Targeted mitigation often does not work

[Jeeqbit]

In Heavensward, it had become a trend that a lot of damage was magic and SE talked about how they kept making changes to whether content dealt magical or physical damage when balancing it. The only logical reason they could care about this so much is because of how casters have less health and less physical defense, and more magical defense. But in that time, all tanks didn't have Reprisal and not everyone had Feint or Addle. What we had were certain combos that could be repeated to mitigate physical or magic damage, but I don't know if it was really balanced around those being used.

Then in Shadowbringers, we got Dark Missionary and Heart of Light, aoe mitigation which only works against magic, but with the above context, I didn't think it was that much of a problem because of how SE likes magic damage.

What I have noticed in modern content, where we actually have abilities like Reprisal, Feint and Addle, is that they are necessary when the content is new to prevent wiping to a raid-wide, so perhaps they have stopped caring about the damage type in content where they expect proper and coordinated use of these abilities. But either way, all three of them mitigate both now, so it helps to know the damage type with Feint and Addle to optimize it but it's not entirely useless if you don't.

There are many other instances that the attack looks Magical but it is actually Physical and vice versa, SE likes to be very inconsistent with their damage types and I am stumped to why they have not added the best QoL in a game where you have to know what type you should be blocking and that QoL is Damage Info!

My concern with adding the damage type is that if it's too obvious what the damage type is, then it puts into question what the point of a damage type is. If you don't know what it is, then you have to explore and figure it out and I imagine that is the intention. If we are going to explore and figure it out for ourselves, then it should be reasonably obvious from the animation or the cast name whether it is physical or magical.

I think there is a way in the battle log to determine it. If they "begin casting" and then "cast" an attack, it's magic. If they "ready" and then "use" an attack, it's physical.

u may be used to more regular content where magic/phys dmg distinction does not matter at all tbh...

It's because I am a tank and have Reprisal, which works on both.