Garuda and the Duty Finder: Mini-Rant

[Lunavi]

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.

[nekomtl]

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

[ApolloGenX]

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 =-)

[Aurelious]

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.

[Bayman]

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.

[Degru]

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.

[Zetor]

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.

[MXMoondoggie]

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.

[FAVisceglia]

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.

[Kenjinmaru]

2) This fight is extremely difficult

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