Rotation planner

Writing a rotation

The composer under the timeline takes KQM notation. A rotation is segments separated by >, each starting with a character’s name and followed by what they do:

• N to N9 are normal attacks — N3 is three swings, and N2 N3 continues the same string. C is a charged attack, P a plunge (lP a low one), D a dash, and J a jump. A is a bow’s fully charged aimed shot.
• E and Q are skill and burst, with hE for a hold where the kit has one.
• Stances add special forms: sE a special skill, sQ a short burst, sC a special charged attack, and F the finisher of a spinning charged attack like Mavuika’s.
• [N2 D]x3 repeats, (E) marks an optional action that isn’t drawn on the timeline, and E/Q draws the first of two alternatives.
• critcalc adds a time token of its own, written ~Xs. ~1.5s adds 1.5 seconds of waiting on the active character’s row. It can also end an action early: Mizuki E draws her Dreamdrifter state for its full ten seconds, while Mizuki E ~2s ends it after two, so you can place her Q or a swap at that moment.

Names are the game’s display names — Kazuha, Raiden, Tartaglia — and the composer suggests them as you type. Actions can be run together (QEN2), and pasted rotations are cleaned up for you: footnote marks dropped, line breaks joined.

Undo and redo sit at the end of the composer, alongside Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z (⌘Z and ⌘⇧Z on a Mac). They work for edits made from the bench and the team builder too. Each tab keeps its own edit history until the page reloads.

A skill or burst written before it’s ready waits for its cooldown, and everything after it waits too. Charges come back one at a time, as in the game.

The composer underlines what it can’t draw exactly as written, in two colors. An orange underline means it couldn’t take the text: a name that matches no character, like Kazuah (that segment is skipped), an aimed shot on a character without a bow, or a token it doesn’t know. A yellow one means it took the text and drew a stand-in: a hold version the kit doesn’t have, like hE, timed as a tap instead; a plunge with no measured frames; a fifth character, who has no slot. Hover the token for the reason.

Walk-cancels. W ends the attack string the way walking does in game: N1 W N1 is two first hits. For most attacks a walk can start only once the animation has ended, though some characters can walk out a little sooner. Regardless, walk cancels give you a reset of the attack string without the stamina a dash would cost.

The team

The bench holds four slots. Typing a character’s name puts them in the first empty slot, even with no actions after it, and deleting all of their notation frees the slot again. A team opened from the Library, a lineup, or a team link is placed in its slots and stays there while you write. When a placed character isn’t written into the notation yet, they’re shown resting (dimmed). When no slot is empty, any other name you type takes the first resting character’s slot.

Each slot on the bench beside the timeline has a bench card. Clicking the portrait opens the character’s page in the inspector. On a wide screen, the two buttons at the card’s left change the slot: The top one opens the team builder’s swap mode for that slot, and picking someone there takes you back to the planner with the notation renamed throughout. The bottom one removes the character from the team and deletes their notation. Clicking an empty slot’s portrait adds someone instead. On a phone, Remove from team is on the character’s page in the inspector.

The chip on the portrait sets the character’s constellation for this tab, and the pill beside it sets their weapon and artifact set. Neither touches your roster: A tab keeps its own levels and loadouts, so one rotation can be written at C6 while your roster says C0. When the tab uses a constellation you don’t own the chip is drawn hollow.

A character without curated frame data carries a mark beside their name, and their actions are drawn with generic timing. The coverage page shows what is covered for each character.

Reading the timeline

Each character gets a group of rows: their skill, then any summons and shields, then their burst, then the active row, which shows when they’re on field and what they’re doing. Received buffs and weapon procs follow underneath, and connectors mark each swap.

A skill or burst bar is followed by a faded tail labeled with the cooldown, ending where the ability can be used again. A stance that lasts longer than its own cooldown is drawn dimmer past the point where the cooldown ran out.

Below the characters are the team-wide lanes — team buffs, Nightsoul bursts, and Moonsign’s Ascendant Gleam bonuses when the team has them — and above the composer a strip lists the always-on bonuses: resonances, faction bonuses, and permanent passives.

Energy isn’t modeled: A burst is ready whenever its cooldown is.

Zoom in the view bar opens a slider and Reset; the mouse wheel over the ruler scrolls sideways. Total is the rotation’s length.

Buffs and Auras in the view bar are layers. Buffs hides every bar that says what a cast grants — buff rows, weapon procs, the team lanes, and the always-on strip — and Auras hides the aura lane. Skills, bursts, summons, and shields stay, since they say when an ability is happening. With both off, the timeline is ability timings and nothing else. If you change either one, your choice is remembered. On a small screen both are off to begin with.

Timing like a person

Human timing is on by default. It adds some frames of reaction time before each input the game doesn’t buffer for you: after a skill, burst, plunge, dash, or jump, from a normal attack into anything but another normal or a charged attack, and on the first input after a swap. Normal into normal and normal into charged are exempt, because the game allows queuing of those inputs. A bow’s charged shot is the exception: It always takes the reaction time.

Settings decides what it changes. Padding (the default) is the reaction time. This is 10 frames to start with (the KQM starting point), and you can adjust it there. Animations lets each action play out in full instead of canceling. Both enables both. The padding shows as hatched slivers on the active row, which Mark padding turns off. Turn Human timing off in the view bar to see the frame-perfect rotation.

Swaps take time either way: your ping plus about 90 ms, set under Swap ping in Settings. If you write the same character on both sides of a > it costs no swap time, since the character never left the field. Laps relies on this when a rotation ends with the character it starts with.

