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Astrologian is one of Final Fantasy 14’s three healing classes, allowing players to call upon the stars to heal and protect their allies in addition to doing damage with a wide array of unique spells. In between spells, the Astrologian class draws and ‘plays’ cards on other party members to give buffs and combine sets of arcana on each card to unleash even stronger healing.

Related: Final Fantasy 14 - Complete Guide To Playing Monk

With a wide array of utility and abilities, Astrologian is a versatile and important class that can be complicated to play effectively. Follow our guide below to get the most out of Astrologian and become a master of the celestial arts.

How To Unlock Astrologian

Final Fantasy 14 Astrologian Headquarters

As one of the jobs added in the expansion Heavensward, Astrologian can be unlocked by reaching level 30 in any Disciple of War class and completing the Main Scenario Quest up to the beginning of Heavensward.

After you’ve fulfilled these requirements, you can talk to Jannequinard in Ishgard (X:15, Y:10) who will give you the first Astrologian job quest. By completing this first job quest, you’ll unlock the job and its job stone. Unlike other jobs, it is not attached to a starting class and therefore cannot be played from the beginning of the game.

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How To Play Astrologian

Final Fantasy 14 Astrologian Stars

As a healer, Astrologian’s number one priority is in making sure the party doesn’t die. In order to achieve this, a good Astrologian will weave in healing, buffs, and status effects in between consistent damage dealing. In dire circumstances, Astrologians will be able to put up shields, heal the whole party at once and even resurrect party members from the dead.

As with all healing jobs, playing Astrologian well relies on the delicate balance between dealing damage, healing without over-healing, and ensuring you retain your own mobility to effectively engage with whatever mechanics a dungeon or trial might throw at you. Astrologian will test the rapid decision-making skills of even the most seasoned MMO healers.

To begin with, an Astrologian has a few basic damage dealing skills. There is no strict rotation here, but in single target scenarios, you’ll want to utilize the skill Malefic as your primary source of damage. In addition, the damage-over-time spell Combust can be applied. Gravity is another spell that can be used to deal damage across a group of targets.

Alternate between these three spells accordingly to deal damage, which you should keep up as much as possible. Try and fit as much of your healing using your wide variety of abilities between your damage spell casts, but when you can’t, you can use Astrologian's basic healing spells.

  • When a party member has suffered minor damage, Aspected Benefic should be your go-to when you can’t use one of the off-global cool-down healing abilities (see table below) due to the follow-up regenerative effect.
  • For unavoidable party-wide damage, Aspected Helios is a similarly effective remedy. This is the best way to get your whole party back up to the safe zone at once if you can’t use abilities such as Celestial Opposition to do so.
  • Generally, Benefic II is a lot more useful than standard Benefic and Aspected Benefic is more useful than either of them. In high-level content, it’s rare for standard Benefic to be used at all.
  • Essential Dignity is a pretty useful heal that can be applied in between damage dealing or benefic uses, increasing in potency the lower the HP of the target. This makes it an excellent skill to use when you want to continue focusing on DPS, but there’s a party member with rapidly decreasing health.
  • Celestial Intersection applies a handy barrier that cures for a small amount of potency and also applies a damage - use this on the tank before they’re about to take on big damage. Celestial Opposition is a lot like Aspected Helios, but better because it’s an instant cast for no MP - use this first before resorting to Aspected Helios!
  • Collective Unconscious and Earthly Star are two radius-based protective abilities to employ in different situations. Earthly Star can be used to heal damage using a targeting circle whilst also doing damage at the same time: try and time using this with certain dungeon or trial mechanics where damage is guaranteed. Collective Unconscious is more of a traditional protective shield that you can engage at the cost of your own mobility.
  • Divination is a generic damage buff that you should try and keep active at all times, so keep an eye on its cooldown. Neutral Sect increases the effectiveness of ‘aspected’ skills, Synastry is for making healing a particular target more effective and Exaltation reduces damage by 10% with a small heal.

With this huge toolkit, Astrologian can react to almost any situation. An important tip is to keep flexible rather than approach the class with a rigid rotation in mind. A good Astrologian should always be making hard choices, doing as much damage as they can, and crucially using all of their tools to do effective healing.

