Restrictions:
No items
No Armiger
No magic
No summons
No character switching
No party techniques
No food buffs
No Ragnarok or Vortex weapons
No Magitek Exosuit (lol)
No menu switching
So at the very start I lure her away so that she wont randomly destroy the pillars with her attacks. I use Cerberus because I’m trying to break her wing, but also take a link strike here and there to take her HP down in chunks.
You might have wondered why I don’t take the Cross Chain when she finally falls down. I didn’t forget about it, it’s deliberate. When Garuda has about 75-80% health, she’ll start summoning the plumes and start flying a lot, at 66% health she’ll summon her minions and at 50% she’ll use her ultimate wind attack. This wind attack can do one of three things:
1. If there are less than two pillars left, the fight will end.
2. If her minions are alive, they’ll join in on the attack, making it so strong that it will wipe the rest of my party, even if I dodge it.
3. If she’s just alone, the attack still hurts, but wont be strong enough to kill the bros.
If I had taken the Cross Chain there, it would have instantly pushed her below 50% HP, which would result in her summoning her minions and then instantly doing the ultimate before I can kill them, wiping my whole party. The whole point of breaking her wing was to burst her down from above 75-80% HP to below 66%, skipping her flying phase where I can’t lure her away from the pillars. It is also beneficial to get past this portion of the fight as fast as possible so that there is less time for her to destroy the pillars.
The minions are weak to light and greatswords, so Sarah’s Shortsword’s normal attacks and Hyperion link strikes deal with them pretty quickly.
At the 50% mark, I I-frame through the ultimate with Trident’s warp strike and then the fight is pretty much normal, she can fly freely now, but it’s not as bad because she can no longer destroy pillars. I still need to destroy the plumes, because if left unchecked, she seems to gain a buff to her resistances and damage (this actually happens later in the fight after the second set of minions, but it luckily doesn’t last long).
At 33% HP she summons minions again, but they’re easily dealt with. After this is over with, I break her second wing, because when she reaches about 10-15% HP, her final phase will begin, which is brutal. I burst her as low as possible to make this phase as short as possible. In the final phase she just flies and it’s only a matter of hitting her with Sarah’s and trying not to die.
But did I die? Almost. My last hit lands simultaneously with her killing blow, but since the fight ends there and then, the death didn’t have time to happen. After all, technically Noctis doesn’t die until the window for using a phoenix down has expired. I just didn’t need a phoenix down. I win :D