What's the point of Physical and Magic Damage Types

...When there's no way to tell which is which? There are 3 types of damage attacks in this game a player can do, Weaponskill, Ability, and Spell. Abilities can seemingly be magic or physical, but they're just called abilities. The problem here is that the animations of pretty much everything in this game is a big, flashy anime move that looks like magic. FFS, Warriors are basically geomancers in this game, half their abilities are straight up earth magic, yet they're either weaponskills or abilities.

Paladins, for example, have an ability that slams their weapons into the ground and beams of blue energy erupt from the earth. Is this a spell? No, it's an ability. Worse, there is only this vague clarity with PLAYER attacks. Enemies? Zero. There is ZERO way to tell whether an enemy's attack is physical or magic. As I said, basically everything in this game looks like magic in some way. Sure, that big blast COULD be magic, but how would you ever know?

How exactly do the devs expect us to know what is an isn't physical or magic damage? Do they even know? There is absolutely nothing to give more than the vaguest hint that an ability, player or enemy, is physical or magic. There is no ability that is clearly listed as "physical" or "magic". I'd assume weaponskill would be physical and spell magic, obviously, but abilities just throw a wrench into this, and even weaponskills often look magical based on animations. I cannot even see whether an enemy's attack was magic or not at all.

If the devs want their to be physical and magic damage types, then there needs to be a clear distinction. Because as it stands now there is absolutely none so I must ask how do they expect us to know. And if they're going to have it be this indecipherable, than why even have physical/magic dmg types in the first place? Why not just have flat "damage"? What are they even thinking?

Careful, one might think you were advocating for a mod there, asking for such fancy functionality as being able to tell what damage is of what type in a game with typal mitigation and with inconsistent aesthetic indicators.




More seriously, though:

This only matters for incoming damage, as the tooltips already tell you whether it is "an attack" [Physical] or "deals (un)aspected damage" [Magical].

For said incoming damage, though, yes, it'd be good if we had some indicator from, say, both the cast-bar and the floating damage text as to whether the damage we will/did receive was magical or physical (or unmitigatable, a.k.a., "Darkness" or "True" damage).

To do damage, obviously.

It's to separate what is a GCD and what is a OGCD.
Abilities for example are OGCD's, weapon skills are not.
You can know simply by reading the tooltip.

And Spells will only get buffed by certain cooldowns while Weaponskills by others.

Edit: And yes this isn't a medieval simulator, the attacks are very flashy I fail to see how this is a problem...
If you don't like it then there are medieval simulators or less flashy games you can play o_O.

It will tell you in the tooltip too what the damage type is too.
And on a visual level there needs to be some consistency and it's easier to make an attack more easily identified and appealing by making it flashy with a bunch of effects that looks '' magical ''.


Edit since maximum post for the day:

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

Does this forum have a reading comprehension problem because I consistently notice an inability to read what somebody has said and infer a completely different meaning from a post than what was actually meant.

I never said I dislike it I said it makes it difficult to distinguish magic from physical. Especially Warriors who can basically be considered geomancers but nothing that do to my understanding is counted as magical dmg.

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Cmon lol, I think it's fair to think that you dislike it based on what and how you wrote about it.
People who don't dislike something doesn't talk about it the way you did.

Otherwise its a boring game. Everyone just pokes everyone with a stick.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

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I think you're missing the point here. We don't have typal damage buffs anymore, so that much is irrelevant. Yes, we can tell what damage type our outgoing damage does; more importantly, though, we have zero reason to bother.

What remains relevant is INCOMING damage.

Let's say an enemy has a cast time on "Spear of <Something>" attack. It looks like a literal spear. Can you block it? No, because this was Heavensward, that's Sophia, the spear is magic, and you can't block magic damage.

Now, this primarily affects just GNB and DRK, but still to a somewhat noticeable degree: Much of the complaints about DRK's Dark Mind mitigation are specifically because a few of the attacks that are magic don't look like they would be. Despite having a 20% mitigation on just a one-minute CD and that affecting the majority of tankbusters this tier, it looks like it'd only affect about half, which would put it behind the likes of Camouflage.

I am pretty positive Titan's punches contrary to what you would assume, is not physical, but he has magical punches because he is magical. At least thats what dark mind tells me in the fly text. I might just be getting lucky dodges or something every time, but I swore this was a thing when I was messing around in titan extreme.

