We're going to make the game a bit more tolerable for melee DPS

[CitizenKing]

Cue Garuda EX and wicked wheel.

What the hell is Yoshi and his crew smoking?

Been to this fight plenty on my Black Mage and its simple and easy. Whoop, had to sidestep a friction. Jump to my Dragoon and suddenly I'm putting in three times the effort I did on my Black Mage.

Oh, you figured out that Friction and Downburst are followed by the attack that instantly kills you? Great, we're gonna switch that up in the next phase. Also hope you're lucky with the timing on these aoe's so you can actually get out of range. Wait, you wanted to DPS? Why on earth would you play a melee DPS if you wanted to DPS?


Seriously, this is completely unacceptable. They messed around with the numbers, but the problem between ranged and melee DPS is not their number output. Its the mechanics they're expected to deal with during fights.

[Rochetm]

I think ifrit ex is even worse.

[IONIC]

You are complaining because difficulty is high?

[Delorean]

You are complaining because difficulty is high?

More like because the difficulty of playing ranged is not usually equal to the difficulty of playing melee.

Sometimes I have to ask myself why I even play a melee class. But then I remember that I am a masochist.

Stacking melee is generally a bad idea in any MMO while stacking ranged is something that trivializes a lot of mechanics in an encounter and just goes unpunished.

[NeonC]

I think ifrit ex is even worse.

??? Ifrit is stupid easy for all dps. Garuda is easy for melee too if you can dodge WW. Titan is the same for everyone.

[Ryuko]

It's not the fight -- it's how people are running it. 'Most' groups use the strategy of killing Chirada and then killing Suparna in tornado/spiny phase. This is easy for ranged... The 2x Wicked Wheels don't matter. But... for melee... it's a problem. So, when I bring in a melee to do Garuda Ex, I use the following strategy: all ranged kill Suparna first while the melee starts on Chirada. When Suparna dies, all ranged switch to Chirada, who should be at about half HP. The melee never has to move during this phase until after the sisters are dead. With most groups that don't have super high dps, you only get a few 'short' seconds to dps Garuda before she jumps, so if a melee is having trouble running across the tornadoes after the sisters are dead... it's not too big of a deal if they wait. Anyway, the melee LB3 to 'end' the fight is pretty sweet... especially because using the mage LB3 is VERY risky (can't tell you how many times I've seen casters accidentally kill the spiny and NOT Garuda because they use it 'too soon').

But... on another note... I sort of wish SE would introduce more fights that require ranged to move into the melee, rather than melee running away to the ranged. One fight that comes to mind is Hydra -- "Fear" always makes everyone run to the mob. Perhaps when more 'dragon' mobs are introduced, ranged will need to move toward where the melee are.

Anyway... tanks need to dodge a lot of stuff within melee range, so it's not impossible for melee to dodge.. just a bit more challenging.

[Vodomir]

It all depends on the strat you are using. There are ways that are melee friendly/failproof. MY FC does the following:

- MT grabs Garuda and Suprana
- OT grabs Chirada and Spiny
- all DPS kills Chirada first, one of your DPS prepares Spiny to about 20% in the meantime
- when Chirada is down, MT provokes Spiny and OT provokes Suprana, so she comes to the melee DPS
- all DPS kills Suprana
- DPS Garuda for the remainder of the phase
- kill Spiny

Melees don't have to deal with Whicked Wheel at all.

[MomoOG]

I dunno why people keep saying Ifrit is hard for melee?

[-d-ky]

our way of doing garuda ex with 3 melees

mt 11 garuda; ot 2 surpana; dps 7 chirada; 1 healer 5 , 1 healer 7
dps down chirada as soon as possible before garuda and surpana swap(if they swapped before chirada is downed, use all you cds to burn down chirada), melee moves to 11 where surpana is now at, and the rest of the fight is pretty predictable
fyi, downburst dmg is share, there are two ways to tackle it :

-all dps stack together, move away during splitscream
-to maximize the dps, i normally will tank it as a blackmage, dps will atk at the rear and back, at a certain time, one of the dps's will be marked(healer sometimes), everyone stacks with the marked guy and continues to dps

[Marcusow86]

My group does it this way:-

1. MT Grabs Garuda + Suprana while OT grab Chirada + Spiny

2. At 2 stack, OT provoke Suprana from MT While MT grabs Spiny.

3. From the start till the end, melee DPS will only be at OT's loc and significantly reducing the risk of eating dirt.

Of course, if you want to do this, in the middle Spiny phase, the OT have to grab the spiny immediately even when spiny went to MT. This will ensure provoke CD is ready for the sister phase.