Quote Originally Posted by fusional View Post
if it wasn't an exploit, and it just boiled down to player ingenuity taking battle content designers by surprise, yoshi would have just commented on how surprised they were by player strategy.

however, what actually happened was yoshi himself acknowledged a design flaw in garuda's AI in calculating HP before using aerial blast. we can prove this two easy ways: first, there's no way to skip astral flow in moogle or ifrit fights. second, we can see examples of garuda's calculation of remaining HP influencing battle mechanics both in pushing her down fast enough that she skips second plumes phase and goes straight to the third, and in pushing her down fast enough that she skips phase 2 after aerial blast. perhaps you haven't experienced the latter since you're blm burning it

the fact that being successful with blm burn strategy requires working around her HP calculation check for 2nd plumes so that you can skip an obviously required element of the fight (aerial blast) is exploitative, no matter how you slice it.

i'm pretty sure that they have never in the history of this game hotfixed content just to make it more difficult. considering how many casual players play ffxiv, doing something like that would cause a shitstorm.

contagion bug @ ifrit? exploit. hotfixed.
DoL wrist flick stunlock @ ifrit? exploit. hotfixed.
die/reraise hate reset strat @ moogle? exploit. hotfixed.

and now, there's this. so.
There is no set amount of plumes in Phase 1 just so you know. Not sure if they will spawn indefinitely as long as her HP is above 60%~ but more can spawn. I figured since you guys kill it enough you'd notice that the "third plume set" (her Aerial Blast set) only happens when she's below 60%. It is the "infernal nails" of this fight and it's the part of the fight that isn't working as intended.

My point earlier was that phase skipping is the BLM zerg but toned down. Get her to 40% or less during the last plume set and she'll skip Phase 2 since 40% is the third phase trigger (what you guys do). Push the DPS further and you just kill her outright (what BLM zerg does). If she does have an auto Aerial Blast at a certain % like Ifrit's Hellfire then that's clearly what's not working. And the moogle fight's Memento functions completely different so it's not an equal comparison. The entire first half of that fight is "infernal nails". But you are right, the devs didn't mean for us to skip Aerial Blast but I'm sure phase skipping falls in the same category.

@TheReal22Doppleganger: Moogle was cheap. Got awarded for sucking. Nuff said about that. I am in agreement with you in regards to why they are patching it, to make the fight function properly.