Astrologian Healing Rotation, Ability Priority, and Cooldowns — Dawntrail 7.1

To maximize your contribution to the party's success, you will need to balance supporting the party and dealing damage yourself. The more efficiently you heal, the more damage you and your co-healer will be able to contribute.

To heal efficiently, you select the best heal for each situation while prioritizing your most efficient heals. As a general rule, oGCD abilities are more efficient than GCD spells because you do not have to stop casting damage spells to use them.

However, identifying the best heal for the situation is about more than just the numbers. You must also consider the range, cooldown, and opportunity cost of each heal. While the priority can vary depending on the situation, this page should offer guidance on what situations each heal is suited to, as well as notes about how some of Astrologian's more unique heals work.

1. Earthly Star
   • Earthly Star is a ground-targeted AoE with a very large radius of 20y. 20 seconds after being placed, or when it is manually activated, it detonates, damaging enemies and healing allies in its area. 10 seconds after being placed, it transforms into its charged version, increasing its damage potency from 205 to 310 and its healing potency from 540 to 720. It should always charge before detonating, if possible.
   • Earthly Star should generally be used as often as possible because it is a significant source of damage. It will be the cornerstone of your healing, and you will plan other heals around it. You should usually default to placing it as soon as it comes off cooldown. As you become more familiar with the encounter, you can adjust the timing to get more value from the healing and damage.
 
2. Collective Unconscious
   • Collective Unconscious instantly applies a 10% damage mitigation buff to party members within 30y with a base duration of 5 seconds. It also applies a 15-second, 100 potency HoT to party members within 8y of you. It can be channeled for up to 18 seconds, continuously refreshing the mitigation back to 5 seconds and the HoT back to 15 seconds for allies within their respective ranges. Channeling prevents you from doing anything else, so you should avoid channeling it except during downtime. Most of the time, it should be quickly weaved between casts like any other oGCD ability.
   • Collective Unconscious is high on the priority list simply because it is your most restrictive heal. Any time the party is grouped up and needs healing, you should use it while you can unless you know there is a more important use for it in the near future. It can be used frequently for mitigation since the range for that effect is so large, but you should try to take advantage of opportunities to get value out of both the mitigation and the healing.
 
3. Macrocosmos
   • Macrocosmos is a non-standard spell that has a cooldown, despite being a GCD action. It has multiple effects:
     1. It damages enemies in a 20y radius around you. It has a potency of 250 on the first enemy and 40% less for all additional enemies. Because of this, it is DPS-neutral on a single target.
     2. It places a 15-second buff on you and all party members within 20y. When the buff expires, or when it is manually triggered by activating the skill again, each person is healed for 200 base potency, plus 50% of the damage they took while they had the buff (after shielding and mitigation).
   • Macrocosmos is more situational than most of your heals. It is an incredibly powerful spell, but its effectiveness is completely dependent on when it is used. It shines most when the party takes heavy damage and needs to be healed quickly afterward, such as 1-HP mechanics or hard-hitting, back-to-back raid damage.
   • Macrocosmos is extremely effective at healing a Dark Knight's Living Dead (or a Warrior after Holmgang, though it is usually unnecessary) because those abilities do not prevent damage; they simply prevent the tank's HP from reaching zero. Macrocosmos counts this "overkill" damage.
   • Gunbreaker's Superbolide unfortunately does not count toward Macrocosmos's damage counter because it does not deal damage; it simply sets their HP to one. Similarly, not all incoming 1-HP mechanics count toward Macrocosmos. Many do, but it depends on how the mechanics are implemented. It can vary between encounters.
 
4. Celestial Opposition
   • Celestial Opposition is your all-purpose AoE heal. It has no particular limitations or incentives to use it in specific situations. It will usually be used when Earthly Star is on cooldown and the conditions are not met for using Collective Unconscious or Macrocosmos.
 
5. Lady of Crowns
   • Lady of Crowns is essentially just a free, oGCD Helios. It will rarely be enough cover a raid damage mechanic by itself, but it is often nice to pair with another ability to add a quick burst of healing. It should be used before your next Astral Draw comes up, or you will lose the use entirely. If nothing else, use it for some free healing on the tank.
 
