Ninja DPS Tips for Asphodelos Savage — Endwalker 6.1

Asphodelos 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 suggestions. If your group decides to use different strategies or buff timings, some of these tips may not work for you.

The first fight of the tier is a very simple dummy fight with mostly full uptime unless you are using a strat that does not let all eight players stay on boss during four-fold chains. Therefore, the general rotation with normal opener works perfectly fine for this fight. The fight is not long enough for three potions, so just do the normal opener and six-minute potion for this fight.

If you know a rough killtime, you can work around delaying your Bunshin to fit more into buffs instead of being every 90 seconds, but if you do not hit that kill time, then you end up losing a usage over time, which is a loss overall. Outside of that, just make sure you know the amount of Ninki you have going into every Trick Attack window so you can plan around getting as many Bhavacakra into Trick and other buffs.

Just use Trick and Mug on cooldown if you are not optimizing for a specific kill time.

The second fight of the tier has downtime during the mechanic Kampeos Harma, which forces downtime around the 4:15 mark. For Ninja, this is not too bad overall because we can get most of our burst out before the downtime, which in a lot of cases will gain us a usage. This is entirely dependent on the team though, so make sure you decide whether to use it before or after the downtime. Using it before has the chance of gaining you a usage, but using it after will generally have higher bursts during that window.

Potion timings for this fight is relatively flexible. If you are still progressing on the fight, it is recommended to use your potion on cooldown, since it allows you an extra potion shortly before enrage. If you are parsing on the fight, you want to do the normal opener and six-minute potion windows.

You either want to use Trick Attack on cooldown, including right before Kampeos Harma, or hold the four-minute Trick Attack until after Kampeos Harma, and then on cooldown after that.

Phoinix is a very intimidating fight. There is a lot of stuff you have to adapt to throughout the fight, but once you get used to it and have a good plan in mind, it is not too bad. This fight you will want to make heavy use of the ability to be ranged if you are every scared or do not think you can hit the GCD without taking a damage down. If you can, save resources during the add phase, but do not feel bad about having to use some to be consistent in add phase, since that is a widely important part of the fight to be consistent on because there is a damage check to get past that part.

This fight has the ability to be a three-potion fight if you are not super geared, or have a good amount of deaths. Once you get a lot more gear and have clean pulls, then it will be a two-potion fight. If you are going for a three-potion fight, you have to potion on cooldown, which means your second potion would be roughly around 4:30 or so, basically the burst window after add phase. If going for a two-potion fight, your second potion would instead be around the 6:30 mark, wherever you would be bursting around there.

For this fight, you use Trick and Mug on cooldown when possible, though you want to make sure you have both available right after add phase since you will likely be holding resources for that burst window.

This fight will use your ranged abilities a lot. Without very specific strategies, you can sometimes be screwed over and forced off the boss, or get lucky and its an easy full uptime fight. For Pinaxes, I recommend making sure you have either Raiton or Phantom Kamaitachi to be able to hit while off the boss.

Because of the semi-randomness of Pinax, most groups opt to hold burst until after these, which you can do without losing a usage as long as you are diligent in using it right afterwards. This is something you should always talk with your group about to line up your burst windows.

Potion usage is just your normal two-potion fight. You should use the normal opener potion, and then your second potion should be around the 6-6:30 mark, depending on burst delays and such.

Use Trick and Mug on cooldown, unless your group plans to hold for after Pinax, allowing for more consistent melee uptime during bursts.

Hesperos phase two is a pretty straightforward fight. The hardest part is that you will have to be bursting during mechanics pretty often, but your burst window should be pretty ingrained at this point, meaning it should not be too bad. Once again though, using your ranged capabilities will be a huge boon to your own damage and your own consistency. Do not feel bad if you have to hold your ranged abilities for stuff like Act 2 where you are likely to be off the boss for a decent bit of time.

You pretty much just using Trick Attack and Mug on cooldown, though there will potentially be minor delays to make sure you have as much uptime as possible during burst windows.