Garuda's Difficulty

[Churchill]

Most good players read these boards for laughs, I can't think of any reason to try and post something constructive here unless asked directly or on job forums.

[Vanguard319]

Well are you getting to AB in under 5 mins? I ask b/c Garuda might be the one taking out your stacks...Plus, you deal with more 'waves' of plumes the longer the first stage lasts.

When we had trouble with this we changed our strat:

1. We now use 3 War's/1 Bard. They take plumes out fast and furious BUT also can keep the DD up on Garuda. (3/blms 1whm round out the rest of the group).

2. The 2 War/ 2Brd setup works as well, BUT the bards are VERY busy due to the nature of needing to keep songs up, the 'recast' timer on light shot and Rain of Death either requiring a combo (on a long timer for this battle) or 3000TP. War's need TP too for Steel Cyclone, BUT they can easily get that tp by bashing on Garuda between plume pops...which helps the BLM's hit that critical 40% HP before Astral Flow to skip phase 2btw.

3. A Bard with Battle Voice is SUPER helpful...not sure if you have a bard in the group or not.

4. Our group currently has a mix of gears ranging from single-triple melds. While in just about every other battle, I've been our Main Healer, in this one I end up being Bard and more recently BLM. My BLM with modest single meld gears rides red the majority of the battle...and We ARE meeting the DPS check to hit phase 2 now. So single melds are plausible, but they need to be the correct single melds for this fight...and you need to eat food etc.

Like I said earlier, we got past the hard stuff in the battle, now it's just a wee bit more practice and timing and we'll get our clear...I have no doubt on this. And when we get it, unlike the 'BLM burn'...which by the way wasn't exactly an 'easy button' either, we'll be able to teach other people in the ls who are ready for it...even if they are DRG or PLD...which is what is most important to me. Instead of saying 'BLM only'

Our last run got Garuda down to 50% in ~5 minutes, problem that time was that we lost a war mid way through to D/C, and were wiped for 8k.

[Noir]

If you think there isn't people with skill joining pick ups, you are lieing to yourself.

I never said there isn't. I said that everyone need to know how to play. If you get a pick up with 8 knowing, go play the mega millions. You own it.

I did Garuda a lot with pick ups. Before blm and after.

Before. Not enough dps. Ppl gear sucked and couldn't dmg it fast.

After, one archer suck, ppl can't handle plumes, whm suck, can't heal tank, archers can't buff, ppl getting hit by everything, can't hide behind pillar and get hit, some tards running and attacking Garuda BEFORE tank gets agro, which makes you /disband right away. That's what you get doing pick up groups. Same shit with hamlet. Can't be done without skills and coordination, and gear (don't apply for hamlet).

[Noir]

Decent gear is NOT needed! " You need to know how to play." Yep that's it.

If your blm can't dmg Garuda hard enough you will get owned by phase after af. So yes, you need gear. Unless you get luck. If you dmg is high, you can skip phases and kill Garuda with clones alive the second time they show up.

[Rau]

If your blm can't dmg Garuda hard enough you will get owned by phase after af. So yes, you need gear. Unless you get luck. If you dmg is high, you can skip phases and kill Garuda with clones alive the second time they show up.

This. Very few parties can last against two clones phases. After astral flow, the main thing is to keep high, consistent damage up so she can't and pray she doesn't use her clones.

[Zezlar]

Can't wait for the 1st Ifrit Extreme is too hard thread.

[DarthTaru]

The progression of threads like these is rather frustrating; they outline a paradox. Those with enough free time to acquire the resources to obtain the most expensive equipment come to the forums and whine that "this game is easy mode," and that they want something harder - then they exploit their way to 7/7 and never go back, leaving the average community as the sole patrons of the difficult fight they asked for. It just reeks of hypocrisy and entitlement.

Few problems with this. First of all, free time does not equal awesome gear. There's plenty of people who /s spam in Ul'dah from dawn 'till dusk and don't have anything and plenty of people who work 50 hours a week and have capped gil and quad melds. Unless you're buying gil, most people who are rich are rich because they're intelligent and have an eye for the wards and the economy and continuously strike while the iron is hot. So smart people = lots of gil = better gear.
Doesn't hurt that many of them are also crafters and have played the game since launch.

Secondly, the best players on every server could beat Garuda with our without the BLM burn. Most of the top NA and JP linkshells were able to down Garuda before we released the BLM burn strat and these people aren't people who would be doing the content with random PUGs anyway so the Ul'dah masses didn't miss out on anything. The only thing the BLM burn video did was allow far more bad players to get Garuda weapons than otherwise would of been possible and -regretfully- drastically decrease Garuda's lifespan as prime time content. (Ifrit Extreme feels like SE's revenge fight FYI)

Garuda is now back as part of the relic quest (which is by far the most difficult questline in the game) and so I wouldn't expect any nerf. In fact, i'd say it's completely out of the question.

[Leo_Hart]

Can't wait for the 1st Ifrit Extreme is too hard thread.

Those ppl reach these stage wont whine like OP.

P.S. JP PT only use 2 BARDs to clear plume, just FYI.

[DarthTaru]

Ifrit Extreme makes Garuda look like something from hellokittyonline.
Very difficult fight. A lot can go wrong, need to master many facets of it and execute perfectly in every situation.
Today was first day our 8 could really go hard on it and I was hoping we would have it behind us by tonight but I don't think that's going to happen just yet

[Estellios]

My LS hasn't beaten Garuda yet, but when we were working on her we got really good at getting rid of plumes, we were able to get Aerial blast to I believe around 1500 or so. We don't have any Darklight, quite a few were in mostly/full AF, and a few of us had crafted, non-primal weapons. Steel Cyclone doesn't solve all your problems so it helps to have decent DRGs, BRDs, or WARs (using Whirlwind instead of exclusively SC) as they can get rid of Plumes quite easily (just make sure WARs and DRGs are ONLY doing the AOE on plumes, all combo starters should be done on Garuda and in most cases they need to go back to her immediately after AOE'ing on the plumes). Battle Voice right before Aerial Blast can give you some breathing room (and should be done for Balld anyway), and since Enmity seems to be the limiting factor on BLM in the fight you may be able to have someone go THM and AOE Sanguine Rite for even more damage reduction, but if you get enough practice in it won't be necessary. MNK can also be used instead of/alongside BLM as Fists of Fire does good damage against Garuda and allows them to damage Chirada, just make sure they never bother dealing with plumes.

Our LS has better gear now and we are going to try tackling her again, we are focusing on getting Hamlet Seals atm though.

The only issue major issue I have really is the 2nd Phase's Teleport + AOE thing (where she will either appear near the tank or on the edges of the arena). Has anyone noticed if there is a pattern to it at all? She usually appears at the tank at weird angle and the shriek from that position seems to come out a lot faster than an edge position coupled with the fact that there's no definite direction to run.