6. Horoscope
   • Horoscope places a 10-second buff on all party members within 20y. When the buff expires or is manually triggered by pressing the button again, it heals for 200 potency. If someone with the buff is hit with Helios or Helios Conjunction, the buff upgrades to 400 potency, and its duration is extended to 30 seconds.
   • Horoscope can be used in two ways. The more common way is to use it without casting Helios or Helios Conjunction to upgrade it, just for the free 200 potency heal. It is a small, free heal with a short cooldown. When used this way, it helps make up for any small gaps left by the other oGCDs.
   • When upgrading Horoscope by using it with Helios or Helios Conjunction, it is hard to give it a clear priority ranking. If you are in a situation where you must resort to Helios Conjunction because your other oGCDs are insufficient, you should prioritize using Horoscope alongside it. However, you should not cast Helios or Helios Conjunction simply because you have applied Horoscope. Outside of downtime, it should only be upgraded when you already have no choice but to cast the GCD heal.
 
7. Neutral Sect
   • Like Horoscope, Neutral Sect has a high priority when you already have to cast Helios Conjunction. Otherwise, it is situational. You should not necessarily try to maximize the number of times you use it in an encounter. Instead, use it when additional party shields are desired, when you need a massive amount of healing, when you need the mitigation from Sun Sign, or simply to buff a single cast of Helios Conjunction that you have to do because you are out of oGCDs.
 
8. Sun Sign
   • After activating Neutral Sect, you may use Sun Sign once within the next 30s. This can be activated immediately to cover the same incoming damage you intend to mitigate with the Neutral Sect shields. Alternatively, it can be delayed so that you can use the Neutral Sect shields to mitigate one thing and Sun Sign to mitigate something else. Look for opportunities to cover multiple instances of raid damage with the 15s mitigation and time your activation carefully.

Note:The AoE oGCD heals listed above should be used to supplement your single-target healing if they are not needed for anything else, which is almost always the case in dungeons trash pulls.

1. The Arrow
   • The Arrow increases all healing received by the target by 10% for 15s. It can be used to buff your own heals or anyone else's. Snapshotting your own regens and shields under The Arrow is an obvious use case, but it is arguably even more effective when used in coordination with your cohealer. Scholar and Sage both have powerful heals that benefit from snapshotting this healing buff even more than most of your own heals. Notably, Scholar can snapshot Adloquium for Deployment Tactics and Sage can snapshot something like Haima.
2. The Spire
   • The Spire provides a small shield to the target for up to 30s. This can be a convenient tool for spot healing or mitigation on someone who is a little bit low before a raidwide, has a vulnerability stack, or is undergeared. This shield does benefit from healing buffs that apply to abilities (oGCDs), like The Arrow. The shield can also crit.
3. The Bole
   • The Bole reduces damage taken by the the target by 10% for 15s. This is another convenient tool that can be used act as a form of spot healing or mitigation. It can also be stacked with Exaltation to make the mitigation effect even more noticeable or with shields like Celestial Intersection and The Spire to further increase the target's effective HP. With The Bole, Exaltation, and two charges of Celestial Intersection, you could easily spread single-target mitigation across several people for a dangerous mechanic.
4. The Ewer
   • The Ewer usually feels like the most impactful utility card in your kit. Its regen heals for a total of 1000 potency over 15s, which can be further buffed by healing buffs like The Arrow if you use The Arrow shortly before Umbral Draw and then use The Ewer before The Arrow wears off. This window is always your burst window, though, so the timing is somewhat narrow. Even unbuffed, it is your highest potency single-target healing oGCD, and it will be an excellent tool for both tank upkeep and spot healing.
5. Essential Dignity
   • Essential Dignity has a very short cooldown and can hold up to three charges. You should use it regularly to avoid holding max charges and letting the free healing go to waste. This still allows you to hold one charge in reserve for emergencies or spot healing. The only time you should be holding three charges is if there is no useful single-target healing to be done.
   • It heals more depending on how much HP the target is missing, reaching maximum potency when the target is at 30% HP. Generally, you should use Essential Dignity first to take advantage of the increased scaling before using additional heals.
 
