The WOL and Mass Murder

[YianKutku]

(to say nothing of the real Nael being very much long dead even before then).

To be fair, the real Nael never became Legatus.

This actually reinforces your general point, since I don't think Eula counts as a Legatus by the time of ARR; presumably the aetheric construct she became in the Coils is not eligible for the position. So it is indeed true that the 1.0 Warriors of Light are the ones who get the credit for taking down the Legatus of the VIIth Legion.

not even every soldier knows who we are despite having made chumps of 3* legates

ARR and later players get two. Regula was credited to Zurvan. The Emperor almost certainly knows about that, and the VIth definitely know, but other than that the information may have been suppressed.

[Cilia]

Do SCoB players still get four legates chumped or does that not count? D:

In the context of contributing to our theoretical infamy among the Garlean populace? No, Nael doesn't count. Only a select few Eorzeans (namely the Scions) know about the events that occurred in the Coils; I highly doubt the average Garlean citizen is aware of that.

... ARR and later players get two. Regula was credited to Zurvan. The Emperor almost certainly knows about that, and the VIth definitely know, but other than that the information may have been suppressed.

I deliberately said "chumped," not "killed." If you want to be technical about it, non-Legacy Warriors of Light haven't actually killed any legates. They have defeated 3 but none actually died by their hand. Gaius was defeated and had no way to escape the exploding Praetorium, Regula was defeated twice (once in undeniably canon single combat) and sacrificed himself to save Unukalhai, and Zenos was defeated but committed suicide. Nael was the only clean kill. Another detail the Garlean citizenry probably isn't aware of, but I digress.

(I'm aware of the whole Nael / Eula thing, but it's a phantom distinction. Regardless of name, she was still Legatus of the VIIth Legion, and Nael is just the more commonly used of the two.)

[Iscah]

Going back to some older points...

Which brings up the question (story and gameplay segregation), how exactly do you knock somebody out if you're a mechanist. I'm going down the route of wild mass guessing, but you can't exactly knock somebody out if you're shooting them with bullets, or using Flamethrower. This might be skirting a little too closely to our reality however.

Hard to keep them alive if you're slashing at them with a great-axe, or even if you're shooting fireballs at them. This is one of those places where gameplay stands apart from the story, but as is always the case, the story wins over the gameplay and you just need to hope your suspension of disbelief is strong enough.

The closest-to-canon demonstration on this is the Heavensward demo, where the Warrior of Light gets attacked by the dragon breathing fire at him. His cloak burns away but he (and his warrior armour) is completely fine, so possibly there's some considerable enchantments on the armour that stop him from being injured in the same way that a normal person would.

(Which is also my best guess at a 'real' reason why we can't equip gear until we reach a certain level - the enchantments are something akin to the gear being 'electrified' with aether and you need a certain level of strength/ability to physically cope with it.)

Side note on machinist specifically though - it really bugged me that a few quests instructed you to use one of your battle skills as a "warning shot" to scare off intruders in town, but the animation for the skill has you shooting directly at them at close range.

Because unless you know Red magic, you can't use your own aether to use stone and air attacks. As she's only barely a CNJ who refuses to borrow from nature, she locks herself out of those branches of the art, but it is not because she refuses to use offensive abilities.

Sylphie's issue, as she sees it, is that she doesn't want to learn attack magic, she just wants to heal - and she thinks she doesn't need to learn to attune with the elements (which from memory involves learning the attack spells associated with them) because she can heal just fine without any training. What she doesn't realise (and E-Sumi-Yan fails to explain to her) is that her intuitive use of healing magic is draining her own aether because she doesn't know how to draw the power from outside of herself.