Garuda and the Duty Finder: Mini-Rant

So last Saturday I finally beat Garuda's story mode, and am excited to continue, but I feel something needs to be addressed about this fight. Specifically, I'm talking about players who use the Duty Finder to group for it and don't have a super-awesome guild with enough players who are willing to do a lv44 trial with no drops, minimal exp, and a repair cost from hell.

These can be summed up like so:

1) No one wants to group for this duty more than once, and has an even smaller pool of players to pull from since it's so close to 50. My waiting times during that entire week was over 2 hours and I only grouped up a total of two times.

2) This fight is extremely difficult and requires practice beyond just "knowing the fight." On average a group of four new players (which is what it will normally end up being) will have to wipe an average of 3 times before they are competent enough to complete it smoothly.

3) This is the first dungeon to really "require" adequate gear, mainly due to when Garuda decides to blow up all of the surrounding towers since any player under 2k hp or just barely over will die instantly if they don't hide behind an undamaged tower. This is where not killing the adds and letting Garuda hit the towers when you don't need to be near them comes back and bites you in the butt. Dps needs to be extremely competent in downing the adds and prioritizing at least one tower being at max height, or it's very likely that your healer won't survive, and that is a guaranteed wipe.

Hopefully the new patch will fix the duty finder so that people won't have to spend a week trying to get into this particular duty. :/

Huh... no?

1. GEAR: Garuda should be completed when you have your artifact armor, sans chest. That's more than enough and in fact it's what the fight is meant for. i.e. do it at level 45, but you COULD do it at 44 like I did and it wouldn't change much.

2. DIFFICULTY: It's not complex. DPS Garuda, hide behind towers, DPS feathers, DPS Garuda, hide behind towers, DPS feathers, DPS Garuda, hide behind towers, DPS feathers, stack up in middle for aoe healing, fight Garuda in middle. The end.

3. AERIAL BLAST: You cannot hide from it. It does damage based on how many rocks are still "alive". Even so, it shouldn't be one-shotting people unless your DPS is extraordinarily bad at killing the feathers, which isn't a fault of the encounter but of the bad players you ran into.

I'm going to be brutally honest: if you think Garuda is hard, you will not enjoy the rest of the game, and you will definitely not enjoy the endgame. It's a really easy fight, as long as someone in the group, anyone, can explain it. It takes five seconds to look up a Youtube video of the fight or read a short guide.

The boss isn't hard per se, but waiting for over 2 hours and not getting a group for it is very depressing. This coupled with the fact that you'll probably be playing with new players and that some players will drop after ~3 wipes doesn't help the situation. I also don't like to "over-level for something" and being in your class set makes this boss a little too much of a cakewalk since that means every member would be at least lv45.

You should also never tank the boss in the middle since that could make the dps or heals get too close to a tower and end up letting it get hit when Garuda targets them with "Friction." While aerial blast is unavoidable, it is reduced in damage by the current "rock" you are hiding behind, not all 4 of the rocks as a whole. Of the three stages of damage the rock goes through, I know for certain that the second stage, where it has been damaged enough to lose the top, deals ~2k damage, and if you're lv44 you might be right at that amount.

Sorry, but you're wrong.

Aerial Blast damage is calculated using the total amount of rocks left. If you don't believe me, try having a run where one tower is intact, and another run where each tower only has one rock left. It'll do the same damage. YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM IT. Hiding behind a rock does absolutely nothing to the damage output of Aerial Blast. You hide from Mistral Song (or Mistral Screech, I forget) three times, then she uses Aerial Blast to destroy all remaining rocks, dealing damage based on how many rocks are left. So if you've been telling your group that it's OK to let three towers get completely destroyed, look no further on why you're wiping.

This is true for story-mode Garuda, and it's true for hard-mode Garuda.

As for not fighting Garuda in the middle, during the phase with the towers, she should be tanked where she started. During the final phase you have to fight her in the middle, you don't have a choice, so once again if you've been telling your group "NEVER to tank Garuda in the middle" look no further on why you'll wipe during the second half of the fight.