I would like for a way to know what the attacks would be. Figuring them out it fun, but some are a bit strange.

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Originally Posted by Lieri

Otherwise its a boring game. Everyone just pokes everyone with a stick.

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I remember being very confused why my BLM was expected to cast Fire III and Flare on Ifrit and occasionally Blizzard/Freeze on Shiva. There is no difference, elemental weaknesses, etc. If a player wants that nuance, go play BLU. Otherwise, we are playing a game where each ability is just potency and nothing else.

Bring back Darkness Damage

It's likely just a tiny remnant of the old style of MMORPGs. A time when weapon types were relevant (blunt, slash, pierce, etc), you needed to skill up physical/magical stats, and the elemental wheel was a thing. It's not a big deal to keep obviously, which is probably why it's still around. A generally harmless thing. I don't think it'll be removed completely, but its relevance has long been dead in this game.

Even when you look at jobs with those types of things as points of concern, the problem isn't the existence of it, it's the balancing between similar jobs. It's pretty funny to me when topics related to job balancing are brought up. People want uniqueness but despise the idea that you don't have similar/exact goodies as other jobs and may not be equal to them in almost every way lol. It wouldn't shock me if, despite any complaints, people would be happy with homogenized and consolidated controls (e.g. PvP) as long as they have what amounts to a fresh coat of paint and visual flair.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Edit: And yes this isn't a medieval simulator, the attacks are very flashy I fail to see how this is a problem...
If you don't like it then there are medieval simulators or less flashy games you can play o_O.

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Does this forum have a reading comprehension problem because I consistently notice an inability to read what somebody has said and infer a completely different meaning from a post than what was actually meant.

I never said I dislike it I said it makes it difficult to distinguish magic from physical. Especially Warriors who can basically be considered geomancers but nothing they do to my understanding is counted as magical dmg.

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

Does this forum have a reading comprehension problem because I consistently notice an inability to read what somebody has said and infer a completely different meaning from a post than what was actually meant.

I never said I dislike it I said it makes it difficult to distinguish magic from physical. Especially Warriors who can basically be considered geomancers but nothing that do to my understanding is counted as magical dmg.

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If it says "deals x aspected damage" then its magic damage. Otherwise physical.

Doesn't do anything outside Eureka and Bozja anymore. They used to have piercing, blunt, and slashing damage buffs on enemies which have been removed, and Bard used to have one of its abilities reduce enemies magic defense.

So its just flavor.

The only thing that matters is incoming damage types, usually raidwides and tank busters, and that doesn't say. Experimentation is what helps you figure that out.

It's probably just a holdover from The Olden Days(tm).

I have to ask, in the greater scheme of things... why it even matters. you are a cat girl who never dies, you carry 80+ minions and 50+ mounts on your person. bad places are highlighted with orange circles or boxes.

basically, its a game. pure entertainment. it does not always have to make sense.

My daggers do physical damage. My mudras do magic damage.

Easy.

They really need to indicate in the combat log what type of damage an enemy's attacks are dealing for mitigation purposes as well as mechanical clarity. Earth attacks in particular can be rather variable about whether or not they're flagged as physical or magical damage.

Another strange thing I realized only recently is that RDM's Fleche/Contre Sixte are specifically flagged as ranged physical damage and thus will get affected by associated mechanics like Leviathan's reflect shields.

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Originally Posted by Lieri

Otherwise its a boring game. Everyone just pokes everyone with a stick.

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Samurai's got you beat right there. You can get a wooden katana in the gold Saucer and just build your kenki up to max and literally shinten spam poke your enemies to death with your samurai stick. xD

From what I gather the only way to discern them in game is to read the battle tab of our chat or make one that specifically shows only messages about enemy skills. Whenever the log says "casting" the incoming damage will be magical and other messages like "prepares" will be physical. Not the most finesse way of doing it but without extra tools it is the best we have for now.

or just do it the old fashioned way: trial and error.

At least that's what I used to do. But I get it that not everybody wants to test that one by one. It would be nice if they could put distinction i.e. differently colored cast bar. Orange cast bar = physical; Blue cast bar = magical; Unaffiliated can be any color they want to pick.

