Physical/magical damage reduction differentiation should be removed

I don't see why certain actions only mitigate magic damage when no abilities mitigate only physical. The separation of magic and physical damage is confusing and shouldn't exist when it comes to abilities. There isn't that many attacks that do magic damage anyways making magic damage mit feel useless most of the time. This distinction feels like a product of its time. It makes more sense for places like Bojza where the differentiation of magic and physical damage matters more.

I understand why people want this but it would mean more of the homogenization they are so against.

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Originally Posted by HyonaCookie

I don't see why certain actions only mitigate magic damage when no abilities mitigate only physical. The separation of magic and physical damage is confusing and shouldn't exist when it comes to abilities. There isn't that many attacks that do magic damage anyways making magic damage mit feel useless most of the time. This distinction feels like a product of its time. It makes more sense for places like Bojza where the differentiation of magic and physical damage matters more.

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Uhh, almost every raidwide is magic. Almost every tank buster is magic.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Uhh, almost every raidwide is magic. Almost every tank buster is magic.

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I want to add that the whole game is designed around this. Melees and physical ranged DDs have more HP but less magic defense, while mage DDs and healers have less HP but more magic defense.

When the raidwides were not magic damage then mages and healers would simply die while melees and ranged would laugh the damage off, thanks to their higher physical defense and HP.

Sure, let's make all jobs a 1 button press like SMN's while we are at it.

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Originally Posted by HyonaCookie

The separation of magic and physical damage is confusing

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Is it... really...??

I could understand back when it took sheer trial-and-error to figure out if an attack was Magical or Physical, but now the icons are built into the first-party flytext, so like... it's really not that confusing at all...?

Is it... that bad that an RPG asks you to differentiate between 2 simple concepts for a paper-thin amount of immersion?

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Uhh, almost every raidwide is magic. Almost every tank buster is magic.

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Maybe in the past, but EW has been mixing them quite a bit more.

Harrowing Hell, one of the hardest hitting raidwides this game has seen in a long time, is physical. P1s's more spammed raidwide is also physical.
This tier alone has physical tankbusters in every fight. (And for P11s & P12s pt2, they're only physical, whereas P9s, p10s and P12s.pt1 have one of each)
P5s had a physical buster along with a magic one. P6s had a stack physical buster, and one half of the forced swap buster was physical.

Two of the EX trials had physical busters.

Point being, that statement is far from accurate these days.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Is it... that bad that an RPG asks you to differentiate between 2 simple concepts for a paper-thin amount of immersion?

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While it's far from confusing, it's also not even a paper-thin amount of immersion either. The vast majority of mit in this game is omni-damage at this point. Two of the four tanks (PLD/WAR) literally have full omni damage mitigation, GNB only has partial damage type on one single skill (camo), DRK is the only tank that has a true 'one damage type or bust' self mit. On the raid mit side you have a grand total of 3 skills that still adhere to damage types - Dark Missionary, heart of light & Fey Illumination afaik. Addle & Feint technically have damage adherence, but they now affect both damage types so they can be more freely used regardless of damage typing.

At this point, damage types may as well not exist outside of a mechanic giving magic vuln+ / physical vuln+. You could change the remaining holdouts to pure damage % and literally nothing would change in the grand scheme of things.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

While it's far from confusing, it's also not even a paper-thin amount of immersion either.

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You just described... a paper-thin amount of immersion.

"Ow the Asmongold Robot Spider is bodyslamming the floor, I sure wish my Dark Missionary could affect Physical damage".

"Oh haha cool, my Feint will be 5% more useful for this, compensating for Addle being 5% less useful".

"Huzzah! My Embolden increases my allies's damage, but only improves my Magical damage. Therefore my phantom stabby things are unbuffed. But because Black and White Mana makes my melee attacks become Magical, it will improve my Combo! What wonderful depth of design."

...but yeah realistically this is probably on the chopping block too, because why waste time use lot concepts when few concepts do trick?

Agree, it doesn't bring much gameplay wise and feel like the concept of an idea that was scraped.

Considering how rarely it matters now, I wouldn't be surprised to see it eventually go the same way as elemental resistances.

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Originally Posted by Syln

Agree, it doesn't bring much gameplay wise and feel like the concept of an idea that was scraped.

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Yeah, which sums up most systems in FFXIV at this point — fine ideas that slowly stagnate into "Why does this exist? It's pointless. They should just get rid of it" due to a systematic lack of developer support to flesh out or continue developing the concept.

To be honest, FFXIV feels like it really just wants to be a simple co-op action game, and is finally tired of even superficially-masquerading as an RPG, and in turn, is beginning to just go "mask off" more and more openly with each new iteration.

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Originally Posted by OM3GA-Z3RO

Sure, let's make all jobs a 1 button press like SMN's while we are at it.

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What does making jobs easier have to do with this? Making mits that do magical only mitigation also mitigate physical isn't gonna change much gameplay-wise. And there's no reason why mitigation should be situational.

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Originally Posted by HyonaCookie

What does making jobs easier have to do with this? Making mits that do magical only mitigation also mitigate physical isn't gonna change much gameplay-wise. And there's no reason why mitigation should be situational.

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You are asking for things to be simplified and homogenized even more, what would be the point in splitting Damage Types if your mits could always block both types especially when they just recently added Damage Types indicators in the game? You ARE asking jobs to be easier.

So why not go even further in simplifying things? I mean you are slowly getting what you asking for because Feint and Addle used to reduce a single type but now they lower both albeit only 5% on the type they didn't reduce before.

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Originally Posted by HyonaCookie

I don't see why certain actions only mitigate magic damage when no abilities mitigate only physical. The separation of magic and physical damage is confusing and shouldn't exist when it comes to abilities. There isn't that many attacks that do magic damage anyways making magic damage mit feel useless most of the time. This distinction feels like a product of its time. It makes more sense for places like Bojza where the differentiation of magic and physical damage matters more.

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It is fine the way it is

If this indeed was a problem? showcase us an Ultimate phase / Savage mechanic / Extreme anything where this differentiation is so detrimental to exist. Cause it existing? Has not caused any game breaking experiences where we severely are lacking in a certain mitigation type. I view this as solving a non-existing problem with a hint of homogenization that ever so slightly simplifies yet another thing for no good reason. The idea to iron out every difference isn't appealing either, cause idk where this line of thought would take us as we can remove a lot of deafferentations that exist in this game... to solve... yet again not alot.

Here's a better idea... Rather than further homogenize everything, make different tanks better at different things.

I think the split is fine, and there are far too many mechanics that take it into account for it to be worth the effort to remove. However, I would agree that player abilities that reduce damage taken or reduce an attack type on the mobs for just one variety should be altered to affect all damage types.

Technically Foresight reduces physical only...but now only the enemies can use that skill.