Quote Originally Posted by Seraphor View Post
Agreed, but in addition, I'd like seals to be applied outside of combat.

It's an arbitrary restriction, all it does is delay your initial Divination by 1m into a fight, which means you miss out on the first burst phase.
But it introduces clunky issues whereby you're forced to start a fight with a Combust, Aspected Benefic or an Intersection, whether you need to or not, and you run the risk of wasting a card if you use it towards the end of a pull when the last enemy is killed a fraction of a second before you use it.
The tentative opener posted in the Balance does not delay Divination, but rather use Swiftcast and Lightspeed in an attempt to get it out as fast as possible to line up with other buffs.

Pre-pull:
-12 ~ -9s — Earthly Star
-5s: Aspected Benefic
-4s: Arcana prepull, if possible
-3s: Draw
-2s: Sleeve Draw
-1.5s: Malefic IV

Pull:
0s: Malefic IV hits > Swiftcast
1s: Combust III > Play, Draw
3.5s: Malefic IV > Play, Lightspeed

And then it branches depending on cards and seals you have received and will receive in the next few GCDs:

6s: Malefic IV > Draw, Play/Redraw
8.5s: Malefic IV > Divination/Play/Redraw, Draw/Divination/Play
11s: Malefic IV > Arcana/Draw/Divination, Play/Arcana/Draw
13.5s: Malefic IV > continue/Play/Arcana, continue/continue/Play

Obviously, this is subject to change, but I have read that it may be better to do a 4% Divination if the cards are not favoring you for the 6% rather than cause Divination to drift too much, as that will result in future Divinations also drifting out of buff windows. That’s min-maxing/optimization territory, but for regular stuff, you can still do Divination within the opener without delaying it to 1 minute (unless it’s sub-70 content where you don’t have Sleeve Draw). You just have to become a concert pianist to do it.