Astrologian PvP Guide for FFXIV

Astrologian is a healer that creates advantages for its party with its buffs. It also provides good burst healing, decent crowd control, and a surprising amount of burst damage. It especially excels in groups that will play around its buffs (or pay attention to party chat signals) to truly leverage them into advantages.

This guide is focused on Crystalline Conflict. Much of it may apply to other PvP modes, but it is written with only Crystalline Conflict in mind.

This section introduces the core mechanics that define Astrologian in PvP and interact with the rest of the kit: Draw and Double Cast.

Draw produces one of three cards at random. Once drawn, you have 15 seconds to play the card before it is lost. Playing the card will provide its buff to party members within 20y of the target. If you do not target a party member, you will be the point of origin. If you target a party member, they will be the point of origin.

Unlike some AoE effects, your cards are unaffected by line of sight from the point of origin. For example, if you target yourself with the card, it will still affect an ally on the other side of a wall or other obstacle as long as they are still within the 20y range of the effect.

The cooldown starts when the card is drawn, not when it is played, so you do not need to play the card immediately. However, card buffs last 15 seconds, and Draw's cooldown is 20 seconds, so you may draw your next card while the previous card buff is still active. Playing the new card will overwrite any existing card buff, so you should carefully consider whether it is worth cutting the previous card short.

• The Balance: 10% damage boost for 15 seconds.
  • This buff allows your party to secure kills more reliably. It can push your party's damage over the edge so the enemy dies before crowd control wears off, before their team can respond, or simply faster than they can spam Recuperate.
  • The extra damage can help create a passive advantage for your team in any fight, and even if you are losing the engagement, it can make it dangerous for the enemy to chase you very far. The Balance makes it even easier for your team to turn around on a DPS that has chased too far, and it helps your team deal enough damage to force the enemy to back off before you run out of MP for Recuperate and they secure the kill.
 
• The Arrow: 10% attack speed boost and 25% movement speed boost for 15 seconds.
  • The Arrow's attack speed boost makes your cast times and global recast time faster. In short, it speeds up your GCD. It may sound equivalent to the 10% damage boost from The Balance, but in practice, it is not quite as useful for burst damage. Instead, it is better suited to applying and maintaining pressure, whether it be chasing down fleeing enemies to finish them off or burning through enemy resources to create an MP advantage so you can bully them away from the crystal.
  • You and your allies will deal the same amount of damage, but you will deal that damage 10% faster. Even if it is not as helpful as The Balance for immediately securing a kill, it may still allow your team finish a burst combo before the target or their allies have time to react.
  • Securing the kill on a target that survived the team's initial burst is usually a matter of dealing damage faster than they can heal it or staying on top of them and burning through all their healing before the enemy can exert enough pressure (damage) to force your team back. The Arrow helps with both of those things.
  • The Arrow can also be useful for defensive purposes. The movement speed can help you kite away from melee enemies or break line of sight from ranged enemies, while the attack speed can allow your team to exert enough pressure to force the enemy to retreat if they are chasing you. The speed boost is not as fast as Sprint, but Sprint is lost when you perform an action. The Arrow lets you stay mobile while you continue fighting and healing.
 
• The Bole: 10% reduced damage taken for 15 seconds.
  • The Bole simply helps your team survive. It is almost universally useful. It can be used to counter enemy burst, give your team an advantage to play aggressively, or help your team escape a losing battle.
  • It is most valuable when it is used to counter high-damage enemy attacks, especially Limit Breaks and area-of-effect (AoE) attacks. By using The Bole, you reduce the value of every damage resource they use while the card is in effect. If nothing else, it forces them to use more time and resources to do enough damage to secure a kill, which gives your team more time to respond with crowd control, healing, or damage of their own.

Double Cast is an oGCD ability that repeats the previously cast spell. The Double Cast version of each spell has slightly different effects.

• Double Cast Aspected Benefic provides a 4000 potency shield instead of the regen.
• Double Cast Fall Malefic reduces the cooldown of Double Cast by 10s, meaning it effectively only incurs one third of the normal cooldown of Double Cast.
• Double Cast Gravity II binds the primary target for three seconds instead of applying heavy for five seconds. Because of this, it may be better to use the initial Gravity II and the Double Cast version on different targets if your primary goal is the crowd control.

Double Cast can only be used if the previous action was one of the above spells. Using any other action after the spell, including Recuperate or Sprint, will prevent you from using Double Cast.

