Monk DPS Tips for Asphodelos Savage — Endwalker 6.2

Asphodelus is the first raid tier released in the expansion FFXIV: Endwalker and consists of four fights, with the fourth fight having two phases and being split with a checkpoint:

1. Warder of the Condemned: Erichthonios
2. Mythic Creation: The Hippokampus
3. Mythic Creation: The Phoinix
4. Himitheos: Hesperos

If you are looking for more generalized guides, you should take a look at our Savage guides written by Lyra Rose, linked below each section.

Disclaimer: This document contains a number of suggestions on potential solutions to issues that arise when playing Monk in the current raid tier. That being said, there are certain times where the best course of action for a Monk may be more detrimental to others in the group than it is beneficial for the Monk themselves. As such, if your group decides they wish to do something different than the potential solutions listed on this page, discuss the changes with your group to try to reach a middle ground that benefits everyone. The suggestions listed below are not your only options for these fights, and so the information contained within this page should be treated in the capacity of guidelines rather than strict instruction.

The first fight of this raid tier is effectively a full uptime combat dummy with no room nor need for any kind of specific optimization. You may choose to use either the Lunar Solar or Double Solar opener here depending on your killtime, otherwise the rotation in this fight plays itself.

The only thing worth mentioning is to ensure that when you use Brotherhood during Intemperance at 2 and 6 minutes, you are as close to the middle of the room as possible to ensure you do not miss any party members with the buff.

Compared to P1S, this fight is a veritable nightmare for Monks thanks to three main culprits. To outline the main issue first; Kampeos Harma. This mechanic happens at roughly 4:18 into the encounter, and lasts for about 10 seconds. Now due to the fact that most raid buffs are going to be coming off cooldown shortly before Kampeos Harma begins, a majority of players simply hold their cooldowns until the mechanic has resolved at around 4:30. Now this poses two problems for us. Firstly, it can end up losing us a usage of either just Riddle of Fire or both Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood. Secondly, it is almost guaranteed to lose us a usage of Perfect Balance. There are two main potential solutions we have to combat these problems with, however ideally the entire group is aware of the adjustments that we are required to make and are able to follow suit.

The first solution available to us is to do an early opener variant. Doing so allows us to use a slightly adjusted burst window at 4 minutes without having to hold our cooldowns, and as such guarantees that we get the maximum amount of potential casts as possible. This also sidesteps the issue of overcapping Perfect Balance stacks quite neatly. Unfortunately, a second problem arises from this that we are not able to actually do anything about, but it does help to bear in mind. Given that Riddle of Fire is now being used sooner, this means that we are required to use it before the Crash mechanic at 3 minutes. As a result, we are forced to eat some downtime under this Riddle of Fire usage, and so we should be acutely aware of precisely how many GCDs can be executed before needing to Six-sided Star in order to ensure minimal waste. Unfortunately for us, the exact same situation repeats itself at the 5 minute mark of the fight, this time with variable timers. At the very least in this situation, there is a 50% chance of the burst being uninterrupted depending on if you have either the short or long timer.

The second potential solution is a technique that we can use in a number of situations to allow the ability to safely drift Riddle of Fire without costing a cast of Perfect Balance and without forcing a usage of Perfect Balance outside of buffs. Where other jobs can generally drift their cooldowns to wherever is required somewhat easily with minimal to no impact on the rest of their rotation, whenever a Monk wishes to move the placement of Riddle of Fire, we must keep in mind the cooldown of Perfect Balance. As such, where other jobs may be able to simply shift their buff usage by 30 seconds to offset themselves for whatever reason, we need to do two consecutive drifts on Monk. The first drift is done on an odd window, and pushes Riddle of Fire back by roughly 20 seconds. This allows us to execute a Double Lunar Odd Riddle of Fire window. The sequencing of this is going to be the same as the Optimal Drift Even window that happens around a Snap 1, but with a Lunar Perfect Balance sequence as opposed to a Solar. This will put us in a state of having one Lunar Nadi while going into our next Even window. Again, the next Riddle of Fire window is going to need to be drifted by roughly 20 seconds in order to accommodate the cooldown of Perfect Balance. This window will be any of our potential Solar Lunar even windows, depending on exactly where Riddle of Fire ends up falling. From here, our rotation has been shifted and we are now effectively doing Double Solar, with all Phantom Rushes happening in Even windows from now on.

This technique is very helpful and can be applied to other situations, e.g., moving buffs off Pinax in P4S. However, due to the heavy drifting required it does require a lot of pre-consideration before attempting. Firstly, Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood will end up being pushed back anywhere from 30-40 seconds, which can easily lose you a usage over the course of a fight depending on the killtime, and as such this should not be used blindly. Secondly, given that we are shifting our even burst windows, ideally you want the rest of the group to be able to do the same so you do not end up misaligned. Depending on your party, this might not always be possible. At the same time, if playing with a Ninja they will need to be aware of - and following - your Riddle of Fire double drift with their Trick Attack.

P3S is another relatively straightforward fight, as you are able to easily manage full uptime throughout all of the time that the boss is targetable. The only thing worth considering for this fight is if you are simply playing to clear, or if you are looking to optimize your parse. On FFLogs the adds phase of this fight is removed and does not count, meaning any cooldowns spent in the adds phase is a cooldown "wasted." As such, you have two options.

If you are playing to clear and nothing more, you do not need to put in any extra effort, simply play the way you normally would. However, if you are looking to optimize your parse you have a couple of things to keep in mind.

Firstly, you will want to hold your first Riddle of Wind into the first even window. This is because you will not be using it in the adds anyway, so you are not going to lose a usage (that actually counts), and it will be back up when needed. Secondly, you are going to want the adds phase to be as slow as humanly possible. This is so that once the boss becomes targetable again, your potion is back off cooldown. You may wish to pop your potion slightly pre-pull in order to facilitate this. Finally, this is the only fight of the tier that makes use of the Triple Blitz. How, why, and when to triple blitz is mentioned in the main guide. This ends up with you able to do a full reopener under your potion with three buffed blitzes.

Again, phase one of P4S is quite straightforward, with the only consideration being how you want to handle your burst when it comes to Pinax. Depending on your killtime you have a few different ways to move your burst away from Pinax. Whether that be pushing your raid buffs back to 3/5 minutes instead of 2/4, or by doing the special drift that was discussed in the P2S section. Again, the solution here is dependent on your killtime, so discuss with your group to find the best option for you.

Speaking of Pinax, while there is a safe uptime strat that can be done for this mechanic, if you get a bad pattern, are playing in PF doing bad strats, or simply want to flex a little bit, the three charges on Thunderclap do allow for full uptime regardless of pattern. The ability to dash to any target, friendly or hostile, means that if you have a macro to dash to a ranged party member that you are confident is going to be in the right place at the right time, you are able to perfectly time your dashes between the snapshots of the damage from the Lightning panel. This can be seen in the following examples (credit to Peepo Smilers).

For the final fight of the tier, there is nothing too specific to Monk to be keeping in mind. The amount of uptime available to you is going to depend on your groups strategies for the various Acts, and there is nothing much you can do on an individual level to affect that.