A swap ends a stance only where the game does: Hu Tao’s Paramita ends when she leaves, while Mavuika’s Nightsoul Blessing or Noelle’s Sweeping Time carries on. A few stances hold the field — Mizuki’s Dreamdrifter keeps her on field until it ends, unless the segment is cut short with a time token or a second press of her skill.

Because Human timing is your preference, it isn’t stored in a share link. Someone opening your rotation sees it at their own setting.

Playing it back

Play (or Space) runs a cursor along the timeline at game speed, and the plate beside it slows it to 0.75× or 0.5×. With sound on, you’ll hear four beats to count you in, then a note for every input. Settings has the sounds and the volume. Back to the start (Home) rewinds.

Bluetooth headphones and speakers delay sound by a tenth of a second or more, so the cursor waits for your device’s delay and stays in step with what you hear.

Laps simulates the rotation five times in a row, as one run. A skill still on cooldown waits and pushes the rest back, and buffs, stacks, and auras carry from one lap into the next, so a rotation that doesn’t loop cleanly shows it. Gold marks on the ruler show where each lap begins. Laps isn’t saved, shared, or exported.

The enemy’s aura

The aura lane above the ruler represents the elemental aura on the enemy. The gauge lines draw each element attached to them, and a line’s height is how much gauge is left, so you can see an aura land, decay, get topped up, and get eaten by a reaction. The gaps are where the next trigger has nothing to react with. Hover anywhere on it to read all the auras present at that moment.

Above the lines, a pill in the element’s color marks each hit that applied an element, and a labeled marker above that names each reaction it caused. A run of a ticking reaction such as Electro-Charged is one marker with a count. Frozen, Quicken, Burning, and Burning’s Dendro fuel are separate objects from the auras that made them, with their own decay, so they get their own lines. A yellow ring on a pill means the hit has no measured gauge strength, and 1U is assumed.

The reaction spawns, below the baseline, are what some reactions leave behind: a Dendro Core from Bloom, a Starlight Prism from Stellar-Conduct, a Thundercloud from Lunar-Charged, and Moondrifts from Lunar-Crystallize. A dot marks each one appearing, and a stepped shape shows how many there are, so a step down is one expiring or being spent. A Dendro Core arrives half a second after its Bloom, lasts 6s, and there can be five on the field at once. Hyperbloom or Burgeon takes the oldest Dendro Core. A Starlight Prism lasts 7s and a further Stellar-Conduct refreshes it. There is only ever one Thundercloud, lasting 5.5s, and another Lunar-Charged restarts its clock. Lunar-Crystallize keeps three Moondrifts topped up, 9s each, drawn as one row. The damage these deal isn’t modeled; their presence is, along with any character effect that depends on it.

The Polestar Field. A Starlight Prism holds a Polestar Field around it, and the field’s buffs sit in the team buffs, because any party member’s Stellar-Conduct raises the same field. Its Cryo and Electro bonus moves: The field counts the Cryo and Electro hits that applied an element, resets every 4s, and boosts based on that count — 20% with none, 29% at one, up to 40% at twelve.

Log in the view bar opens the aura log beside the timeline. Hovering a row highlights that moment on the aura lane, clicking one scrolls there, and clicking a pill or marker on the aura lane opens the log at its row. The log also works with the Auras layer off.

The model behind it is the gauge explorer’s: the ×0.8 aura tax, decay rates, how much each reaction consumes, and the Crystallize cooldown. It assumes one enemy without a permanent aura that applies nothing back to you, and Shatter isn’t modeled. (If you would like to see permanent auras as a feature, please send a request through the feedback form.)

The inspector

Notes opens the notes panel: the caveats on each character’s kit, where the timeline knowingly differs from the game, with constellation notes shown from the level the tab uses. Each character ends with a link to their coverage. The button is disabled when the team’s kits have nothing to note.

Turn on Coverage strips in Settings to draw each character’s coverage under the composer and dim the parts of the kit this rotation doesn’t use.

Tabs, saving, and sharing

Each tab holds one rotation with its own team, constellations, and loadouts. You can keep up to twelve tabs open. Double-click a tab to rename it, and drag to reorder them. A closed tab with anything in it goes to Recently closed in the Library.

Save puts the rotation in the Library and links the tab to it, after which the button reads Save changes. Save as new in the ⋯ menu forks a copy of the rotation. A saved rotation keeps the constellations it was saved with. Once you’ve marked characters as owned, Sync in the Library makes a rotation follow your roster instead. Setting a constellation on a bench card ends the sync, and the rotation keeps its own levels again.

The Library groups saved rotations by team. Its search turns a character, element, or reaction into a tag, and tags combine. Its Roster tab is where you mark who you own, which the team builder shares.

Share copies a link, the KQM notation, or an image of the timeline. The link opens the rotation with its constellations and loadouts in a new tab without touching the reader’s roster. The KQM copy removes inputs that are specific to critcalc — time tokens, optional marks, and stack counts — and keeps the rest as you wrote it. The image is the whole timeline, not only the part on screen, with the notation written above it.

On a phone

On a phone the composer docks to the bottom of the screen. Collapsed it shows the last line of the rotation. Tap it to open it with the keyboard, and tap anywhere else to close it. A row of keys above the keyboard offers the inputs that fit where the cursor is.

The bench becomes a row above the timeline, which the Bench button in the view bar hides. Tapping a portrait on a phone opens the character’s details. The Buffs and Auras layers are turned off by default and the zoom starts wider than on desktop.