6. Celestial Intersection
   • Celestial Intersection is tied for first priority. Much like Essential Dignity, it has a short cooldown and can store two charges. Use one charge on the tank regularly to avoid capping on charges.
   • Celestial Intersection can be used to extend someone's maximum effective HP in an emergency. The most common cause of this situation is Vulnerability Up stacks. The shield may save them from an otherwise lethal attack.
 
7. Exaltation
   • Exaltation is somewhat situational. It provides damage mitigation followed by a delayed heal. It should be used fairly often, but not necessarily every time it is available. You will get more overall value by using it at the most impactful points rather than by focusing on maximizing the number of uses.
   • In dungeons, you can simply use it on every pull. You may want to use it after the tank's initial cooldowns have expired instead of stacking it on top of their cooldowns.
   • In boss encounters, you should prioritize using it whenever the tank is taking the most damage (and is not using an invulnerability cooldown). This may mean using it on every tank buster and then seeing where you can fit additional uses between tank busters.
   • In raids, tanks can often use invulnerability cooldowns for many of the tank busters. In this case, you should try to use it when a tank is taking uninterrupted auto-attacks from the boss or adds.
   • It can also be highly effective when non-tanks are targeted with single-target damage, especially when it is in the form of a damage-over-time (DoT) effect. The DoT will snapshot the mitigation, which means its damage is calculated when the DoT is initially applied to the target. No matter how long the DoT lasts, the entire duration will be affected by the mitigation that was in place when the DoT was applied.
 
8. Neutral Sect
   • Neutral Sect is listed again in the single-target section because it affects Aspected Benefic. It turns Aspected Benefic into an absolutely massive amount of healing at the cost of using the GCD to cast it. The GCD cost places this at a low priority, but its raw power will help minimize the number of GCD heals you need to use if you have run out of oGCD options.
   • Due to its long duration, if you need a lot of healing, it is possible to cast Aspected Benefic twice on the same target without overwriting the heal-over-time (HoT) effect.
   • In addition to raw healing, a "Neutral Aspected Benefic" may also be used just for the sizeable single-target shield in an emergency. This shield can help someone with Vulnerability Up stacks survive otherwise lethal damage or help make up for a tank's lack of cooldowns for a tank buster.
   • Neutral Sect shields stack with all other shields in the game, including your own Celestial Intersection shield. However, Helios Conjunction and Aspected Benefic both apply the same shield buff under Neutral Sect, so you cannot cast both to get stacking shields.
 
9. Synastry
   • Synastry marks a party member for 20 seconds. The person with the mark is healed for 40% of the healing you do with single-target healing spells (GCDs). When you heal the Synastry target, it is effectively a 40% boost.
   • This unique ability has a variety of niche applications—so niche, in fact, that it is fairly common to go an entire encounter without having any reason to use it.
   • Unfortunately, it only works with single-target healing spells: Benefic, Benefic II, and the initial 250 potency heal of Aspected Benefic. Between those, Benefic II is the primary spell used with Synastry, which is why it has such a low priority—Benefic II is already your last resort.
   • It is a significant healing boost on a single target, so the most basic use is to get more healing from Benefic II when you have run out of more efficient heals.
   • One notable but niche use of Synastry is to handle a Dark Knight's Living Dead or Warrior's Holmgang. These abilities prevent the tank from dropping below 1 HP, but they do not prevent damage. Taking advantage of them often involves leaving the tank at 1 HP and only healing them right before the buff expires, especially in the case of multi-hit tank busters. Synastry + Benefic II is one way to immediately heal the tank to a safe HP threshold at the last second if you do not have any charges of Essential Dignity available. Dark Knights should easily be able to heal themselves out of Walking Dead if they are able to hit an enemy for the full duration of the buff. However, if they use it when they are unable to hit an enemy, such as immediately before or during downtime, Synastry + Benefic II is an efficient way to heal them out of Walking Dead to prevent them from dying during downtime.
   • Synastry can allow you to very effectively heal two targets at the same time, with virtually no range limitation on the secondary target once Synastry has been applied to them. This can be useful for mechanics like shared, multi-hit tank busters.
   • If you are desperately low on MP, you can use Synastry to boost the healing from Benefic to keep the tank alive when you cannot afford to cast anything stronger.