General way to tell magic from physical damage? (Dark Mind)

I mean, I get this is kind of a stupid question, but I want to make good use of Dark Mind for DRK. Is it as easy as what an animation looks like?

And I guess the other mitigation skills DRK has helps reduce it even further right?

You can almost always tell. If it's magical looking then it's magic. Byakko, Shinryu, Lakshmi, O1, 2, 3 adds, 4, 5, 6, and 8 all have magic tankbusters. And for autos or mobs you can just tell if it's shooting magic at you(orbs, fire, etc).

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Originally Posted by RLofOBFL

You can almost always tell. If it's magical looking then it's magic. Byakko, Shinryu, Lakshmi, O1, 2, 3 adds, 4, 5, 6, and 8 all have magic tankbusters. And for autos or mobs you can just tell if it's shooting magic at you(orbs, fire, etc).

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Oh ok. I guess it is as easy as just looking at an animation

I just don't understand why won't they make dark mind reduce all kind if dmg. Wouldn't it be easier?

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Originally Posted by DamianTenbe

I just don't understand why won't they make dark mind reduce all kind if dmg. Wouldn't it be easier?

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It's there way of making it stand out from other tanks

Eh, it's a bit of trial and error IMO. It was easy to tell on War because Raw Intuition simply won't parry, I find it easier to do it this way then to try to pay attention to what the animations look like on top of everything else. It'd also be nice if they had some consistency with their naming of abilities, for example Doom Strike sounds like a physical tankbuster so I thought it was physical at first, but it is in fact magical. Meanwhile Heavenly Strike from Byakko is a physical buster. "Strike" would seem to imply a physical attack, but apparently not always. Arm & Hammer in v3s sounds physical, and it is. So I just wish they'd be a little more conscious of stuff like that. But either way you just have to try it and see what happens. Or you know, come to the forums and ask ;)

For your other question, obviously if you stack defensive CDs it will mitigate more. It's probably less of an issue with Dark Mind in particular because it's a pretty short recast, but on War and Pld you typically wouldn't want to stack CDs (not counting Sheltron, TBN, or IB paired with a CD). If you need to stack 2 CDs to survive you simply need better shielding from healers or just use an invuln and save the CDs for fluff damage in between.

I usually use this somewhat effective chart till SE decides to use physical and magical indicators...

It's probably physical < Yes < Did you die? > No > its probably magical

As for mitigation. Usually DRK stacks The Blackest Night with any CD they use. NEVER use dark mind alone, always pair it with something else, and in most cases dont even think about Dark Arts Dark Mind, I wouldn't ever touch that unless you're doing some insane mitigation such as surviving both of Exdeaths Thunder IIIs(though normally youd never do this, it's pretty fun to try)

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Originally Posted by RLofOBFL

And for autos or mobs you can just tell if it's shooting magic at you(orbs, fire, etc).

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Not true. Shinryu's autos look like some kind of orbs of magic but they're physical. It really is just trial and error, like whiskey said.

I didn't mean it as an absolute. I worded it poorly. 9.8 times out of 10 it is exactly how it appears. I do remember being surprised when raw intuition worked on it though.