Oh, and you also have to play a card game while you’re doing all that.

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Cards & Astrodyne

Final Fantasy 14 Cards

The real draw of Astrologian is the unique card mechanic. During your standard Astrologian gameplay, whenever you’re not using an off-global cooldown ability to heal or buff, you should be using it to draw cards from a deck.

These cards all provide small buffs to damage that can be applied to your party members. The type of card will determine which party member you should give it to. Cards with a blue border should be given to melee DPS or the tank to give them a 6 percent damage buff. Cards with a purple border should be given to ranged or caster DPS to give them a 6 percent damage buff.

Cards can be drawn as an off-global cooldown ability and ‘played’ on other party members in the same way. Although these cards offer useful buffs on their own, the true purpose of drawing and playing cards is to activate Astrodyne, an ability that can regularly buff Astrologian to recover MP, deal more damage, and hasten their abilities.

In order to activate Astrodyne, you must first play three cards. Each card has a ‘seal’ or symbol at the top of it. These are represented by a sun, a moon, and a crescent respectively. After you’ve played a card, its seal will be ‘stored’ in one of the three diamond slots on your job gauge.

The possible combinations of the three seals result in three different versions of Astrodyne. The same type of seal in all three slots will give you MP regeneration. Two seals will give you MP regeneration and haste. All three seal types will give you MP regeneration, haste, and a buff to damage and healing.

It’s therefore preferable to get three seal types to use the best version of Astrodyne as much as you can. In order to increase your chances, you can use the skill redraw to redraw a card once. There’s still some random chance to contend with, so sometimes even redrawing won’t help you get the optimal Astrodyne.

In addition to the ordinary cards, you can also draw Minor Arcana cards. This ability will draw either a Lord of Crowns or Lady or Crowns card. Lord of Crowns will do 250 potency AoE damage, whilst Lady of Crowns will give a 400 potency AoE heal. These are useful cards to keep in your back pocket for when you need them.

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Job Quests

Final Fantasy 14 Astrologian Job Quests

As you level Astrologian, you’ll need to complete job quests every few levels in order to gain important abilities and gear necessary to play the job effectively. Most of these job quests will be undertaken by talking with Jannequinard at the Astrologian’s Guild in Ishgard.

Refer to the table below to see what skills and gear you’ll be rewarded with at each level:

Quest Name

Level

Skills Unlocked

Other Rewards

Stairway To The Heavens

30

N/A

Soul of Astrologian, Star Globe, Velveteen Cowl, Velveteen Tights.

Fortune Favors The Bole

30

N/A

Hanging In The Balance

35

A Lesson In Patience

40

Redraw

Slings and Arrows

40

Ewer Right

45

Gravity

Loved By The Sun

50

Synastry

Astrologian's Attire Coffer

Sharlayan Ascending

50

N/A

N/A

Empty Nest

52

Conviction

54

Malefic II

Feather in the Cap

56

N/A

Trumped

58

Collective Unconscious

The Hands of Fate

60

Celestial Opposition

Welkin Attire Coffer

East Meets West

60

N/A

N/A

Ride Like The Wind

63

Come Rain Or Shrine

65

Behind Door Number Two

68

Foxfire

70

Minor Arcana

Constellation Attire Coffer

Love, Astrologically

80

N/A

Piety Materia VII, Savage Aim Materia VII, Savage Might Materia VII

Gear And Materia

Final Fantasy 14 Astro Gear

Gear for Astrologians is pretty simple: Astrologians should wear ‘of Healing’ gear sets and accessories. Generally, Healing gear will increase the stats Vitality and Mind the most to increase your HP and MP respectively.

When it comes to melding materia into your gear, there are a few different approaches with Astrologian. If you’re finding yourself low on MP often during encounters, you can alleviate this problem using Materia which will grant additional Piety, which speeds up MP regeneration.

However, it will generally make more sense to increase your Spell Speed and Critical Hit. You can go for a balance of these two stats or choose one to prioritize. Examine your gear closely to identify its weaknesses and determine which of these two stats to boost with materia.

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