Why is Light and Dark damage so rare?

Holy deals unaspected damage, Shadow Flare, Bio, Miasma deal unaspected damage. Clemency is an unaspected heal, compared to Cure, Physick and Benefic which are Wind based. Some enemies seemingly use Light/Dark attacks though. Holy Elementals cast Banish (a Light damage nuke from FFXI), many Ascians cast "Dark" or "Dark III" etc, and their version of Shadow Flare is like a black Holy, massive AoE nuke which looks to be Dark based. The only Dark spell players can cast is Sleep/Repose, which conjure Dark Aether when you cast it during the animation. I know elements serve no purpose, but there must be a reason why Holy and Clemency are unaspected...?

The elemental system of XIV has always been well-rooted in the lore, but it's always been a mess in terms of game mechanics. Banish (Astral) and Scourge (Umbral) are the old basis of Thaumaturge (before BLM came in and forced Conjurer to split the elements with it).

If you want to be a purist about it, Astral and Umbral aren't aspects at all, they're polarities. Polarities exist in all things. The elemental wheel as a whole is divided (3 Astral / 3 Umbral) but any of those elements can also be affected by Astral or Umbral energies.

But here's where it get awkward: Astral damage used to be Wind / Lightning \ Fire in equal measure, Umbral was Water \ Ice / Earth. Sometimes Light and Dark seem to work like Astral and Umbral mechanically, and sometimes not. The difference, if indeed there is one, is pretty murky at the moment (As far as I know, anyway).

I assume that's why they just leave it as Unaspected, lol. (Not that Elemental Aspect really counts for anything mechanically, anyway.)

Well given the fact that no spells actually give true elemental damage anymore, this is a moot point (due to Yoshi wanting to avoid 'class favoritism' with players just using the 'opposing' elemental spell against an enemy with an elemental affinity). Lore wise though, light and darkness appear to be considered within Eorzea as basically two sides of the same coin, light or 'astral', and darkness or 'umbral', and are not truly elements per se but more just an 'aspect' of aether - this is most reflected in the cycles of time within Eorzea, in that periods of destruction, hardship and chaos are called 'Umbral Eras' (naturally times that are considered very 'dark' indeed), and times of growth, prosperity and development are called 'Astral Eras' (metaphorically more brighter periods).

Even the pantheon of the Twelve have astral and umbral alignments - each god and goddess of the Twelve have an elemental alignment, but they are further divided into groups of six based on whether they are umbral or astral (a good example is Nald'thal and Azeyma - both are fire elemental, but Nald'thal the Traders, the god of the dead, underworld and 'earthly' pursuits like commerce is umbral aspected, while the goddess Azeyma the Warden, the goddess of the sun, is therefore astral aspected.

Either way I am sure the lorebook will be able to shed further light on the element puzzle. ;)

EDIT: Oops! I'm sorry Moose I didn't mean to snipe you like that. *hangs head in shame*

-The reason the dev's will give you.

blablabla calamity blablabla echo blablabla alagens blablabla the 12 blablabla aetheric rupture's

-The real reason

yoshida

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

The elemental system of XIV has always been well-rooted in the lore, but it's always been a mess in terms of game mechanics.

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Don't forget the Materia and elemental affinity/resistance, Most gear cant handle it with all the other stat Materia to choose from. Then there is the notion that status effects are also related to specific elements. The gist of what I heard was Black Mage would be useless against Ifrit because if the elemental system worked they would deal little damage or heal Ifrit. In that sense it messes up their rotations if they are not against an opposing element. While White mage has Water, Earth, and Wind but cant be effective as both healer and DPS. Not without removing physical DPS to have extra healers to be a lesser DPS compared to Black Mage. Making a scenario where people will exclude specific jobs for specific content or reject people because they done have the right/enough elemental affinity for that encounter. Then there's having to go back and redo them all every time there is a specific need to.

But in all honesty, the only place where an elemental wheel would work is with crafting. As each Crafting Job tends to have a specific element affinity for the majority of recipies and a lesser secondary. I can see elemental stats applied to tools and job specific gear but it would require a rotational overhaul to make it work and have any meaningful influence to Brands, Names, Durability, Quality, progress, conserving crystals. While things like Light and Darkness can be left for combat spells. As it is now Unaspected spells are like saying astral is used to create these elemental magics, while Umbral is used for these. The game just lacks any kind of "verses" between the two outside of lore, and probably for the better.

I also noticed there's "Dark Blizzard" and 'Void Fire". I wonder if these are different somehow too...

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

I also noticed there's "Dark Blizzard" and 'Void Fire". I wonder if these are different somehow too...

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Dark and Void are different, but not in any way explained that I know of.
(Similar to how there is Holy heals, and nature heals in other games, along with potion heals, etc. They are considered the "good" magic, but not all of them are holy)