ELI5 How Magic Damage Works

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ELI5 How magic damage works
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By spicychai 2025-11-13 20:52:15
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Hi all, I've spent a few weeks looking into magic damage, magic attack bonus, INT, magic accuracy and dINT and I'm afraid I'm struggling with understanding the difference with how all these stats work and affect magic.

I tried reading the page over and over but haven't really understood it well. Some parts I get to an extent, and then immediately miss the point:
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Magic_Damage


What I do know right now is:

  • Magic Accuracy affects if a debuff lands or how much potency a spell will hit for (iirc it decreases if macc is too low by segments e.g. 1/8, 1/4, etc), and this is compared against the target's magic evasion.




Otherwise I don't fully understand the following:

  • What dINT is and why / when it matters, and what INT is compared to it.

  • Difference between magic damage and magic attack bonus.

  • With all this, how to build for low-tier and high-tier nukes since they scale differently based on different stats (or dINT?)



Thanks! I'm hoping this helps other newbies too.
 Asura.Vyre
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By Asura.Vyre 2025-11-13 21:27:20
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As I understand it in simple terms:

dINT is like fSTR, but it checks vs. the Mob's INT stat(whereas STR goes against VIT). It's the difference between your INT and the Mob's. More INT more better for all tiers of nukes and any magic WS with a dINT variable.

Macc affects resist rates. Resist rates have tiers, and each level of being resisted cuts damage or effect potency in half, depending on what the resist roll check was for the mob. When you get enough of it, they only get one roll, so you'll almost always hit your highest numbers by going unresisted.

MAB is a stat that is compared to a mob's MDB(Magic Defense Bonus). Just like with Attack vs. Defense, it directly impacts how much damage your spells or magic WS will be capable of. If a mob has really high MDB, you want to lower their MDB and raise your MAB by a lot to directly raise your damage.

Magic Damage is a flat addition to your spell or magic WS damage. Think Naegling's +217 Magic Damage. This will add 217 damage to any of your nukes or magic WS, making it very valuable for low level spells and less valuable for high level ones, it's the smallest increase but an increase nonetheless.

When gearing for high end nuking, afaik, it goes something like INT > MAB > Magic Damage, wherein your Macc needs mostly matter for free nuking because you mostly nuke on MBs where Macc still matters but matters a lot less (and generally MAB gear will have a lot macc anyway).

But I'm no mage main at all, so someone else can probably explain it better.
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By spicychai 2025-11-13 22:13:01
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Wow this is an incredibly thorough answer, ty!