
Originally Posted by
Gruntler
Spells that target enemies and spells that target friends use different animations. There's a different kind of sheen to an enemy cast spell than a self-cast spell. Not to mention Blue Magic uses its own swirly regardless of element.
The swirly you see is the generic swirly for abilities, but lightning sprits have a special sparking animation to go with their casts for their spells, and so on; what you do see is -before- the swirl/spark, for a brief second, you do see the same purple-cast aura that a blm has when casting thunder for Thunder Sprites. So, if you look at the water sprites, you can see they do have an offensive cast aura that an aqua blue color.
The cast animation for Vercure and Benefic and Esuna has two colors--blue-purple in the center, and on the outer swirls, the same blue color as the water sprites use in their subtle offensive cast animation under the swirlies.
However, if you go to Il Mheg, and you fight undines, when they cast water II, they don't have the 'ability swirl' you describe. They have a bluish purple casting aura--the exact same blue purple in Vercure et al.'s cast aura.
What we don't see are the rainbow effects of unaspected spells, which contain hints of red and blue and green, as well as white--something you can see for yourself.
Except for Undines casting Water II, Sahaguin casting Enwater....
They deal physical damage. Not 'unaspected' which is magical. You can test that for yourself with Embolden.
Blizzard IV doesn't deal physical damage. RDM abilities do. Everyone knows this. Test it for yourself.
Claiming the swords are 'unaspected damage' when they're physical would be imposing 'head canon as fact.' And it is entirely possible to channel ice-aspected aether and deliver a physical attack. Samurai do!