Garuda (Final Fantasy XIV)

Garuda is fought as a boss in Final Fantasy XIV, as part of the quests In for Garuda's Wakening and Taming the Tempest. The first fight is balanced towards level 40 characters, while the second one is for level 50s.

Strategy (hyper)
It is advisable to have as much materia melded gear as possible, and be particularly geared towards maximizing damage. The party composition has to include a healthy distribution between physical and magic damage, due to Chirada and Suprana's resistances.

During the beginning of the fight, Garuda only uses physical attacks; use this period to position all ranged attackers near one of the four stone pillars in the arena, and Garuda near one of the corners.

After some time, Garuda will randomly teleport to a point in the arena and cast a powerful conal AoE move, Mistral Song. This ability can deal 2.000+ damage, but can be avoided by hiding behind one of the pillars. Once her HP is down to 80%, she will cast Plumage to summon four "Razor Plumes", an ability that will be used every minute after this point.

The Razor Plumes are small enemies that will target the stone pillars in the arena, and must be killed as fast as possible; they take very low damage from spells, so it's advisable to quickly use weaponskills such as Steel Cyclone or Aura Pulse (it should be noted that no elemental fist ability should be activated, or the damage will be low). Protecting the stone pillars is extremely important, since their height determines the damage of Aerial Blast.

Once Garuda's HP reaches roughly 30%, or she has used plumage a certain number of times, she will use her strongest ability, Aerial Blast. The spell can easily deal 3000+ damage and has the potential to instantly end the fight (dealing 9999 damage) if there are not stone pillars left in the arena; Aerial Blast will destroy all remaining pillars regardless of their size.

After Aerial Blast, her behaviour changes; Razor Plumes will now attack the players, whirlwinds will appear all over the arena, and the message "Garuda summons the -cardinal direction- winds" will appear every once in a while. This is a hint telling the players where she will teleport for Mistral Song / Shriek, and also repositions the winds on the arena; these winds will randomly deal damage to players standing on them.

During this stage, survival is the main focus. Players should gather together to make it easier to get heals, and move as a group whenever the winds change direction, to avoid the whirlwinds damage and Mistral Song. This forum thread has useful images that can help with positioning. .

After dealing enough damage in this phase, Garuda will summon Suprana and Chirada to the battlefield; they are clones of her in both appearance and abilities, and must be killed in under 45 seconds or else the trio will teleport together and cast 3 Mistral Shrieks at once, making it extremely hard to avoid the damage.

This is the last change in the fight, and as long as the group stays together and manages to avoid Garuda's strongest attacks, the wind primal should not last long.