Damage Type

From FFXI Wiki

Each type of physical attack does different types of damage, and enemies have traits may make them resistant or particularly vulnerable to certain damage types. The basic types are:

Damage Type Weapon Type
Blunt H2H Blunt Hand-to-Hand, Club, Staff
Slashing Slashing Axe, Great Axe, Great Sword, Sword, Scythe, Katana, Great Katana
Ranged Piercing Piercing Dagger, Polearm, Archery, Marksmanship, Shuriken

Additionally, the Blunt and Piercing categories can be further divided, separating Hand-to-Hand from the other Blunt weapons, and separating ranged weapons from the other Piercing weapons. While many things that are weak to Blunt are also weak to Hand-to-Hand, and likewise for many things weak to Piercing also being weak to Ranged, some enemies have different weaknesses to each. They are also counted separately for the purposes of things such as Caturae's Tabbiyaa Gambit.



Types

Blunt

  • These attacks strike your target with percussive force to break, crush, smash, or disable.
  • Abilities: Includes Bash abilities such as Shield Bash, Weapon Bash, and Blade Bash.
  • Spells: There are post-75 Physical Blue Mage spells with the Blunt Blunt type. See Blue Magic.
  • Pets: Many Jug Pets have access to one or more Blunt TP moves.
    • In the level 75 cap era, pet melee damage was usually Blunt Blunt. Many of these pets, including Avatars melee damage have since been reworked to be Slashing slashing damage.
      • Only Cait Sith Cait Sith, with Blunt Blunt, has non-Slashing auto-attacks.
      • Titan's Titan Megalith Throw and other Throwing Blood Pacts were changed to Slashing also.[1]
      • Ifrit's Ifrit, Shiva's Shiva, and Siren's Siren physical Blood Pacts will be the H2H Hand-to-Hand type in cases where it would make sense: punches, kicks, roundhouse, rush.
  • Skillchains: The weapon skills are more often associated with Impaction Impaction, Reverberation Reverberation, and Compression Compression skillchain properties.
  • Balance: A widely accessible attack type. While the disadvantages outnumber the advantages, it's of virtually no impact if there aren't common leveling or merit fodder among them.

Blunt Resistance

Note: These monster family resistances exclude NMs, which mostly are special cases.

Slashing

  • These attacks cut down your target with slices and tears.
  • Pets: Wyverns, Avatars, Familiars, most pets are dealing slashing damage now; before 2014, they usually had blunt damage.
  • Skillchains: The weapon skills on slashing weapons will more often have skills with Scission Scission and Fragmentation Fragmentation skillchain properties, but this includes a wide variety of weapons with their own specialties.
  • Balance: The majority of weapons deal slashing damage. This type rarely sees any disadvantages, but there are not many enemies it has advantages over either.

Slashing Resistance

Note: These monster family resistances exclude NMs, which mostly are special cases.

Piercing

Piercing Resistance

Exceptions

Some weapons also deal different damage than other weapons in their same category during auto attacks, however they do their normal category of damage when performing weaponskills.

Calculating Damage Resistance Values

Using attacks with simple damage formulas, such as those that ignore defense or dSTAT, we can quantify an enemy's resistance to a particular damage type.

† Blue Mage's 1000 Needles deals Breath damage.
As of June 2014: "Skillchains have been adjusted to that they may no longer be resisted, but their potency will now vary depending on the resistance values of the target."
§ The Twilight Scythe (level 90) and Crepuscular Scythe (ilvl 119) are the only sources of non-attribute Physical damage. This can bypass physical immunity on a case-by-case basis if the immunity was implemented as slashing + blunt + piercing immunity.

Unknown Damage Type

If a tree falls down in the forest and no one is around to see it, what type of damage did it deal?

  • The damage of Requiescat is only exceeded by its mystery.

Unique Mob Damage Type Resistances

While some mobs may take more/less of a type of damage type, some mobs are fully immune. This includes:



  1. Confirmed on the damage immunities from A Shantotto Ascension Mission 8