What's the point of Physical and Magic Damage Types

[Fland]

TBH, I usually just weave in addle/feint to any tankbuster or raidwide even without knowing the type of incoming damage. Even in previous expansions where they still only affect one type of damage, and especially in casual content where the damage won't one shot the tank or wipe the party. Otherwise, they won't be used anway.

[KageTokage]

You see that spell the enemy mage is casting?..

...... that's definitely physical damage.

And for the love of Hydaelyn, don't even start with "Just make it all one type of damage" to dumb it down...

That's not 100% consistent and there are instances where "casts" and "prepares" can deal physical or magical damage respectively.

I'm not sure why people are trying to defend obtuse damage tells in an environment where failing to mitigate properly can result in one-shots in harder content. DRK in particular has problems with this because Dark Mind is generally a really strong personal mitigation due to its short cooldown, but I see DRKs popping it on things like the E12 tankbusters that you could easily assume are magical damage if you haven't done the savage version where the vulnerability debuffs reveal the truth.

Another thing that needs distinction is darkness and gravity damage because most forms of mitigation in general don't work on those (E1S being the most prominent example of this as virtually all of the raidwides fall into the latter camp).

[DiaDeem]

That's not 100% consistent and there are instances where "casts" and "prepares" can deal physical or magical damage respectively.

I'm not sure why people are trying to defend obtuse damage tells in an environment where failing to mitigate properly can result in one-shots in harder content. DRK in particular has problems with this because Dark Mind is generally a really strong personal mitigation due to its short cooldown, but I see DRKs popping it on things like the E12 tankbusters that you could easily assume are magical damage if you haven't done the savage version where the vulnerability debuffs reveal the truth.

Another thing that needs distinction is darkness and gravity damage because most forms of mitigation in general don't work on those (E1S being the most prominent example of this as virtually all of the raidwides fall into the latter camp).

It has never truly got in the way of anyone clearing content, and it's one of the few things we get to be intuitive and use context clues instead of a black/white marker.

It really isn't that big of a deal.
Also, the mage was casting a spell and it was magic damage.

[YukikoKurosawa]

You see that spell the enemy mage is casting?..


...... that's definitely physical damage.


And for the love of Hydaelyn, don't even start with "Just make it all one type of damage" to dumb it down...

Circle of Scorn has your PLD slam their sword into the ground causes beams of blue energy to erupt from the earth damaging all enemys and causing them to suffer a DOT. One would naturally assume it's a spell, right?

But it's not a spell, it's an ability. Is this physical or magical? You tell me. Because the game sure as hell doesn't and I sure as hell don't know if my physical dmg buff has any impact on it. This is the problem. The game fundamentally fails to distinguish between physical and magical attacks because the animation are outright deceptive. Other games don't have this problem so why does FFXIV?

[Hasrat]

Circle of Scorn has your PLD slam their sword into the ground causes beams of blue energy to erupt from the earth damaging all enemys and causing them to suffer a DOT. One would naturally assume it's a spell, right?

But it's not a spell, it's an ability. Is this physical or magical? You tell me. Because the game sure as hell doesn't and I sure as hell don't know if my physical dmg buff has any impact on it.

Circle of Scorn tooltip: "Delivers an attack..."

Compare with

Holy Spirit tooltip: "Deals unaspected damage..."

The former is physical, the latter is magical.

[YukikoKurosawa]

Circle of Scorn tooltip: "Delivers an attack..."

Compare with

Holy Spirit tooltip: "Deals unaspected damage..."

The former is physical, the latter is magical.

Goligee why would an ability that visibly looks like magic do physical damage? Proved my point.

And "delivers an attack' could be interpretted as "magical attack". Why the hell do they not just clearly label abilities as "Physical" or "magical"? Jesus Christ.

[Rolder50]

Goligee why would an ability that visibly looks like magic do physical damage? Proved my point.

And "delivers an attack' could be interpretted as "magical attack". Why the hell do they not just clearly label abilities as "Physical" or "magical"? Jesus Christ.

Or even simpler, have the popup numbers for physical damage be one color, and magic a different color. Boom problem solved, even if tooltips could still use some work

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Goligee why would an ability that visibly looks like magic do physical damage? Proved my point.

And "delivers an attack' could be interpretted as "magical attack". Why the hell do they not just clearly label abilities as "Physical" or "magical"? Jesus Christ.

It's almost like reading things in the context of how the rest of the skills are written matters here.


All magic damage is aspected or unaspected, while all physical damage is neither.


And again, it doesn't matter in the context of player damage outside bozja.

Or even simpler, have the popup numbers for physical damage be one color, and magic a different color. Boom problem solved, even if tooltips could still use some work

This would be nice for damage to players, I would definitely like knowing what incoming damage is.

[dspguy]

Physical damage, magical damage, blunt, piercing, slashing... what does any of it matter? If there are mob weaknesses, it isn't like we bother to exploit them. See enemy, hit buttons - enemy dead. Listing what sort of damage a spell or ability is is a waste of time. 99% of the content doesn't care.

For anyone that played older FF games, physical damage would never touch a jelly-type enemy. You don't caste fire on a fire sprite. You don't cast quake on a floating enemy. None of that matters here. It is all just potency and nothing else.

[Deceptus]

Simplest way to fix this is just to make all mitigation abilities mitigate ALL damage, not determined by physical or magic.

Dark Mind is one of the biggest reasons DRK's are low on mitigation because it's essentially a useless button in most situations.

And for the love of Hydaelyn, don't even start with "Just make it all one type of damage" to dumb it down...

If the devs aren't willing to somehow easily differentiate enemies using magic vs physical damage then yes it should just be one type.

To do otherwise is simply bad game design.