Astrologian's Fate

Astrologian is a Pure Healer in Endwalker that has the unique ability to buff the damage of party members. Its healing toolkit consists of extremely powerful off-global cooldown healing abilities, allowing Astrologian to keep the party alive while using few GCD heals in the process (heck, it sometimes doesn't need to cast one at all).
 

The MP regeneration attached to Astrodyne and Draw enables Astrologian to maintain an above average MP economy, allowing it to worry much less about piety compared to other healers.
 

Astrodyne can also be used as a good MP recovery tool, since the MP regen is guaranteed and seals aren't lost upon death. However, RNG plays a major role in the Arcana system, which can be frustrating if you're unlucky. 
 

Overall, while requiring a lot of effort to play properly, and despite the presence of RNG, Astrologian can contribute greatly to both raid DPS and the overall survivability of any group.

Pros:

1. The only healer that directly buffs the damage of the party.

2. Potent off-global cooldown toolkit, which can be used in many situations.

3. Has the unique ability to apply shields in addition to regens with Neutral Sect.

4. Astrodyne, that maintains seals after death, allows for good MP recovery.

5. Loses the least amount of personal damage when GCD healing.

6. No additional healing resources are tied to its oGCD heals, making them literally free.

Cons:

1. Weaker burst healing in emergency situations.

2. Requires knowledge of rotations and burst windows for other jobs.

3. Lightspeed is needed for fitting the required abilities in 2-minute burst windows, reducing mobility.

4. RNG plays a role in card Seals and Minor Arcana, and there's basically no RNG mitigation present.

5. The haste buff from Astrodyne, which heavily impacts our rotation, is not guaranteed.

6. Lowest personal DPS out of all four healers.

Astrologian consists of a strong free off-global cooldown (oGCD) healing toolkit and a global cooldown (GCD) healing toolkit, unlike Sage and Scholar which have additional resource management requirements attached to their abilities.

Getting the highest value from an Astrologian's toolkit requires knowledge of the encounter. Unlike White Mage, Astrologian has a bit more trouble with healing reactively. Instead, it greatly benefits from planning its healing cooldowns in advance.

Healing Priority system
 

Astrologian’s oGCD heals should be used first before using GCD heals. This allows Astrologians to put more GCDs into damage instead of healing.

Astrologian’s free oGCD heals/kit are the following:

• Essential Dignity (40s, up to 2 charges)

• Celestial Opposition (60s)

• Collective Unconscious (60s)

• Celestial Intersection (30s, up to 2 charges)

• Horoscope (60s)

• Exaltation (60s)

• Lady of Crowns (60s, has a 50% chance to appear after using Minor Arcana)

• Synastry (120s)

• Neutral Sect (120s)
   

What about Earthly Star?

Upon detonating Earthly Star after a minimum of 10 seconds after placement, it will deal 310p of damage to all enemies in range. Earthly Star should be prioritized as a damage cooldown and used in buff windows since it deals more damage than Fall Malefic. However, consider optimizing Earthly Star usages and take advantage of both the heal and damage when possible.
 

If oGCD heals aren’t enough, then use GCD heals. With the exception of Macrocosmos. GCD heals result in a loss of damage, so make sure to use these only when it's required for survival. Astrologian’s GCD heals are:

• Benefic (400 MP)

• Benefic II (700 MP)

• Helios (700 MP)

• Aspected Benefic (400 MP)

• Aspected Helios (800 MP)

• Macrocosmos* (600 MP)
   

Macrocosmos is an exception because it is the only GCD heal in Astrologian’s toolkit that can be used without a loss of DPS.
 

Now that we know the spells and abilities Astrologian has, let’s talk about when these should be used.

 

Single Target

 

• Essential Dignity

Essential Dignity has a unique trait; the lower the target’s health, the higher the ability’s potency is. Due to how the ability works, it is recommended to let the target drop to 30% or lower before healing them, ensuring that you gain as much value as possible. The nature of this ability also makes it especially useful if a tank takes an excessive amount of damage while under Holmgang or Living Dead. Essential Dignity is also a great recovery tool, and it can be used to heal resurrected party members, or party members that need immediate unplanned healing.
 

• Celestial Intersection

Celestial Intersection is Astrologian’s equivalent to White Mage’s Divine Benison, as it applies a 400p shield as well as a 200p heal on the target. Its extremely short cooldown, multiple charges, and its ability to stack with other shields makes it useful in any scenario that involves high single-target damage. Use this to help mitigate hard hitting tank busters or heavy auto attacks. Celestial Intersection can also be applied to targets that have vulnerability stacks, or slightly lower health than the rest of the party, resulting in less damage taken.
 

