Extreme Garuda MELEE Woes

[RhaesDaenys]

Yeah i know its rough for melee. Tried making your own party?

Tried. People accept the invite. I've gotten the response, "Do you have a ranged class to play?" and "Sorry, can't do this with melee" and they leave. It is honestly truly insane that SE decided to make a patch that 'helps' melee do better in fights and say they don't make fights that make it overly difficult for melee, then pull a stunt like 5k-6k damage AOEs in melee range.

[Empressia]

u gotta be kidding me, that garuda ex is so damn easy done by melees!

[Atreides]

Garuda ex is a joke for melees, Ifrit ex on the other hand is really annoying for melees. >_>;

[MidBoss]

Garuda ex is a joke for melees, Ifrit ex on the other hand is really annoying for melees. >_>;

I'd say it's annoying for the healers, if they're worth their salt they position around you, not the other way around.

u gotta be kidding me, that garuda ex is so damn easy done by melees!

It really is. Kill Chirada first, if your group is fast wait till Garuda Wicked Wheels to jump/dash in. Burn as normal, gtfo after Suparna casts friction. Collect Loot. Bonus points if you're geared and can buff up to eat the wheel.

[Shneibel]

It really is. Kill Chirada first, if your group is fast wait till Garuda Wicked Wheels to jump/dash in. Burn as normal, gtfo after Suparna casts friction. Collect Loot. Bonus points if you're geared and can buff up to eat the wheel.

inb4 ppl begin to only kill chirada first for melee group. Our group kill surpana first and our DRG melee have no problem with dodge the WW

[Sygmaelle]

Garuda ex is a joke for melees, Ifrit ex on the other hand is really annoying for melees. >_>;

I still can't understand the timing for Whicked wheel on garuda EX in the tornado phase, while on Ifrit EX its really hard to do a single mistake as a melee ~ ~

[Ri_ri]

I still can't understand the timing for Whicked wheel on garuda EX in the tornado phase, while on Ifrit EX its really hard to do a single mistake as a melee ~ ~

Seems to be affected by their health. After a certain time passed, they start Friction, and at a certain % of health, Downburst and Wicked Wheel. So if you bring the health of one of them low while the Friction is casting, Suparna will cancel and go straight to Wicked Wheel, same with Chirada and her Downburst....

That's what I think. I noticed that the "Friction canceling" happens more frequently in farm groups focusing on one harpy.

[o3o]

Its just people just see melee as unsafe and want to completely eliminate the risk.
kinda sucks how melee get one shot by WW even though its not to hard to dodge.

[Royze]

SE have never been good at balancing ranged and casting dps with melee dps.

In the early to mid years of XI, Rangers and BLMs were the only DPS classes that were considered worthy of spots in Alliances.
Rather than addressing the flaws with Melee DPS such as DRGs, MNKs, DRKs and sometimes WARs, SE's first thought was to nerf Ranged DPS and establish diminishing returns for same elemental magic.

Swoosh SE. The problem was that Melee DPS were on the front lines and taking relatively more DMG than their ranged counterparts, which taxed the MP and stress levels of the healers, (RDMs and WHMs). It was seen as an annoyance and wasn't in fact about dmg output, but more about less headache for the healers.
EDIT:
While the situation in XI eventually reversed itself(BLMs and RNGs becoming rather inferior to pure melee dps such as WARs/DRKs/SAMs/MNKs and even THFs), SE again proved itself incapable of addressing the issue, where the final solution was to boost melee dps so far above ranged and casters' dps, that alliances and parties favored them now. Thus leaving Rangers and BLMs out in the cold on 90% of the content. Those who remember the horror stories of BLMs soloing their exp or were one of them,will be able to relate.

I fear we will now have a similar situation in XV, more than a decade later.
Parties and Alliances will always favor the easiest route to a goal; the path of least resistance.
While SMNs, BLMs and BRDs require the least amount of upkeep, they are also on par with melee dps in terms of dmg output.

SE have already increased Melee DPS (DRG and MNK in 2.1) in an attempt to address this issue. But again, they failed to understand what the core issue was. Melee will always have to dodge more than ranged/caster dps, and their dps AND sustainability will be effected by such.
WHMs and Healers tend to get rather lazy and passive and prefer a class that requires less healing from them. That's just how healing becomes in an MMO after doing it for hours on end, day after day, for months.

There are several solutions to this problem. 1 is make being on the front lines near a tank less of an issue. You could do this by giving tanks more abilities or passive traits/auras that grant all surrounding members of the PT a increased defense % or a flat -damage taken%.

Suddenly the playing field is even. This is just one possible solution. You wouldn't want to give the Melee DPS their own DMG reduction abilities or traits, because then you would render tanks obsolete. (2008sh-2012 Tanks were worthless in XI. DPS classes became the tanks. SE gave up and never really tried to fix their own mechanics again)

There are also several ways to make healing a fun job/role. SE just need to think outside the box. What if WHM and SCHs were rewarded for timely heals by their healing causing an additional effect on the enemy? WHMs could compete for DPS numbers and have something to work towards. You wouldn't want it to be their main utility, but just enough to keep them motivated to heal and heal well.

[Duelle]

do u know if you stack as in stack with tanks, it reduce the damage of wicked wheel?

You mean damage is split between the number of targets struck? Like Thane Korth'azz's meteor or our own sabotender's 500 needles? Interesting...

It was seen as an annoyance and wasn't in fact about dmg output, but more about less headache for the healers.

This is also why the playerbase greatly favored Utsusemi, as MP was a rare commodity and not having to spend it curing DPS was just a benefot for the whole alliance.

I fear we will now have a similar situation in XV, more than a decade later.
Parties and Alliances will always favor the easiest route to a goal; the path of least resistance.

While SMNs, BLMs and BRDs require the least amount of upkeep, they are also on par with melee dps in terms of dmg output.

On your first paragraph, considering the lead battle designer is the same guy that did it in FFXI, are you that surprised at history repeating itself? >.>

Single-boss focus is in part responsible for the damage. One of the ways multiple classes in a group comp became acceptable in WoW was due to bosses having different mechanics within the same instance. Using Ulduar as an example, you had an encounter where classes with positional requirements were penalized while everyone had to kite random lazers (Kologarn), followed by a boss that sort of favored melee due to everyone having to stack on the tank (Auriaya), followed by a boss that penalized melee in one phase and penalized ranged in another (Mimiron), followed by a boss where you needed both melee and ranged to do the job (Freya), a boss that penalized spellcasters (Vezzax) and so on. You couldn't pull any of this "ranged only" BS because you needed people of the multiple roles and sub-roles in order to be able to down bosses and clear the raid. If The Howling Eye was a raid with 5 bosses, 4 boss-level Ixxal before getting to Garuda, and each encounter favored ranged, melee, casters, physical DPS and so on per boss, you would be encouraged to bring a balanced comp. The only snag is that such design would NOT favor duty finder.

WHMs and Healers tend to get rather lazy and passive and prefer a class that requires less healing from them. That's just how healing becomes in an MMO after doing it for hours on end, day after day, for months.

This is a mentality carried over from FFXI. Healers never bitched about healing targets that were not worthy of them spending mana to do so in WoW, for example.

You could do this by giving tanks more abilities or passive traits/auras that grant all surrounding members of the PT a increased defense % or a flat -damage taken%.

This is not needed. What's needed is for boss design to not favor ranged-only and to include variety. Primal fights are admittedly screwed because they are single-boss raids and duty finder kind of puts a wrench on encouraging balanced comps.