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

[whiskeybravo]

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.