• Exaltation

Due to the nature of this ability, it should be used almost exclusively on tanks to mitigate tank busters or hard hitting auto attacks, especially during periods where the tank has less cooldowns available. Using this ability properly requires good timing, since the heal doesn’t apply until 8 seconds later. To get the most value, it should be applied a couple seconds before the source of damage comes out, allowing the mitigation to mitigate the source of damage, and for the target to get healed afterwards. 
 

• Synastry

The selected target receives 40% of any single target GCD heal (regardless of the spell's target). This is especially powerful if using a GCD healing on the target affected by Synastry, since the effect stacks with the heal. However, Synastry’s effect doesn’t apply to oGCD heals. It also has no effect on the regen effect applied by Aspected Benefic. Despite being niche, Synastry is absolutely a vital tool for healing through, for example, Living Dead. If combined with Essential Dignity right after the initial Benefic II cast, this is most likely enough to top the Dark Knight right up to full health. This, of course, is only necessary if the co-healer is not a White Mage, as they can always resolve it with Benediction.

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AoE Abilities
 

• Collective Unconscious

This ability is used proactively for mitigating high sources of damage, due to the fact that the ability provides a 10% mitigation effect; the same strength as Sage’s Kerachole or Scholar’s Sacred Soil. You need to use this ability as the AoE cast bar is approaching its completion to successfully apply the mitigative effect, as it will remain for approximately 3 seconds after the bubble disappears. In addition, Collective Unconscious yields a 500p regen over 15 seconds that can stack with other regen effects. Properly timing this ability with high sources of damage allows both the mitigation and the regen to yield the most value. 

This can be done by “flashing” Collective Unconscious shortly before the source of damage comes out. 

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Flashing Collective Unconscious works especially well when mitigating AoEs that also inflict DoT effects, as it softens both the DoT ticks as well as the AoE itself, and the regen already assists in counteracting against the DoT effect. However, make sure however that your entire party is in range for when using this ability, as it only applies to everyone within this bubble, and the overall range is pretty small.

 

• Celestial Opposition

This ability is one of Astrologian’s strongest heals. It heals everyone in a range of 15y for a total of 700p over 15 seconds, making it the perfect tool for healing the party after they take heavy raidwide damage. Like Collective Unconscious, it is especially useful when used to heal through raidwides that inflict a powerful bleed DoT on the party.

 

• Earthly Star

Yields 720p of pet potency Healing and 310p of damage pet potency if Earthly Star is allowed to ‘cook’ for 10 seconds before detonating it. Can be manually detonated but will detonate automatically after 20s of its initial placement. Due to its potency, it should be strictly treated as a DPS cooldown and planned around raid burst windows.

As it is also the highest potency burst healing tool in the kit, you may want to plan this around AoE damage happening within burst windows, so long as you do not lose a use and its offensive potency under buffs.

 

• Horoscope

Horoscope is a peculiar ability that can be recasted after the initial trigger to earn its healing; it is a free 200p heal that can be augmented to 400p when paired with Aspected/Helios.

When manually activating the second cast only those in range will be affected, everyone else's horoscope buffs will heal them after they expire.

Augmented Horoscope is especially useful during pre-pull or downtime, since its long duration can allow the skill to heal the party after a raid wide. It can also be used to prepare for situations that force the party to split up, so being far away from a healer will be a problem for some players. Make sure to plan this ability out properly. Augmenting it might be vital!

 

• Neutral Sect

Can be utilized pre-pull or during downtime for mitigating damage, as an amazing recovery tool, or as a method to keep the party alive during intense heal checks. It may also serve well to soften up situations that force the party to split up. This ability synergizes incredibly well with Horoscope, as both require an Aspected Helios to be used. It also increases the power to your GCD heals by 20%.

Synergies with Regens

 

All of Astrologian's Regen effects stack on top of each other. You can use multiple HoT effects overlapping with each other to either top up the party or counteract DoT effects as they happen. You can stack Opposition and Unconscious, it is highly unlikely that you will need to GCD heal AoE damage outside of content progression.

If you need to use a GCD Spell, make sure to use Aspected Helios for maximum efficiency, as its regen is stacking on top of the others as well and can be used to augment the ability Horoscope.
 

Global Cooldown Healing (Spells)

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AoE

 

• Aspected Helios
  This is your go-to AoE GCD heal. Great for healing through raid wides, especially ones that occur back to back. However, its MP cost is equivalent to two Fall Malefic casts, making it the most expensive GCD heal in Astrologian's toolkit.

 

• Macrocosmos

Deals 250p of damage to the first enemy, and 150p to the rest of the enemies in range. Grants the Macrocosmos effect to self and all party members for 15 seconds, compiling 50% of damage taken. Turns into the Microcosmos ability after use.

Upon using Microcosmos or after the Microcosmos effect expires, the party will recieve a heal that is equal to 200p plus the compiled damage.

The amount of HP restored cannot exceed a player's maximum HP.
 

