SE keeps kicking themselves in the ass every time they put in these ridiculous conditions on beating bosses. First phase, not so bad, you keep the plumes off the pillars before she Astral Flows.
Second phase however is so ridiculous that all people think about are stacking BLM's so they don't even have to deal with it. SE, when your players are trying to find their way out of a phase instead of taking the challenge, you have done something wrong here. Her attacks are quick and the server load times screw things up also. You need to make a fight where it caters to your current servers, once again, your new fight does not.
I understand phase 2 should be hectic, but an instant move if I am happened to not be behind her knocks me back for enough damage to kill me. I call this unfair simply. You can say I am whining about this, but this just plain sucks. If anything, all that ability should do is decrease the damage on it dramatically and have it knock people who does not have highest hate back. This would make it so the tank is on his own for a small while and give Garuda a single target damage increase. Not only would this be fair in my opinion, but also an incentive to bring PLD in so he can heal himself.
The clones, this is another ridiculous one. Why do we only have one minute to kill both of them? Isn't it bad enough we have to deal with them to begin with? Along with the wind portals you place on the floor? Not only that, why can't mages damage the plumes? Why don't you have it where they are resistant to fire, but not thunder. I mean they are wind elementals, it would be understandable if they were resistant to fire. It would make BLM's a part of the group taking down plumes.
So SE, when people have to deal with ridiculous conditions you give them in a fight, what makes you think that people will not stack in this fight? You have made conditions so severe that people rather take it down as soon as possible instead of being efficient and safely/slowly killing her. It should be harder to do a speed run than a safe/slow run.
I'm sorry SE, but this third primal shows you cannot create proper balance, and all you do is worry me on how content will come in 2.0. Instead of making ridiculous conditions on beating them, why don't you make a strategy that is fair and difficult at the same time. If you can mix those together, people would find less incentive to stack themselves and not follow what other people are doing. You can reply back and say "The fight can be done with a balanced setup!", yes true, but why deal with the crap when you have geared BLM's that can take it down in around 3 minutes. People would not stack like this in the first place if you actually made the conditions of the fight not so frustrating.
I don't believe you will ever find balance with your methods. All you do to balance is gimp one job to the point no one wants them. You need to go back to the drawing board and take lessons from other MMO's on how to make a boss fight, because while the environment and music is great on Garuda, that is about as far as I can say about it.
Poor job on this one SE, I was expecting better, but shame on me apparently. Some may disagree with what I said above, but that is simply how I feel about it.