You see that spell the enemy mage is casting?..


...... that's definitely physical damage.
https://i.redd.it/sfqo5oy41nt41.jpg

And for the love of Hydaelyn, don't even start with "Just make it all one type of damage" to dumb it down...

TBH, I usually just weave in addle/feint to any tankbuster or raidwide even without knowing the type of incoming damage. Even in previous expansions where they still only affect one type of damage, and especially in casual content where the damage won't one shot the tank or wipe the party. Otherwise, they won't be used anway.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

You see that spell the enemy mage is casting?..

...... that's definitely physical damage.

And for the love of Hydaelyn, don't even start with "Just make it all one type of damage" to dumb it down...

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That's not 100% consistent and there are instances where "casts" and "prepares" can deal physical or magical damage respectively.

I'm not sure why people are trying to defend obtuse damage tells in an environment where failing to mitigate properly can result in one-shots in harder content. DRK in particular has problems with this because Dark Mind is generally a really strong personal mitigation due to its short cooldown, but I see DRKs popping it on things like the E12 tankbusters that you could easily assume are magical damage if you haven't done the savage version where the vulnerability debuffs reveal the truth.

Another thing that needs distinction is darkness and gravity damage because most forms of mitigation in general don't work on those (E1S being the most prominent example of this as virtually all of the raidwides fall into the latter camp).

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

That's not 100% consistent and there are instances where "casts" and "prepares" can deal physical or magical damage respectively.

I'm not sure why people are trying to defend obtuse damage tells in an environment where failing to mitigate properly can result in one-shots in harder content. DRK in particular has problems with this because Dark Mind is generally a really strong personal mitigation due to its short cooldown, but I see DRKs popping it on things like the E12 tankbusters that you could easily assume are magical damage if you haven't done the savage version where the vulnerability debuffs reveal the truth.

Another thing that needs distinction is darkness and gravity damage because most forms of mitigation in general don't work on those (E1S being the most prominent example of this as virtually all of the raidwides fall into the latter camp).

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It has never truly got in the way of anyone clearing content, and it's one of the few things we get to be intuitive and use context clues instead of a black/white marker.

It really isn't that big of a deal.
Also, the mage was casting a spell and it was magic damage.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

You see that spell the enemy mage is casting?..


...... that's definitely physical damage.
https://i.redd.it/sfqo5oy41nt41.jpg

And for the love of Hydaelyn, don't even start with "Just make it all one type of damage" to dumb it down...

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Circle of Scorn has your PLD slam their sword into the ground causes beams of blue energy to erupt from the earth damaging all enemys and causing them to suffer a DOT. One would naturally assume it's a spell, right?

But it's not a spell, it's an ability. Is this physical or magical? You tell me. Because the game sure as hell doesn't and I sure as hell don't know if my physical dmg buff has any impact on it. This is the problem. The game fundamentally fails to distinguish between physical and magical attacks because the animation are outright deceptive. Other games don't have this problem so why does FFXIV?

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

Circle of Scorn has your PLD slam their sword into the ground causes beams of blue energy to erupt from the earth damaging all enemys and causing them to suffer a DOT. One would naturally assume it's a spell, right?

But it's not a spell, it's an ability. Is this physical or magical? You tell me. Because the game sure as hell doesn't and I sure as hell don't know if my physical dmg buff has any impact on it.

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Circle of Scorn tooltip: "Delivers an attack..."

Compare with

Holy Spirit tooltip: "Deals unaspected damage..."

The former is physical, the latter is magical.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Circle of Scorn tooltip: "Delivers an attack..."

Compare with

Holy Spirit tooltip: "Deals unaspected damage..."

The former is physical, the latter is magical.

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Goligee why would an ability that visibly looks like magic do physical damage? Proved my point.

And "delivers an attack' could be interpretted as "magical attack". Why the hell do they not just clearly label abilities as "Physical" or "magical"? Jesus Christ.

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

Goligee why would an ability that visibly looks like magic do physical damage? Proved my point.

And "delivers an attack' could be interpretted as "magical attack". Why the hell do they not just clearly label abilities as "Physical" or "magical"? Jesus Christ.

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Or even simpler, have the popup numbers for physical damage be one color, and magic a different color. Boom problem solved, even if tooltips could still use some work

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

Goligee why would an ability that visibly looks like magic do physical damage? Proved my point.

