What's the point of Physical and Magic Damage Types

[Faafetai]

I am pretty positive Titan's punches contrary to what you would assume, is not physical, but he has magical punches because he is magical. At least thats what dark mind tells me in the fly text. I might just be getting lucky dodges or something every time, but I swore this was a thing when I was messing around in titan extreme.

I would like for a way to know what the attacks would be. Figuring them out it fun, but some are a bit strange.

[Nizzi]

Bring back Darkness Damage

[Welsper59]

It's likely just a tiny remnant of the old style of MMORPGs. A time when weapon types were relevant (blunt, slash, pierce, etc), you needed to skill up physical/magical stats, and the elemental wheel was a thing. It's not a big deal to keep obviously, which is probably why it's still around. A generally harmless thing. I don't think it'll be removed completely, but its relevance has long been dead in this game.

Even when you look at jobs with those types of things as points of concern, the problem isn't the existence of it, it's the balancing between similar jobs. It's pretty funny to me when topics related to job balancing are brought up. People want uniqueness but despise the idea that you don't have similar/exact goodies as other jobs and may not be equal to them in almost every way lol. It wouldn't shock me if, despite any complaints, people would be happy with homogenized and consolidated controls (e.g. PvP) as long as they have what amounts to a fresh coat of paint and visual flair.

[AziraSyuren]

It's probably just a holdover from The Olden Days(tm).

[Kes13a]

I have to ask, in the greater scheme of things... why it even matters. you are a cat girl who never dies, you carry 80+ minions and 50+ mounts on your person. bad places are highlighted with orange circles or boxes.

basically, its a game. pure entertainment. it does not always have to make sense.

[Haruka_R]

My daggers do physical damage. My mudras do magic damage.

Easy.

[KageTokage]

They really need to indicate in the combat log what type of damage an enemy's attacks are dealing for mitigation purposes as well as mechanical clarity. Earth attacks in particular can be rather variable about whether or not they're flagged as physical or magical damage.

Another strange thing I realized only recently is that RDM's Fleche/Contre Sixte are specifically flagged as ranged physical damage and thus will get affected by associated mechanics like Leviathan's reflect shields.

[Jaquan]

From what I gather the only way to discern them in game is to read the battle tab of our chat or make one that specifically shows only messages about enemy skills. Whenever the log says "casting" the incoming damage will be magical and other messages like "prepares" will be physical. Not the most finesse way of doing it but without extra tools it is the best we have for now.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

or just do it the old fashioned way: trial and error.

At least that's what I used to do. But I get it that not everybody wants to test that one by one. It would be nice if they could put distinction i.e. differently colored cast bar. Orange cast bar = physical; Blue cast bar = magical; Unaffiliated can be any color they want to pick.