The Weapon’s Refrain:
Phase One
Garuda
Debuff Key:
Thermal Low
Slipstream
❖ Dodgeable frontal cone
❖ Locks in direction when cast starts.
❖ Stuns you for a long time if it doesn’t kill you
Wicked Wheel
❖ Dodgeable point blank AoE
❖ When Awakened, Garuda will instantly follow up with a donut AoE called wicked tornado.
❖ Stuns you for a long time if it doesn’t kill you
Mesohigh
❖ A green tether that needs to be picked up by whoever needs to resolve it.
❖ Cleanses any thermal low stacks the player has and deals raidwide damage and a point blank around the tethered player, relative to amount of stacks.
❖ Deals lethal damage to any player that resolves the tether without any thermal low stacks
Mistral Shriek
❖ Raidwide AoE that deals high damage to the party.
Aerial Blast
❖ Raidwide AoE that deals high damage to the party.
Friction
❖ Deals shared stack damage around a random player.
❖ Applies a stack of thermal low to every player struck.
Mistral Song
❖ Line AoE that deals massive damage to the first target and moderate damage to subsequent targets.
❖ Have a tank intercept it as the first-in-line target using a cooldown.
❖ Indicated by a green over-head marker.
❖ Leaves behind a big AoE at the point of interception that must be dodged.
Video Guide
Garuda On Pull
Begin by pulling Garuda to the center of the arena. Shortly after, she will cast Slipstream and mark a random healer for Mistral Song. Make sure to have a tank in between Garuda and the healer. You also have the option of simply using Cover on the healer, if you have a Paladin in your party.
Garuda will follow up with a second Slipstream, followed by a Downburst, and spawn four Satin Plumes, tethering to random DPS; and one Spiny Plume, which will tether to the first person to attack it. Have your tank pick up the Spiny Plume as soon as possible. If left alone the Satin Plumes will explode, inflicting all players with a sleep, meaning they must be killed as soon as possible. Make sure to group up and AoE them down. The Spiny Plume, on the other hand, will periodically cast Cyclone on the tank, dealing significant magic damage and inflicting a stack of Thermal Low. Before killing this Spiny Plume, it is very important that your tank takes two hits of Cyclone in order to gain two stacks of Thermal Low. While you are fighting plumes, Garuda will use Feather Rain. Make sure you listen for her scream, which will indicate when players will have to move to avoid it. Garuda will immediately follow up with a Mistral Shriek.
Cleansing, Thermal Low and Thermal High
Begin by pulling Garuda to the center of the arena. Shortly after, she will cast Slipstream and mark a random healer for Mistral Song. Make sure to have a tank in between Garuda and the healer. You also have the option of simply using Cover on the healer, if you have a Paladin in your party.
Garuda will follow up with a second Slipstream, followed by a Downburst, and spawn four Satin Plumes, tethering to random DPS; and one Spiny Plume, which will tether to the first person to attack it. Have your tank pick up the Spiny Plume as soon as possible. If left alone the Satin Plumes will explode, inflicting all players with a sleep, meaning they must be killed as soon as possible. Make sure to group up and AoE them down. The Spiny Plume, on the other hand, will periodically cast Cyclone on the tank, dealing significant magic damage and inflicting a stack of Thermal Low. Before killing this Spiny Plume, it is very important that your tank takes two hits of Cyclone in order to gain two stacks of Thermal Low. While you are fighting plumes, Garuda will use Feather Rain. Make sure you listen for her scream, which will indicate when players will have to move to avoid it. Garuda will immediately follow up with a Mistral Shriek.
Suparna and Chirada Summoned
Garuda will follow up with an Eye of the Storm and summon Chirada and Suparna (also known as the Sisters), untargettable adds that have similar skills to Garuda. After being summoned they will immediately use Feather Rain (remember to listen for the scream!) and mark a DPS and healer with Mistral Song, jumping to the edges of the arena. Sisters will always jump to two of the four cardinal points of the arena.
Keep Garuda in the center of the arena as you dodge Feather Rain, leaning towards the South-East of the map. The party should stack up South-East (but not at the edge, as Eye of the Storm will be active) to avoid the Wicked Wheel from Garuda, while the tanks intercept Mistrel Song from each Sister. It is recommended to have one tank take the first sister going clockwise starting from north, and the other tank taking the first sister going counter-clockwise starting from northwest.
After the tornadoes resolve drag Garuda back to the middle as she will use another Eye of the Storm. She will then summon another set of four Satin Plumes so burn them quickly as you did in the start of the fight. At the same time, the two sisters will appear in the east and the west sides of the arena and tether random players with Mesohigh dealing heavy magic damage that must be mitigated with at least one Thermal Low stack. Have your tank with two stacks and a DPS with one stack (preferably ranged) take the tethers while the party stacks together defeating Satin plumes and the other tank takes a Downburst. If you have been following the outlined strategy and your last two stack Thermal Low tank takes a tether, these tethers will give Garuda her final Aetherically Charged stack making her "Woken."
Yellow dots indicate the players who will be taking the tethers. Alternatively, if you want your tanks to take these tethers, you can rotate the diagram and have Garuda face east or west, with the other tank taking the other tether. Keep in mind that tethers will do a point-blank AoE around their target that will cleanse Thermal Low stacks, so be careful to not stack together.
As soon as Mesohigh tethers resolve, the sisters will shriek and jump once more, using Feather Rain, followed by Garuda using another Slipstream. Garuda will then follow up with a Wicked Wheel (which will be followed immediately by a Wicked Tornado combo, as she is Woken). Make sure to avoid the wheel first, and then move into melee range as soon as the marker disappears as Wicked Tornado has no cast time. She will follow up with a Woken Downburst, which must be taken by at least both tanks as a split tankbuster. She will then use a final Slipstream before enraging.
At 2:55 after engaging Garuda, she will become untargettable, jump in the air, and use a Feather Rain followed by a lethal Aerial Blast, serving as an enrage. If this phase was done as described, you should be defeating Garuda with four players having one stack of Thermal Low (one tank, one DPS and two healers), of which you will need three in later phases of the Ultima Weapon. Once defeating Woken Garuda, a light puddle will appear under where she was. Make sure your pre-assigned healer, caster, or melee picks up this puddle.
Designed by Lloyd Oxley