NOTE: Weakness and healing buffs do NOT count towards the compiled damage. However, healing buffs DO count towards the base 200p.

 

The following will get compiled:

• Raw damage taken, including DoT (Damage over Time)

• Excessive damage at 1 HP (Holmgang, Living Dead, Ashen Eye)

• The HP lost during mechanics that reduces the party member's HP to 1

 

The following will NOT get compiled:

• Damage taken while being shielded

• Abilities that prevent you from taking damage (Superbolide / Hallowed Ground)

 

Macrocosmos shines the most when using it to deal with multi-hit or heavy-hitting raid wides.
 

In addition, Macrocosmos is damage neutral on single-target, and a DPS gain on 2 or more targets. As a result, it can be used to hit multiple enemies if it's not needed for mechanics.

 

Macrocosmos should absolutely be used for mechanics that involve highly frequent damage (this will still require some mitigation from the party to be effective), 1 HP mechanics or DoT AoEs, as it makes healing them almost trivial.

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Co-healer Healing Synergy
 

As Astrologian does not have any utility tools that increase either the parties’ received heal or increase someone else's healing potency and is only capable of increasing their own, make sure to work with the other healers’ abilities. Physis 2 (Sage), Fey Illumination (Scholar) and Asylum (White Mage) all increase healing, so you might want to try and fit your better heals into them, resulting in a way stronger healing output. This requires you to either work together tightly with your co-healer to efficiently heal the party.

• Draw

The cards can either be melee cards, or ranged cards. In addition, these cards can have one of three seals: Solar, Lunar, or Celestial. Melee cards increase the damage dealt by Tanks and Melee DPS by 6%, while Ranged cards increase the damage dealt by Healers, Physical Ranged DPS, and Caster DPS by 6%.
 

Playing a card on the non-ideal target will reduce the damage buff to 3%.
 

If you play a card during combat, you will receive a Seal according to the type of card that was played. The user is also granted the Clarifying Draw buff after using Draw. This effect cannot be stacked.

 

• Redraw

Able to use under the Clarifying Draw buff.
When used, the user is guaranteed to receive a card that is different from the current held and an unobtainable seal. Can only be used once per Draw.

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Redrawing & Playing - what do I do with my cards?
 

You will want to use Redraw to change a card you currently hold, either to change the seal as you already received it, or to fix the card type to fit an upcoming bursting DPS more. In most situations, you will want to fit the card to the DPS that will deal the highest damage in the upcoming GCD window.
 

As you go into a 2 minute burst, you might want to prepare a card for the job that will have the highest 2 minute window burst in party composition.
 

Looking at the following document, you may be able to determine what jobs are currently profiting off your cards the most.

 

When applying cards on other jobs, it's best to keep these things in mind:

 

- Play cards onto jobs that will benefit from them the most. This is where knowledge of jobs' burst windows comes into play.

- Do not card yourself. Astrologian deals the least amount of personal DPS in the entire game.

- Avoid keeping Draw at 2 charges during an encounter if possible. If there's a need to hold Draw at 2 charges, do it as little as possible to avoid losing a use.

- Keep Lightspeed specifically for 2-minute burst windows. Three cards, Divination, Astrodyne, and potentially Minor Arcana need to be fit into a 15 second window, since all jobs are bursting during this period.

 

• Astrodyne

Grants effects depending on the different types of Seals obtained.

 

    1T Astrodyne (all 3 Seals are the same)

    Harmony of Spirit: Restores 500 MP per tick for 5 ticks (2,500 MP)

 

    2T Astrodyne (2 Seals are different)

    Harmony of Spirit: Restores 500 MP per tick for 5 ticks (2,500 MP)

    Harmony of Body: Reduces Spell Cast times and Recast timer by 10%

 

    3T Astrodyne (all 3 Seals are different)

    Harmony of Spirit: Restores 500 MP per tick for 5 ticks (2,500 MP)

    Harmony of Body: Reduces Spell Cast times and Recast timer by 10%

    Harmony of Mind: Increases damage and healing potency by 5%

 

Astrodyne should ALWAYS be used alongside Divination in order to prevent drifting. Do NOT delay Astrodyne in order to fish for a 3T Astrodyne.

As this ability is the lowest priority cooldown in your burst kit, it will in most cases be played out after Divination has already happened and cards have been used accordingly. While the 5% damage increase is a nice thing to have, fishing for it is -generally- not advised if it comes at the cost of a perfect card on a burst window, as Astrologians are always the lowest damage dealers in the group, and the damage increase on yourself would be lower than the value lost on a major DPS burst.

 

• Minor Arcana

Draws either a Lord of Crowns or Lady of Crowns. Unlike Draw, the resulting card from Minor Arcana can't be redrawn.

The card received can be played by using Crown Play.

