About Wuk's strength [Ending spoilers]

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

Yeah, I also figured it was Dynamis being attracted to her sheer desire to prove herself against her peers/siblings, but...

If you interpret the Final Day fight dialogue as the Endsinger confirming our Limit Breaks are just a bunch of Dynamis, then what does it mean for us as WoLs if Wuk Sue was able to LB like 6 times in the span of a single fight?

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Is LBs being based on Dynamis a retcon?
Elidibus uses several limit breaks during his seat of sacrifice trial and as an Ascian he shouldn't be able to control dynamis like that. I could swear before EW LBs were based on aether, weren't they?

(I honestly don't like Dynamis, not gonna lie. It's just too easy to use it as a justification for anything no matter how outlandish because now you can just excuse whatever nonsense event with "oh dw, the character just really really wanted it" and completely circumvent the "magical laws of nature" regarding aether (which gave the latter more or less reasonable limitations and interactions with the world). Substituting/Undermining powers built on "magical laws of physics" with "the ultimate power of just wanting and believing" didn't do the world building any good imo.)

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Originally Posted by NotoriousQX

I think that's a reasonable concern. FFXIV's power scaling has never really made sense though. Characters have always generated threat based on what the story needs them to. Ran'jit appears in ShB and beats the crap out of the WoL AND all of the Scions. He's just some guy from a warrior clan or something.

I don't like it, but I guess Dynamis can be used to fill in the blanks with that sort of thumb.

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Ran'jit isn't just "some guy". He follows the trope of "Fear an old man in a job where men die young". He's a war general in a doomed world that's been fighting sin eaters until very recently. The only flaw in his character is that he didn't die when Thancred beat him.

The more Wuk talks, the stronger she gets.

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Originally Posted by Loggos

Is LBs being based on Dynamis a retcon?
Elidibus uses several limit breaks during his seat of sacrifice trial and as an Ascian he shouldn't be able to control dynamis like that. I could swear before EW LBs were based on aether, weren't they?

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Yes it was aether.
The Encyclopedia Eorzea actually explains the limit breaks of the jobs (every one). It's in the first one, starting from page 219 (yes I have it open beside me right now thats how much I enjoyed the lore).

For example black mage:
Meteor
"Gathering vast quantities of aether from allies, the mage unleashes a gigantic mass of crystallized energie upon the heads of her foes. Those who witness the unmatched destruction of this potent magick liken it to a burning star falling from the heavens."

Was it actually said anywhere that it was Dynamis against Endsinger? I always thought that was because of the prayer shield?

It seemed to me that Elidibus uses Aether for his limit break (he's unsundered and so is bad with Dynamis).

if it was Aether it would make Wuk Lamats feed even more strange.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

Yes it was aether.
The Encyclopedia Eorzea actually explains the limit breaks of the jobs (every one). It's in the first one, starting from page 219 (yes I have it open beside me right now thats how much I enjoyed the lore).

For example black mage:
Meteor
"Gathering vast quantities of aether from allies, the mage unleashes a gigantic mass of crystallized energie upon the heads of her foes. Those who witness the unmatched destruction of this potent magick liken it to a burning star falling from the heavens."

Was it actually said anywhere that it was Dynamis against Endsinger? I always thought that was because of the prayer shield?

It seemed to me that Elidibus uses Aether for his limit break (he's unsundered and so is bad with Dynamis).

if it was Aether it would make Wuk Lamats feed even more strange.

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Yes, Endsinger herself says tank LB was Dynamis.

The only flaw in your thinking is that you seem to be going too far down the path of biological determinism. Nature is certainly one aspect that will dictate the potential of one's combat ability, but nurture is just as significant. If one of my parents was a shopkeeper, but I've been receiving combat training for my entire life, our effectiveness at combat will be markedly different.

That said, I think all of your talk about heritage, etc, distracts from your actual question: why was Wuk Lamat not strong and then suddenly strong? The answer to that question could never be determined by tracing someone's family tree. Something changed at this moment, well after birth, so what was it?

And the answer that we're supposed to come away with after having experienced the conclusion of Endwalker is "dynamis". That the journey Wuk Lamat has taken has resulted in her feeling such a powerful connection to her people that it empowers her.

In a vacuum, it works.

All I'll add is that later we learn that Kabool Ja Ja has a very motivating reason for wanting to pursue his goals. But he doesn't get the same treatment as Wuk Lamat because that would have interfered with the binary story the writer wanted to tell. And in that sense, it smacks of the poor character writing that the rest of Dawntrail suffers from.

The idea I believe was was that because aether normally stifles dynamis, it's when WoL has exhausted their personal aether but still has strong willpower to survive that it can manifest. I.e. Sort of a cutesy lore explanation why Limit Breaks take so long to build up and why it happens in plot moments when we are on our last leg.

So it does explain some uses of Limit Break, but personally I don't think it's a hard set rule literally every instance of Limit Break abilities is dynamis. I mean, Papalymo definitely didn't secretly know how to buff someone's dynamis levels all the way back in 2.X when she boosted "Yda".

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

Yes it was aether.
The Encyclopedia Eorzea actually explains the limit breaks of the jobs (every one). It's in the first one, starting from page 219 (yes I have it open beside me right now thats how much I enjoyed the lore).

For example black mage:
Meteor
"Gathering vast quantities of aether from allies, the mage unleashes a gigantic mass of crystallized energie upon the heads of her foes. Those who witness the unmatched destruction of this potent magick liken it to a burning star falling from the heavens."

Was it actually said anywhere that it was Dynamis against Endsinger? I always thought that was because of the prayer shield?

It seemed to me that Elidibus uses Aether for his limit break (he's unsundered and so is bad with Dynamis).

if it was Aether it would make Wuk Lamats feed even more strange.

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Thank you very much for the clarification! It being aether makes much more sense to me, especially since all the other powers are...also based on aether. Our whole magic? Aether. If I create small fireballs from aether, then why is the big fireball, an expression of my/our team's pinnacle of magical power, suddenly not aether? Gunbreaker bullets? Based on aether (so Ryne needs to recharge them for Thancred), etc. etc.

And yeah, I agree on Elidibus. I thought he had to use aether since Ascians can't make good use of dynamis. And if the old lore explicitly says LBs were based on aether then him using LBs makes sense. It really seems like they retconned this for EW without checking (or caring?) whether it contradicts what they had officially established or published before.

The power of terrible writing knows no bounds.

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Originally Posted by Sayo_

Ran'jit isn't just "some guy". He follows the trope of "Fear an old man in a job where men die young". He's a war general in a doomed world that's been fighting sin eaters until very recently. The only flaw in his character is that he didn't die when Thancred beat him.

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Nah, Ranjit is also stupid and shouldn't have given us a hard time, by that point we've already beaten Shinryu and Omega

His only special trait is that he can punch and kick good and also that he can kill trash mobs (Sin eaters), big deal.