Goddess Sophia Lore posted.

I wouldn't be so hasty to assign elemental alignments to the warring triad. Importantly, the other primals/eikons of that era (Bahamut, Odin) didn't have notable alignments.

Sephirot's use of brown and green is easily and more obviously attributable to roots and foliage in its tree-like stylisation. It's a strong theme, but I'd be hesitant to presume specific elements from it, even though the features of nature lend themselves well to such an exercise.

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Originally Posted by Catapult

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Sephirot's attacks are designed around Earth and Wind. If the usage of the green and brown was ONLY meant to be a representation of a tree-like stylization and not wind and earth element then surely Square enix would not have designed attacks that come in a wind and earth elemental fashion. Yesod are earth pillars, the Add before the arm swipe consists of wind, Malkut is a breath of wind, literally. To me that's indication enough of his elements actually.

If the design of the attacks shouldn't be taken into consideration then I'd doubt what element Bismarck belongs to. Or more extreme, what is Ramuh then?

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Originally Posted by Cherub

Sephirot's attacks are designed around Earth and Wind. If the usage of the green and brown was ONLY meant to be a representation of a tree-like stylization and not wind and earth element then surely Square enix would not have designed attacks that come in a wind and earth elemental fashion. Yesod are earth pillars, the Add before the arm swipe consists of wind, Malkut is a breath of wind, literally. The debuffs he gives in the extreme version are literally called "Force against Earth/Wind". To me that's indication enough of his elements actually.

If the design of the attacks shouldn't be taken into consideration then I'd doubt what element Bismarck belongs to. Or more extreme, what is Ramuh then?

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Ehh, your last bit there doesn't really follow. Ramuh, regardless of how you view him, is obviously lightning. 90% of his attacks are lightning based. The designs of Bismark's attacks show the he controls the weather, using lightning, water, and wind, yet is specifically stated to be dual-aspected in water and wind. Bahamut uses Megaflare, but if we follow from previous games it is not fire-aspected, but is non-elemental. However! He also uses Tornado and Earth Shakers. He also has those towers that burst when not stepped on. So what element is he?

With regards to your Sephirot statement, if I recall, the two orbs he uses are Spirit and Life, right? Are those aspected to earth and wind, even though one is orange and not brown? I'm not saying that we can't use enemy attack colors or patterns to determine elements, but we also can't jump to conclusions based on color alone.

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Originally Posted by Mysteltain

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I did not say you should decide which element a primal is aspected to based on colors alone. Color itself is an extremely stupid argument, if you only look at color, not including the whole design of the attack.
I also don't get how my example isn't clear. You say 90% of his attacks are lightning based but that is exactly what we decide to ignore in this case. With this, the 90% becomes 0% because we chose to ignore it.

Now, Catapult did not state he thinks that Sephirot isn't wind/earth so I might have been jumping the gun, in fact the whole argument started on the whole Sophia aetheric flames thing. However he did make it sound like Sephirot is not wind and earth because the colors should not be just associated to an element, to which I agree. But in the case of Sephirot, the color AND the design of the attacks, used in the fight, -both- are indication enough as to which elements he is aspected to. It's as if he completely ignored the fact that there clearly were wind and earth based attacks in the sephirot fight and only took into consideration the colors which are brown/orange and green. (But strictly speaking, he did not say that. He's free to think whatever but my response stands.)

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Originally Posted by Cherub

The debuffs he gives in the extreme version are literally called "Force against Earth/Wind".

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Eh, this is wrong. The debuffs are "Force against Magic" and "Force against Might" respectively.

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Originally Posted by Rocl

Eh, this is wrong. The debuffs are "Force against Magic" and "Force against Might" respectively.

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My bad. Thanks for the correction.

Heavensward Primal's are dually aspected. The Triad may be as well, or Triple. ;0

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Originally Posted by Cherub

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My apologies then, I misunderstood your original intent. However, if we cannot rely on design or color, then we are essentially left with the attack name. Once again, using Ramuh as an example, we see that almost all his attacks are lightning themed, and thus we can safely assume his elemental affiliation. We can apply the same test to all of the single-aspect primals and arrive at the same result. The dual aspect primals tend to use less specific names, leaning more towards thematic names, such as Slaughter or Cetacean Rage, and that makes them a bit more difficult to determine. Moving towards the Warring Triad and Odin, it's near imposible due to the use of ancient Scandinavian (fun fact: a few of Odin's attacks are actually just different names for Odin), Arabic, and whatever Sophia's names will be (my bet's on Greek).

Of course, I have my own theory that Eikons are the embodiments of not elements but of universal concepts (life, death, order, chaos, etc), so I'm pretty hard-lined against considering the Warring Triad being of any elemental aspect(s) in general. Saying that does not preclude them from using elementally based attacks, but simply that they are not composed specifically of a given set of elements.

Is there such thing as unaspected aether?

Since primals/eikons are beings of pure aether, and aether usually has an elemental alignment, so in theory every primal must have an elemental alignment of some sort.

I seem to remember though that here are some items which have umbral or astral alignments (umbral rock, astral moraine etc) so someone like Goddess could have an astral alignment instead of one or two elements (she could be aligned with all elements or none of them). Odin and bahamut could be umbral.

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Originally Posted by Griffey

Is there such thing as unaspected aether?

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Yes. It's actually considered purer than aspected aether, as the imbalance is what gives aether an elemental charge; that's why an over-charge essentially renders a crystal radioactive. In Version 1.0, the beast tribes actually preferred to work with unaspected crystals during a summoning ritual, as they were thought to be purer and thus better suited as offerings to the gods.

We've seen primals of one element, two adjacent elements, and perhaps it would be possible to have primals of Astral (Wind / Lightning \ Fire) and Umbral (Water \ Ice / Earth) elemental balances. Theoretically you could imbalance aether to any spot on the continuum that didn't cancel itself out. For instance, trying to be equal parts Ice and Lightning probably just leaves you back in the neutral gray (but this might not necessarily be true).

The big question is if a primal need be defined by an elemental aspect at all, or if its attacks manifest as elementally aspected because aether requires that charge to affect reality in that specific way. An unaspected entity might use wind-aspected attacks because it's the only way to affect the movement of air, for example.

I mean ... the player seems to be unaspected, yet is capable of tipping their aspect. (Summoner and Black Mage especially.)