Playing as healer, from Australia, Garuda is near impossible

[Castillan]

Servers are in Montreal, almost at the antipodean point to where I live. So many people complaining of lag. I end up burning through all my mana most times before we even get past the first wave. I've tried this fight like 35 times now, all with no success.

People say it's easy. Yeah, easy if you live near the server farm. Easy if you are lucky enough to get a party that doesn't all stand in the blast zones making the healer work overtime. Easy, if you don't get parties who all blame the healer 'cos they died.

Seriously, this fight is about to make me walk away from the game.

[ntall1]

It is a pretty easy fight... if conditions are ideal. For me the servers are just crazy laggy in general. If I tried doing Garuda before 4pm my time I would be in the exact same boat as you. After 4pm tho everything seems fine.

[Castillan]

I'm sure people like to say "it's easy" as some form of troll. If something is "easy" then people don't fail it, all the time, and complain about it, all the time.

[Sirtimid]

As someone who also heals from Australia I can vouch that the fight is easy. It's essentially a dps check, so if you're doing your job and not getting hit, than the problem is the dps. Alternatively have someone experienced call the attacks and/or follow the mob when they proceed to hide.

[Pence]

No problem on Garuda here, also from Australia. If 'lag' is making Garuda hard, than you better either have 800k for Titan or stick to Ifrit =/ Blunt but realistic.

[Castillan]

My fights go like this:

Tank grabs aggro
I start to heal them
Garuda aggros on me
I kite and self-heal, and use Shroud of Saints to break aggro
By now, party is all almost dead
I heal them all back
Garuda disappears
One person dies in the blast
I raise them, someone else dies
I raise them, I'm out of mana

Rinse and repeat the above endlessly, at various stages of progression

At the end of the day, always getting aggro, always out of mana, people always dying

It's retarded

[Calyanare]

My fights go like this:

Tank grabs aggro
I start to heal them
Garuda aggros on me

I'm not in Australia, but this is one of two things. Either the tank is not building enmity quickly enough, or you're using too strong a heal (Regen, Cure II) right off the bat (a possible third option might be that you outgear the tank by a large margin). If they're DF groups, my money is on the tank being bad.

[Castillan]

I'm not in Australia, but this is one of two things. Either the tank is not building enmity quickly enough, or you're using too strong a heal (Regen, Cure II) right off the bat (a possible third option might be that you outgear the tank by a large margin). If they're DF groups, my money is on the tank being bad.

I don't know what to do differently. Tanks have 3500hp or so. Within 10 secs, they're down to 1000hp, and that's starting with Stoneskin on them. Have to lob off 2 x Cure II's, and then a regen to try to conserve mana, and then the aggro is on me.

My groups are always pugs. I ask in my guild, and no one wants to go. They all say "it's easy", but not one of them actually balls up to come to help, leading me to think that it's all bluster.

[Ryuuji]

try the WTFast free month trial and see if it works for you. VPN services are your friend until SE deals with their server woes. in terms of threat managment you need to trust your 2nd healer. you have to remember that you are in an 8 man party and healing should be somewhat even ideally.. else obviously the other healer is not healing enough.. or you are overhealing your own share. with a comptent partner regen + cure Is are enough.. IIs are only needed for spike damage... not standard HP upkeep. If that's not the case you or the tank or both are just undergeared for the fight. You also should be utilizing your shroud of saints like an aetherflow on ARN... ie. use it at ~70% to prevent the snowball effect on your MP while dropping hate at the same time..

So stop being all hero about your healing and l2threatmanage.. yell at your other healer to pull his weight.. if BOTH healers are riding the tanks hate then it is most likely a tank issue... but it seems you are grabbing everything.. it is a healer issue on either your side or the others.. i'm not there when you fight so /shrug.

[Castillan]

Finally got through it, after like 15 tries, and dying 5-10x per try.

My tips that I learned:

1) Get a tank that can hold aggro through healer's heals
2) As White Mage, use shroud of Saints to break aggro, and regen mana, when needed
3) have dps stand on top of healer when possible. Yeah, may get hit as a group, but nothing that Medica coupled with Divine Seal, won't heal in one burst.
4) Make sure tank faces Garuda away from team (and away from pillars)
5) When feathers come, drop a regen on each of the dps, and then leave them be, and continue to focus on keeping tank up
6) Make sure tank uses Limit Break when Garuda calls for Reckoning
7) After Reckoning, as healer, stand behind Garuda (between tank and dps) and just spam Medica or Cure III on self, to heal whole party

The above is all contingent on tank doing their job well and holding aggro and keeping Garuda facing away from party (something which wasn't there in most of my failed runs), and the dps dealing with the feathers quickly and getting back into position to receive healing, as having to chase them around the pillars to keep them in line of sight to keep them alive wastes time and risks the tank dying.

Despite dying 5x on the successful run, including having to raise someone mid-fight on the final successful sequence, one of the guys walked out saying "It's easy", which was incidentally the person who died.

Which to my mind, just confirmed what I always suspected. People who say "It's easy" are just lucky enough to get into a good team with a good tank and a good healer that's doing their jobs and which have worked out all the tricks, and despite dying many times, still walk away flippantly saying "It's easy".

That's the difference here. When people die many times in a try before achieving success, it's "not easy" in my mind.