It's starting to sound like the issue isn't anything but your personal lack of understanding of the fight. I'll put it down for you here, as clear as I can:

WHILE TOWERS ARE UP:
Tank Garuda at her starting position. Do not stand near rocks or have her facing rocks.
When she teleports, hide from her.
When she spawns feathers, kill them.
Rinse and repeat until:

AERIAL BLAST:
Don't bother hiding. Damage is dealt to the entire party based on how many rocks are left. You want at least 4~6 rocks to survive, but more is better. THIS PHASE IS EQUIVALENT TO IFRIT'S HELLFIRE AND TITAN'S EARTHEN FURY. Where Ifrit's Hellfire deals damage based on whether or not you killed his Nail, and Titan's Earthen Fury deals damage based on whether or not you killed his Heart, Garuda's Aerial Blast deals damage based on how many rocks are still on the battlefield. I don't have the damage values for you, but again, try to have as many up as possible. If you manage to have 10~16 rocks up when she fires it off the damage is trivial. At 3~5 it gets dangerous for lower health party members.

TOWERS ARE DOWN:
Tank her at the edge of the safe zone in the middle. Party stands away drom her.
Occasionally she'll aoe for pretty hefty damage, but less than Aerial Blast.
Just kill her.

Just to emphasize how much you cannot dodge Reckoning in any way, shape or form, I sometimes make it a point to run right next to Garuda and jump up and down in front of her during Reckoning while others hide behind rocks, just to show that hiding means nothing. In fact, for Garuda HM, if you hide behind a rock for her Reckoning then instead of just booking it south, you will be mocked. Well, you will be if in a party with me. With love, of course.

That is extremely weird because we've had a total of 8 rocks up vs 6 rocks up and I still got hit for 2k when I hid behind a 2 stacker. I don't know if you've never noticed because you've never hidden behind a rock or what, but every guide I've seen on the net says you should put the rock between you and her when she ports to the middle and initiates phase 2. This is because, while the attack ISN'T AVOIDABLE it still mitigates damage. Or maybe you're right and it's just a case of mass misinformation.

As for where she should be tanked, I thought you meant that she should be tanked in the middle during phase 1. XP (For those who don't know the fight, she should be tanked on the edge during Phase 1).

I went off of Kira Yakami's guide before I did the Trial. Garuda Guide video

IGN Guide

It is mass misinformation, dood. The rocks only mitigate Mistral Song/Mistral Screech/Mistral Shriek, whatever the hell it's called, and also that one orb she can shoot at someone randomly which can get caught in rocks (and this is bad, since it damages the rocks).

When she screams about reckoning there is no point in hiding. Aerial Blast does fixed damage based on how many rocks are up. Getting a bit tired of repeating it.

Man I just looked over that IGN guide in full and it is so full of crap that it makes me wonder if someone was being pressured to write something and just threw everything he could in there so he'd get his paycheck without checking to make sure it's all accurate.

Really awful guide in some ways. Gives a good overview it's inaccurate in a lot of critical abilities.

Yeah, when the reckoning comes, its damage is based on the total stones left, not your position.

Well, a fight in which a new party wipes ~3 times is not a hard fight in my books... Garuda is not so hard as soon as you get the mechanics.

I know its useless to hide behind rocks during reckoning but it so habitual. The rock is there so I hide :P

I have actually run this several times in the past week to help RL friends through the fight... so people do run it more than once. Some people are willing to help =-)

I am at that stage now. Me and two other LS mates are at it so we need a healer. We wanted to try it last night and got a healer (SCH) after 30mins. Unfortunantly we kept wiping but honestly I was having fun. Sometimes a DPS would not get behind a rock in time, sometimes the SCH just got unlucky. SCH was healing like a champ though, can't lie. Was on a different server was hoping to friend request, but I thank him/her for their patience as they had already done it and just wanted to "pay it forward."
We now have a very good idea of what to expect and what to go through. In the meantime til Friday (next time we are running it) will be getting our AF pieces available. Three things I wanted to mention for those who are at this fight who aren't repeating it (being that 44-45 area). This is for the story mode only I have no experience in hard mode.