The limited nature of all healing resources in PvP means that you must approach healing with a very different mindset from what you may be used to. You must consider whether healing someone will actually save them or if it would be a waste of a limited resource that could be put to better use. For example, if someone is crowd controlled (stun, silence, etc.) without Purify and is taking heavy damage, it is extremely difficult to keep them alive with external healing. If they have no MP to use Recuperate even if you keep them alive for a few more seconds, there is almost no hope of them making it out alive.

In a case like that, it may be better to devote your healing resources to people you can reasonably save. Otherwise, the enemy gets the kill and drains your resources at the same time, leaving you even more vulnerable. In a perfect world, you want to barely save someone's life with your heals. This means that your healing was the deciding factor in preventing the enemy from getting the kill. They used many resources to attempt to get a kill, and you used a handful of resources to negate everything they invested in it.

Aspected Benefic is an instant-cast healing spell that gets stronger depending on how much HP the target is missing, reaching max potency if the target is at 50% HP or less. Your charges are limited, so you should try to take advantage of that scaling as much as possible.

Double Cast allows you to instantly cast a second Aspected Benefic right after the first. The Double Cast version provides a small shield, giving it more instant potency. It is especially effective on someone who is being focused down, but keep the missing HP scaling in mind. If you are using both casts on the same target, the second cast may be weaker if the target has been healed to over 50% HP.

Macrocosmos deals significant AoE damage to enemies and applies a buff to party members within 20y of you. When the buff expires after 10 seconds or you manually reactivate the ability, each person is healed for 4,000 potency plus 25% of the damage they took while they had the buff.

Macrocosmos can undo a lot of burst damage, but it does nothing to keep people alive in the immediate sense. Pay close attention to your party; you will still have to keep them alive long enough for Macrocosmos to compile the damage. You may get more healing out of it by letting it expire naturally, but do not hesitate to activate it early if it means saving someone's life.

Celestial River is your Limit Break. Its base charge time is 105 seconds. It increases your allies' damage and decreases the enemies' damage by a huge amount, but the buff's strength decays quickly. The buff/debuff begins at 30% and is reduced by 10% every 5 seconds.

The 15y range around you is extremely limiting, so it can be difficult to hit all your allies with it without putting yourself in a dangerous position, and it can be even more difficult to hit the enemies in addition to your allies. It is usually a good idea to spread out a little afterward to avoid being grouped up for enemy area-of-effect abilities, especially if there is an enemy White Mage.

Celestial River can be used both offensively and defensively. If your team is using a burst countdown, you can use your Limit Break as the countdown reaches 1, providing your team with a huge damage boost to secure the initial kill and making it difficult for the enemies to force your team to retreat with their own damage.

When used offensively, it is a good idea to follow it up with Gravity II and Double Cast, optionally on different targets to make use of both the Heavy and the Bind. This way, you can keep enemies locked down so your team can easily make good use of the remaining buff time from Celestial River.

Celestial River is somewhat more difficult to use defensively because it is rarely possible to hit both the melee and ranged enemies with it. However, if you watch the enemy Limit Break gauges on the enemy list, you may be able to use Celestial River to prevent them from getting kills with their Limit Breaks. The damage buff on your party will also make it harder for them to stay in the fight to follow up on their initial burst. Again, try to quickly reposition yourself after using it. Do not stay grouped up for enemy AoE attacks.

Any time your party is together and you can hit multiple enemies with it, Celestial River can quickly turn a fight in your favor. This is especially useful when you are defending the crystal or making a push onto the crystal as a group. If you hit everyone with it, it creates a massive power difference between your teams for a short time.

Astrologian has surprisingly high burst potential for a healer. Using some or all of this combo on a burst target can help your team quickly secure a kill. If you are timing the burst combo with a stun, silence, charm, hysteria, or Miracle of Nature, the full combo can deal over half an enemy's HP in the short duration of the crowd control effect without any damage buffs.

1. Fall Malefic
   • Double Cast
   • Macrocosmos
2. Gravity II
   • Double Cast

The full combo deals 38,000 damage in about 3 seconds. Under the effect of The Balance, this is increased to 41,800. Under the effect of Celestial River, it is increased to 48,600. With both buffs active, the maximum damage should be 53,460.

Using Celestial River for the maximum possible burst damage can be awkward because of the animation lock from using the Limit Break itself. You must begin the burst combo immediately after activating Celestial River. Even then, the buff is only at full strength for the first five seconds, and some of that time is lost to the animation lock.

In practice, the final hit of the combo is almost always going to fall under the 20% portion of Celestial River rather than the 30% portion. That is why Macrocosmos is used before Gravity II even though using it at the end would be a cleaner weave. It is the hardest hitting part of the combo, so it is preferred to make sure it is used under the full strength of Celestial River.