the bar that uses the Ctrl modifier. Use whichever modifiers are comfortable for you.
3. I often place skills that are similar in function, use case, or targeting on the same keys, but with different modifiers.
   • AoE healing: Helios, Aspected Helios
   • Core oGCD heals: Essential Dignity, Earthly Star, Celestial Opposition
     • It might seem more sensible to place Celestial Opposition on Alt+E instead of Collective Unconscious, but that was where I kept Sacred Soil before Astrologian was introduced. It felt logical to place another dome-shaped mitigation ability on the same key, and now that is the key I use for party mitigation on every healer. As long as it is not getting in your way, use what you are familiar with.
   • Single-target heals: Aspected Benefic, Celestial Intersection
   • Enable instant casts: Swiftcast, Lightspeed
   • Consumables: Grade 8 Tincture of Mind, Super-Ether
4. I prefer not to move my hands to a new key and a new modifier at the same time, especially if I am alternating between the skills quickly. There are many times when I still have to do so, but if I know that certain skills are going to be used together, I plan around that and try to make it easy for myself.
   • Minor Arcana, Astrodyne, Divination, Play, Lightspeed, Grade 8 Tincture of Mind, and sometimes Redraw are all core parts of the burst window. The burst window involves a lot of double weaving these specific oGCDs, so they are all on the Alt modifier.
   • Neutral Sect is almost always followed by Aspected Helios, so they are both on the Shift modifier.
   • Horoscope is also primarily paired with Aspected Helios. If I were starting the game today, I would place Horoscope on Shift+R. However, I have had Esuna on Shift+R for a over decade now. Horoscope on R works just fine for me. Take advantage of what you are used to. There is no need to try to break established muscle memory unless it is causing you problems.

The extra hotbars shown in this layout can be enabled by opening Character Configuration → Hotbar Settings → Custom → Expanded Hold Controls. It is also highly recommended that you change your party sorting settings if you are playing Astrologian on a controller. Those settings can be found under Character Configuration → UI Settings → Party List → Party List Sorting. There, you can change the order in which different roles or jobs appear in your party list. You can set different sort orders based on which role you are playing, if you prefer.

To make playing cards easier, it is recommended that you move melee DPS jobs to the very bottom of the sort order, prioritizing Ninja and Samurai in the bottom two slots. Melee DPS are usually the highest card priority in our very busy burst windows. Placing melee DPS at the bottom of the party list allows you to minimize how many times you have to tap the D-pad to get to your priority card targets, with the very last person in the party list being a single tap away.

It also highly recommended that you use one or two extra hotbars (regular hotbars, not cross hotbars) as "display bars" to keep track of your cooldowns all in one place. This is especially helpful when playing on a controller, because only the active set of cross hotbars will be displayed. Without using normal hotbars to display your cooldowns, you would have to pull up the different cross hotbar sets every time you want to check your cooldowns. I recommend positioning these display bars fairly close to where your character is on the screen so you can see them without looking away from the action. It may also help to resize them, adjust their transparency, or change their layouts to grids instead of bars.

As much as possible, core skills are placed based on ease of access, and other skills are either clustered or mirrored around them based on similarities in their functions or use cases.

In general, single-target oGCDs that are used on allies, such as Essential Dignity and Play, are placed on the D-pad because you will already be using the D-pad to cycle through the party list and select a party member. Core GCDs and most untargeted oGCDs are placed on the face buttons because they are more accessible while using the left stick to move.

Healing oGCDs are placed on the LT bar, while healing GCDs are pushed back to the LT→RT bar. That is slightly more out of the way, but this is usually not an issue because you are already committing an entire GCD to using them. The oGCD heals will often be used quickly between Fall Malefic casts, so they are placed on the bar that I find easier to access from the RT bar.

• Clustered Skills
  • Offensive GCDs: Fall Malefic, Combust III
  • Core card management: Draw, Redraw
  • GCD heals: Benefic II, Aspected Benefic, Aspected Helios
  • Targeted oGCD heals/mitigation: Celestial Intersection, Exaltation, Essential Dignity
  • Offensive buffs: Astrodyne, Divination, Grade 8 Tincture of Mind
 
• Mirrored Skills
  • Targeted, cast-time GCDs: Fall Malefic, Gravity II, Benefic II, Benefic
  • Instant-cast GCDs: Combust III, Macrocosmos, Aspected Benefic
  • Draw/prepare a card: Draw, Minor Arcana
  • Area-of-effect heals: Aspected Helios, Helios, Celestial Opposition, Earthly Star
  • Self-buffs for the two-minute window: Lightspeed, Astrodyne
  • Offensive buffs for allies: Play, Divination
  • Abilities that empower GCD heals: Horoscope, Neutral Sect, Synastry
  • MP restoration: Lucid Dreaming, Super-Ether
  • Consumables: Grade 8 Tincture of Mind, Super-Ether
 
• Other Placement Logic
  • Based on my general hotbar logic, it might make sense to swap Swiftcast with Collective Unconscious so that Collective Unconscious is grouped with Celestial Opposition and Swiftcast is mirrored with Ascend since that is what Swiftcast is often used for. However, I chose not to do that for a specific reason:
    • I prioritize keeping Swiftcast on a face button because it is often used while moving to maintain GCD uptime. In my mind, Collective Unconscious still feels like a logical group with Exaltation, as they are both mitigation abilities.
    • It is a small exception to the general logic of how the hotbars are set up, but for me, the specific desire to keep Swiftcast on a face button takes priority over the general logic.
  • Rescue is on D-pad Left because I associate it with pulling someone back to me.
  • Ascend is on D-pad Up because it is called "Ascend" (or, generically, "raise" from White Mage's Raise or "rez" from Scholar's Resurrection). It may seem like a silly reason, but if it makes sense and feels right to you, you will never forget where you put that skill.

Making personal adjustments like these to ensure that your hotbar layout makes sense to you is the single best piece of advice I can give you for your hotbars. The primary reason this layout works for me is that I made it, so it makes sense to me. Your own hotbars do not need to follow the same rules or logic. They only need to make sense to you.

• Repose is completely optional. Enemies are immune to it except in the overworld and certain niche types of content such as Eureka.
• Undraw is not included because you should never be in a situation where it is beneficial to throw away a card instead of playing it.
• The potion icon on the RT→LT bar is for Grade 8 Tincture of Mind.
• The healer role macro icon on the LT, LT bar is for Super-Ether.
• The chat bubble macro icon on the LT→RT bar is for a party chat macro that you can press alongside Ascend to announce who you are raising. It is not combined into an Ascend macro because abilities used through macros are less responsive, as they do not use the skill queueing system.

  • /p Raising <t>

• The Earthly Star on the RT→LT bar is a macro that improves speed and responsiveness compared to a non-macro version of the ability. This macro, along with an explanation for how it works, can be found in the Settings and HUD section near the bottom of this page.
• The extra Earthly Star on the RT, RT bar is a non-macro version of the ability in case you want to bring up the targeting circle for a visual reference or precise placement. It is also more responsive than the macro for manually detonating Earthly Star because the detonate command is able to use the action queueing system.