For the tank: Garuda has a move called Slipstream (Front cone wind blast) does around 1400 and stuns. While there is no AoE red square to indicate it is dodgable, IT IS. Move to the side and you can avoid a good chunk of damage (she tends to Downblast, Slipstream and Friction in close proximity) so avoiding the big hitter can alleviate stress on the healer. You have to more or less keep watching the HP bar to see it because once the animation of her charging begins she is about halfway and may not have enough time. healer should still be able to heal through it but less damage taken is more the healer can focus on others.

For the DPS: After each teleport-->Mistral Shriek she will come to the tank, Downburst and then summon the razor plumes. If you time your AoE (Bliz 2, Fire 2, Doom Spike, whichever) you can do some good AoE damage to them before they go to the pillars, resulting in only one or two AoEs to kill instead of 3-4, making damage taken to stones much easier. Once we started incorporating this, we had more stones up for Aerial Blast.

For the tank: If you get to Aerial Blast and you do not have a lot of stones up, activate your Limit Break. There have been times where we would of survived if I had used it. If you use it and everyone dies, then LB is reset anyway so you may as well. If you have quite a number of stones up then I would conserve it, but otherwise if you aren't sure, better to use it and survive (and then Medica/Succor can get people topped back up) during the 5-10 seconds Garuda sits there after to continue the fight.

May these help you (or feel free to offer more constructive criticism/tips) so that we all taste victory against the Lady of the Vortex. Thank you.

Every once in a while a healer bud of mine and I will q up the duty finder do a couple of these, or other story mode primals. We keep our mouth shut as to the mechanics, and if the dps wipe, we normally just finish it (very slowly, and after the dps checks).

Had one guy calling us n00bs the whole time he was dead, and it was our fault that he got killed by not taking cover from the rocks.

This fight is easy at 44 as long as the right side of your gear is up to date rings bracelet necklace earrings, too many people just ignore them. People who pay attention, don't just stand and dps. Tank limit break. I ind most people die because they have slow reactions or lag as most damage is avoidable for everyone except the tank.

Garuda took a couple of wipes (about 4-5), but I've come to expect this for all DF pugs. As soon as people understood the mechanics (which is basically "you should stand at X during the Y phase of the fight"), it was just a matter of coordinating enough AOE dps / cc to kill the plumes in time as well as people avoiding getting one-shotted by the breath in the last phase ("what do you mean by 'get behind her'?! I didn't see a red mark on the ground!").

Now Titan... was much worse, I must've wiped over 10 times with one pug before I requeued and got a group with experienced people that killed it first try. If a dps is too slow to move out of landslide, they'll die and cause you to wipe in the heart phase, guaranteed. Can't even res them as they're knocked off the ledge. Worse yet, getting hit by landslide depends entirely on latency / reaction time, which -in my experience- is NOT something the person will improve on as they die to the move over and over again.

I found the Titan nm fight much harder before Garuda. Took about a week of trying in DF because the fight design is just so overly cruel. Garuda nm like it's hm counterpart is a very slow fight with very obvious phases so it's much easier. First time i did the nm took 3 tries to finish it in DF and the last time i did it i actually accidentally clicked the nm Garuda fight instead of hm and didn't realise until i was inside. Didn't really want to be a jerk and just leave so decided to explain the fight and after a first wipe because the tank used their LB too early and people took too much damage we downed it on the second turn. If somebody can just explain the fight the phases are so obvious it's easy for people to know what to do.

While I agree the biggest challenge is not getting grouped with people who constantly stand near pillars and, as a consequence, rape the rocks with splash AoE damage, a level 2 tank Limit Break trivializes the fight. It makes her ultimate all but useless, and it negates the need for a healer Limit Breaks.

