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.

being hit then try again......you can't be an ok tank if you don't have ptsd....

The best would be to have a revamped combat text (like the wow add-ons plz T_T) with 2 different colors for physical / magical damage taken.

You can look at the combat text altough I highly recommande you make a special tab with only the damage YOU take and nothing else. Then you can easily check.
Finally as many people have said, you can look at the animation but it's it always clear and there are some elemental effect that can't be weaken (holy and dark for instance) by skills like reprisal (I think that's the skill name I'm not sure)

Just have a WAR pop Raw Intuition to test something. It's much easier to see "-20% (Parry)" floating text, than it is to try and do the math with Dark Mind. Sometimes bosses use tank busters of both types too. God Kefka uses magical (Hyperdrive) and physical (Ultimate Embrace) busters.

Battle log.

Begins casting / casts = Magic
Readies / uses = Physical

Auto attacks don't give you this information though. It also doesn't apply to darkness damage.

You don't. They really should color code it. Or something. But they won't.

Or just change Dark Mind into flat DMG reduction.

PLD's used to not block magic but now they do anyway so it's whatever.

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Darkness damage amuses me. It exists but DRK's can't throw out Darkness type dmg. Baffling.

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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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Its going back a bit, but Holiest of Holy from Thordan Ex is physical damage... I'm not saying you are wrong as of right now, but it might not always be the case.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

The best would be to have a revamped combat text (like the wow add-ons plz T_T) with 2 different colors for physical / magical damage taken.

You can look at the combat text altough I highly recommande you make a special tab with only the damage YOU take and nothing else. Then you can easily check.
Finally as many people have said, you can look at the animation but it's it always clear and there are some elemental effect that can't be weaken (holy and dark for instance) by skills like reprisal (I think that's the skill name I'm not sure)

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Originally Posted by Sove92

Battle log.

Begins casting / casts = Magic
Readies / uses = Physical

Auto attacks don't give you this information though. It also doesn't apply to darkness damage.

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This helps a lot! thx. But I play on PS4, there a a way to make another text box for combat log?

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Originally Posted by AncientCrystal

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

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Dark Knight being the designated magic tank was an idea that started and died with the introduction of Stormblood the minute they made PLD an omnitank rather than the designated physical tank. They killed every other sacred cow with tanking with 4.0 with the exception of Dark Mind, and I think that one should be next on the chopping block for DRK's hopeful revamp.