Talk:Garuda/@comment-2600:8804:6400:B5:903A:37E5:4C4E:2E3C-20181112141040

I have mixed feelings about her. I think her cast times might be a little too long baseline; she doesn't feel very fluid all of the time.

At the same time I love her concept and playstyle. She seems to be the only balanced "swordmage" frame that gets best results when equally mixing her abilities with her melee combat. Two of her abilities dash her in to the middle of the fray, one of which creates a healing area that can get pretty strong and another of which makes a very strong shield that also charges her nuke and functions as a very powerful execute. Her 4 deals some damage, stuns enemies, and amps all future damage for a bit by letting everything proc bleed. And when the swarm starts getting a little too thick, her 1's projectile component can be used to quickly clear out a pretty respectable area, especially if the enemies are already marked with her 4. Plus it can be charged to quickly amp its damage even further if needed, and doesn't do any damage to Garuda and can thus be thrown at her own feet to clear everything around her. And she even gets an ability that restores a very large chunk, or even all, of her energy to ensure that she's always able to use her skills. Not to mention the insane synergy this has with Quick Thinking and Blood Altar to offset the self-damage. And to add icing to the cake, her passive gives a pretty good bonus to her damage as her health lowers, giving you a bit of an edge when things start getting tough or letting you play a bit riskier and keep your health lower for more power. And her talons make for pretty good melee weapons too (Though why on earth DE didn't give them their own animations and stance is beyond me. Looks kinda silly using the normal claw stance when looking at her in the armory lol)

If only her "casting" abilities didn't feel quite so clunky to use. Smaller delay for registering a hold vs. a tap for her 1, the ability to cancel charging her 1 easily, and a quicker start-up for her 4 would improve her a ton. Her damage and mechanics are already there and work great. She just needs some tuning right now. Course you can still wreck with her anyways.