  

Lord of Crowns deals 250p of damage to all enemies within 20y. A great damage tool for add phases and dungeon pulls. Use when raid buffs are up! Lady of Crowns heals all players within 20y for 400p. Essentially a free Helios with a bigger range.
 

Since you can't control your luck on Minor Arcana, you will have to make use of any card you get. While getting Lord of Crowns for damage is preferred, Lady of Crowns can still be utilized. It might be able to save either yourself or your Co-Healer a GCD heal you originally planned to do. You should use this after taking raid-wide damage.
 

For Lord of Crowns, you will have to consider your options. You will mostly want to play it into raid buffs, however holding it and using it on multiple targets might be a better gain.
 

In a normal situation, you will use your Lord of Crowns (if you happen to draw one) on your opener into raid buffs, and hope for another one around the 1 minute mark, which you then hold and play into the 2 minute raid buff window. From there, rinse and repeat.
 

In some fights it might be beneficial to hold on to a drawn Lord of Crowns from an earlier draw and forego the follow-up to make sure you do have this card for certain situations. A prime example of such situation would be an add phase or a phase with multiple targets while raid buffs are active, so having a Lord of Crowns ready for this particular part of an encounter might be a bigger gain than drawing another Minor Arcana and possibly lose out on it due to unfavorable luck.
 

Astrologian Opener

Suggested Card Play Rotation (6 Minutes)
 

Essentially, you should be using one card for every 1 minute window, and three cards for every 2 minute window.

 

Here's some directions to follow:
 

-0:30 prepull - Draw a card

0:00 - Use Lightspeed after the pre-pull Malefic. Play your drawn card on a target, then draw the other two cards and play them on other targets. Use Astrodyne, and you should end up with three cards on the party and no seals.

0:30 - Draw a card.

1:00 - Play the card recieved at 0:30 on a target, and draw another card. You should have 1 seal.

1:30 - Let the Draw action build one charge and do NOT draw a card.

2:00 - Use Lightspeed. Your Draw action should be approaching 2 charges. Repeat the same process as at 0:00: Play the card you drew at 1:00, then play the other two cards. You should end up with three cards applied on the party, Astrodyne should be used, and you should have ONE seal.

 

Repeat this entire process until the boss is dead!

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You should end up with the ability to use Astrodyne TWICE at the 6 minute window. At that point, use the first Astrodyne slightly before Divination, play your three cards, then use the second Astrodyne once the effect from the first Astrodyne expires. After that, the card rotation will reset.

 

When applying cards on other jobs, it's best to keep these things in mind:
 

- Play cards onto jobs that will benefit from them the most. This is where knowledge of jobs' burst windows comes into play.

- Do not card yourself. Astrologian deals the least amount of personal DPS in the entire game.

- Avoid keeping Draw at 2 charges during an encounter if possible. If there's a need to hold Draw at 2 charges, do it as little as possible to avoid losing a use.

- Keep Lightspeed specifically for 2-minute burst windows. Three cards, Divination, Astrodyne, and potentially Minor Arcana need to be fit into this window, since all jobs are bursting during this period.

1. Always Be Casting (ABC). Keep your GCD rolling, and slidecast if you need to move.
 

2. If you're NOT in progression, utilizing Swiftcast for movement and the additional weave window can be especially useful for ABC.
 

3. Keep your DoT up at all times. However, if your DoT falls off, and the target becomes untargetable in 15 seconds or less, it's better to keep using Malefic.
 

4. If there's 2 or more targets, and they're close to one another, use Gravity. Otherwise, use Malefic.
 

5. When using Earthly Star, always wait for the star to grow. When detonated, it deals more damage than your Malefic, and it deals a massive amount of damage on multiple targets.
 

6. Use Earthly Star at -10 seconds prepull or later. This is ensures that the star will detonate while raid buffs are up in the opener.
 

7. Lining up Divination with other raid buffs allows you and your raid buddies to deal more damage!
 

8. Be aware of burst windows! Some encounters require the raid to delay burst windows for optimal DPS. Communicate with your party for the proper alignment.
 

9. Use Astrodyne during Divination. This ensures that Astrodyne is used every 2 minutes, which will prevent drifting.
 

10. Do NOT delay Astrodyne just to get its 3T variant. The additional 5% to damage and healing is not necessary. Playing cards on the right targets yields greater raid DPS.
 

11. Avoid a 1T Astrodyne as much as possible. The haste buff from a 2T Astrodyne and above impacts our rotation, and missing out on it will cause misalignment in the long run.
 

12. Lord of Crowns can be held if drawn on a 1 minute window and be used on a 2 minute window so it can be used under raid buffs or for an add phase. However, avoid delaying your next Minor Arcana draw, as you might be able to luck out and fit 2 Lords of Crowns into a 2 minute burst window for bigger DPS gains.