Blocking and Parrying Magic: It Just Makes Sense

[eagledorf]

The core of the problem, from a gameplay point of view, is that the game was designed from the very beginning to make sense with the tank taking almost all physical damage and the party taking almost all magic damage.

To make my point, here is a list of skills/stats/status (off the top of my head) that only work on physical damage:

1. Foresight
2. Eye for an Eye
3. WHM/BLM Virus
4. Sheltron
5. Raw Intuition
6. Wrath
7. Block STR/Rate
8. Parry
9. Dark Dance
10. Bulwark
11. Rage of Halone
12. (Reprisal) (procs on physical)

The following are skills that are magic only:

1. Dragon Kick (Delirium)
2. Apocatastasis
3. Dark Mind

This is also evidenced by the high magic defense on healer gear.

Exceptions to this made for mechanics that were supposed to be awkward for the tank. For example, T2 vulnerability stacks or Ravens Ascent right after Ravensbeak.

What we have now is a raid cycle where there is an unusual balance between these two damage types rendering a large number of skills useless (especially A4S) and the kind of weird addition of Dark Mind to the tanking repertory (most likely related).