The fight is probably meant to be done with better gear and near-perfect execution with the pillars, allowing you to just survive her ultimate, and relegating the Limit Break to optional DPS or emergency healer status, but we found it was better just to use the tank one to make the fight a joke.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The_Last_Dragoon

2) This fight is extremely difficult

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i lol'd.

There are zero challenging mechanics in Garuda HM. Zero. Niet. Kaput.

1) Tank out of slipstream: walk through the boss. Pro skills.
2) Stay spread out to avoid friction: Pro positionning.
3) Dont hug a pillar needlessly: see 2)
4) Line of Sight during the blasts: 5 second to do a 2 second walk - Pro speed.
5) /dance during reckoning as LoS doesnt affect its damage: Pro rhythm
6) Tank positionning boss hugging the tornado: it's pro walking
7) Off tank picking up red, DPS nuking green: one (or two if unlucky) pressions of TAB
8) Move clockwise: it's pro walking
9) DPS the satin plume: Macro or 2-3 pressions of TAB
10) going to the middle: it's pro walking
11) rinse repeat: it's just doing the same thing again at different spots. Pro memory needed
12) Press that LB button if you're a bard and both healers are down. Pro awareness

Honestly. Garuda is such a piss take. People were making so much noise about it i was looking forward to a rough ride; first time i did it I went in using the duty finder and ended with a group with zero relic or AF+1 gear, and we downed it on the second try once the off tank understood that tanking red in the group of healers wasnt the best move.

edit: typo

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kenjinmaru

There are zero challenging mechanics in Garuda HM. Zero. Niet. Kaput.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by The_Last_Dragoon

So last Saturday I finally beat Garuda's story mode

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OP has nothing to do with HM. The entire post elaborates on the Story Mode difficulty, the extremely high DF queues when solo due to lack of FC/LS/etc, as well as the lack of incentive to ever run it again after the first time.

I to am someone who randomly ques up for these and other story mode fights as a SCH to help out others but I totally agree that there needs to be some sort of incentive to help. Give this game a year on the market and new players are going to have one hell of a time getting anything done.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kenjinmaru

i lol'd.

There are zero challenging mechanics in Garuda HM. Zero. Niet. Kaput.

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I agree that after a few tries, Garuda is a cakewalk, but every mistake you make gets magnified. Also keep in mind that I'm talking about Story Mode Garuda and not HM, and most of the time you might get a single person who knows the fight. Small mistakes in the party can easily lead to the death of either dps or the healer. Things such as the last add summon, the first friction on someone too close to a pillar or the first aerial blast once the tornado has started up. All of these can easily wipe a group due to inexperience regardless of the player's knowledge of the fight.

This coupled with the fact that the Duty Finder has you wait for over 2 hours makes the fight hard to even queue up for since you have to have a good and solid block of time to readily be able to accept the queue. Not to mention connection issues...

i agree it should have some incentives pretty much just like most of the lower level dungeons.

but nah garuda sm is not hard. there are quite a few mechanics, sure, and you will wipe unless you are familiar with all of them, but at least it isnt like titan which is based on luck with landslide.

more impt things to note for her:
1. avoid slip steam
2. do not camp near pillars unless during slip stream
3. do not stand tgt
4. tank limit break during aerial blast
5. watch out for final slipstream during storm.

the finer mechanics will get picked up when e party is tgt. it's a fine and fun fight.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by irvm89

OP has nothing to do with HM. The entire post elaborates on the Story Mode difficulty, the extremely high DF queues when solo due to lack of FC/LS/etc, as well as the lack of incentive to ever run it again after the first time.

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The queue time is one thing i didnt comment on, yes, but are you saying that Garuda story mode is harder than HM? Because if you're not my post is even more valid.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The_Last_Dragoon

This coupled with the fact that the Duty Finder has you wait for over 2 hours

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Yeah this i have sympathy with, as a tank back then i waited a good half an hour i remember, mind you it might have been because off odd playing time late at night, who knows.