And "delivers an attack' could be interpretted as "magical attack". Why the hell do they not just clearly label abilities as "Physical" or "magical"? Jesus Christ.

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It's almost like reading things in the context of how the rest of the skills are written matters here.


All magic damage is aspected or unaspected, while all physical damage is neither.


And again, it doesn't matter in the context of player damage outside bozja.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Or even simpler, have the popup numbers for physical damage be one color, and magic a different color. Boom problem solved, even if tooltips could still use some work

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This would be nice for damage to players, I would definitely like knowing what incoming damage is.

Physical damage, magical damage, blunt, piercing, slashing... what does any of it matter? If there are mob weaknesses, it isn't like we bother to exploit them. See enemy, hit buttons - enemy dead. Listing what sort of damage a spell or ability is is a waste of time. 99% of the content doesn't care.

For anyone that played older FF games, physical damage would never touch a jelly-type enemy. You don't caste fire on a fire sprite. You don't cast quake on a floating enemy. None of that matters here. It is all just potency and nothing else.

Simplest way to fix this is just to make all mitigation abilities mitigate ALL damage, not determined by physical or magic.

Dark Mind is one of the biggest reasons DRK's are low on mitigation because it's essentially a useless button in most situations.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

And for the love of Hydaelyn, don't even start with "Just make it all one type of damage" to dumb it down...

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If the devs aren't willing to somehow easily differentiate enemies using magic vs physical damage then yes it should just be one type.

To do otherwise is simply bad game design.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Dark Mind is one of the biggest reasons DRK's are low on mitigation because it's essentially a useless button in most situations.

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Weren't all but 2-3 tankbusters / tank-targeting specials this tier... magic?

They need a visual indicator for received or incoming damage, something like red = physical, blue = magical.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Weren't all but 2-3 tankbusters / tank-targeting specials this tier... magic?

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the other 3 tanks can all mitigate and survive these magical tankbusters with zero issues. therefore it offers no benefits over the others, and there's really no good reason for it to remain as magical mit only.

outside of raids its even worse. its useless in dungeons, and makes DRK below 70 squishier due to essentially having 1 less cd than the others.

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Originally Posted by Tlachtga

the other 3 tanks can all mitigate and survive these magical tankbusters with zero issues. therefore it offers no benefits over the others, and there's really no good reason for it to remain as magical mit only.

outside of raids its even worse. its useless in dungeons, and makes DRK below 70 squishier due to essentially having 1 less cd than the others.

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Until Dark Mind is part of the reason DRK could solo both demigod doubles in P4s & every double buster in P2s without breaking a sweat and ever needing an invuln, even during week 1 world prog. DRK also readily takes magic tank busters with way more HP remaining than the other tanks on almost any tank buster purely because DM is just absurdly strong and up for almost everything. DRK is just a defensive powerhouse with it in tow.

Even in Dragonsong ultimate it's absolute godly for P6 & final phase since its up for so much in P6 where other tanks are stretched ice thin on the mit front (seriously, one Hallowed wings is literally nothing but Corrundum + camo, he needs my TBN or he drops instantly where Dark Mind makes my entire mit that phase ultra comfy), on top of being up for every tankbuster in the final phase. 60s CD with 20% mit is actually absurdly broken. It can stay magic and keep its broken recast & %, thanks. Just give it a 5% physical mit or a healing % up so it has some use in dungeons without impacting its raid performance and not changing its absurdly OP magic mit.

On topic, the purpose behind their existence (or at the least, in the dev's eyes) - was to create variation in tank design and class design. Like, PLDs were great at physical fights because they could block, DRG could take a beating if a tank fell due to its much higher HP & physical defense, etc. The whole system fell apart when they started designing the vast majority of raid damage to be magic and certain jobs were having massive trouble mitigating (PLD) or surviving at entry ilvl week 1 (DRG) which caused them to streamline damage types and change several job mechanics, rendering the system almost non-existent outside of niche cases, like Feint vs Addle.

Now its a relic of a bygone age that only really serves to let the devs allow an attack to hit the casters in the party harder than normal to force stronger party mit. (Like that one solo hit that follows the stack hit in E12s in phase 2, or the entire icicle phase in phase 1)