Astrologian DPS Rotation for Healers — Dawntrail 7.01

Astrologian's core damage kit is very straightforward, having one single-target damage spell ( Fall Malefic), one area-of-effect (AoE) damage spell ( Gravity II), and one damage-over-time (DoT) spell ( Combust III). The basic idea is to keep Combust III up and continue casting Fall Malefic until you need to refresh Combust III.

Our opener is less busy than it was in previous expansions. Our primary goals are to use Divination after our third GCD, play The Balance and Lord of Crowns, use Umbral Draw, and then play The Spear and use Oracle. Finally, we almost always want to do a slightly early Combust III refresh right before Divination and any other raid buffs expire. This is a minor initial potency loss since we are overwriting some of the pre-existing DoT, but it aligns our natural DoT refreshes with the last GCD in every subsequent two-minute burst window.

The DPS gained from getting to naturally refresh our DoT under raid buffs quickly makes up for the small initial damage loss from refreshing it early in the opener. However, for it to be a gain, our DoT refresh timing must be consistent from the opener through the next 2-4 minutes, depending on how many raid buffs we have in the party. With no raid buffs other than Divination, our DoT alignment must remain consistent for four minutes after the initial early refresh. With any additional raid buff, it is a gain after the very next two-minute burst window. If our DoT alignment is interrupted or reset by downtime before that point, it is not a DPS gain to do the early refresh in the first place.

Our burst windows after the opener should all look almost exactly like this, starting from Fall Malefic → Lightspeed and ending with our naturally aligned Combust III refresh right before raid buffs expire.

• -12 to -4: place Earthly Star
• -2.1: precast Fall Malefic
  • Grade 1 Gemdraught of Mind
• Combust III
• Fall Malefic
  • Lightspeed
• Fall Malefic
  • Divination
  • The Balance
• Fall Malefic
  • Lord of Crowns
  • Umbral Draw
• Fall Malefic
  • The Spear
  • Oracle
• Fall Malefic x5
  • You may cast an extra Fall Malefic here if your GCD is 2.35 or faster.
• Refresh Combust III a few seconds before it expires, right before Divination and other raid buffs expire.

The potion weave immediately after the precast Fall Malefic should be possible without clipping, but it does not queue, so you will have to spam the button to get it to go off on time.

The precast Fall Malefic is listed at -2.1s to more accurately reflect the correct precast timing, accounting for the delay between the end of the cast and the damage being applied. However, this assumes that your tank's first attack lands at exactly 0 on the countdown, so you may need to adjust your timing to ensure you are not pulling early.

Combust III is refreshed slightly early as the last GCD before Divination and other raid buffs wear off. At a 2.36 GCD or slower, you will do 7 casts of Fall Malefic after Divination, then refresh Combust III on the 8th GCD in the buff window. If you have a GCD of 2.35 or faster, it may be possible to fit in 8 casts of Fall Malefic and still get the Combust III refresh under buffs.

Even if it looks like Divination wears off before your Combust III applies, it should still benefit from Divination as long as your GCD is 2.35 or faster and you did not have any additional delays beween your casts. The DoT snapshots buffs/debuffs as soon as the spell is cast, not when the debuff is applied. However, you may still want to skip the extra Fall Malefic cast if other raid buffs are expiring before Divination to ensure that your Combust III refresh benefits from all the buffs.

Astrologian's multi-target damage revolves around balancing Combust III and Gravity II, depending on how many enemies there are and how long they will live. To supplement that, our damaging oGCDs are excellent for multi-target damage; they are all AoE attacks, and they all deal full damage to all targets hit. The vast majority of our multi-target scenarios occur in dungeons and similar content, so this section is written primarily with that in mind.

1. Use Divination and Oracle if they are available (unless the enemies are about to die and the buff would be wasted).
2. Use Lord of Crowns to hit as many enemies as possible, preferably under Divination.
   • If you use Astral Draw and get your Lord of Crowns on the last pull before the next boss, use it for the AoE on the trash pull. Hitting extra enemies with it is worth far more than saving it for the next Divination that will just be used on the a single-target boss fight.
3. Immediately place Earthly Star as soon as you know where the tank is stopping with the gathered enemies.
   • Placing it quickly helps to ensure that it has time to charge before enemies start dying.
   • You may want to manually detonate it as soon as it is charged, either to heal the tank or to ensure you get the damage off before some of the enemies die.
5. Gravity II is a DPS gain over Fall Malefic on 3 targets.
6. Up to 5 targets, depending on how long the enemies live, it may be worth applying Combust III to some or all enemies before you begin using Gravity II.
   • With 3 targets, Combust III is efficient on enemies that will survive at least 18 seconds.
   • With 4 targets, Combust III is efficient on enemies that will survive at least 24 seconds.
   • With 5 targets, Combust III is only efficient on enemies that will survive for the full 30s duration.
7. In dungeons, apply Combust III to enemies while the tank is running to pull all the enemies.
8. Even when there are more than five enemies, it can be time-efficient to apply Combust III to enemies that have significantly more HP than the others in the pull. While Gravity II seems better on paper, it would only result in the weaker enemies dying faster. You would still have to finish off the tougher enemies afterward.
   • By focusing a little more damage on them with DoTs, you can save time overall by minimizing how much time you spend dealing with the remaining enemies in a less AoE-efficient one- or two-target situation.
   • In a perfect world, the most efficient outcome is that every enemy dies at exactly the same time because the party used its most efficient single-target damage sources to keep the tougher enemies in line with the weaker ones.

The vast majority of your personal damage is directly tied to your GCD uptime, so keeping your GCD rolling is vital. Be aware of your positioning and any movement that is required to dodge incoming AoEs or handle mechanics. Combust III is an instant cast, so it provides a good opportunity to move larger distances whenever you need to refresh it.

Take advantage of slidecasting and the short cast time of Fall Malefic to move for mechanics and dodge AoEs. "Slidecasting" refers to the ability to begin moving before your cast bar has completed without interrupting the cast. The timing of this window can vary based on your latency to the server, so you will have to experiment to familiarize yourself with it.

Generally, it occurs about half a second before the cast bar is finished. With a short cast time like Fall Malefic, that would be around two-thirds of the way through the cast bar. This window, combined with the roughly one second before you must stop moving to begin your next cast, gives you a lot of freedom to move around without losing any casts.

When a large amount of movement is required and you cannot pause to slidecast, Lightspeed should be used to maintain GCD uptime.

Astrologian has only three sources of oGCD damage: Earthly Star, Lord of Crowns, and Oracle. Try to use them as many times as possible over the course of an encounter.

Oracle will naturally be used under raid buffs. Lord of Crowns should also be saved for raid buffs unless you can hit more enemies with it by playing it outside of raid buffs.

It may also be more damage-efficient overall to delay Earthly Star if it will allow you to damage multiple targets. Even if you lose a use of it in the fight because you held it, it would be damage-neutral if you hit two targets instead of one. With more than two targets, it is a significant gain even when losing a use.

Earthly Star deals more damage than Fall Malefic, and Helios Conjunction does more healing than Earthly Star. This means that it is usually better to use Earthly Star purely for damage, even if it is 100% overheal. You should try to make use of both the damage and healing, but if you would lose a use in the fight by delaying Earthly Star to make use of its healing, it is actually more efficient to use it purely for the damage and cast the extra GCD heal later.

Earthly Star will usually form the backbone of your healing plan for an encounter, and you will move other healing tools around to try to ensure that you get value out of Earthly Star's healing even when it is being used as often as possible to maximize damage.