Aether Explained- Spell Craft/Schools, Final Fantasy 14 

She certainly loves your support! I'm happy to have Catti's help.

This art is created for the videos?? It's so good, it looks like it's something from in the game or an art book or something

They were removed and Astrologians no longer have any direct connection to time magic in the lore now. But this definitely freed up the space for an actual Time Mage later down the line.

Ast lost a lot, but still has a lot to say about its regen style (and horoscope)! As well as their prep-style of casting earthly star and macro maintaining a time-based spellcasting. I usually see my ast as an odd sort of arcanist though for the spell glyphs in the sky and ink symbols on the cards. I'm not sure if they removed the quest boss's time freeze spell or not. 🤔

Y'shtola is what happens when you mix things like, Conjuration, Thaumaturgy, and a couple other spell schools into one pot. Meanwhile, the aetherotransformer that a Machinist uses isn't so much a spell school as it is a field of technology that deals with aether as a primary power source.

Brown mage? I played FF11 for many years but quit around the time Abyssea was released. I remember the heavy bias and advantages of Bards and Red Mages had.

Esuna falls within the cleansing/purifying category of the healing arts. While there are some diseases Esuna can't remove, it is extremely reliable at removing weaker ailments as well as effects that were recently applied. Historically there are plagues/curses that Esuna was powerless against.

Esuna doesn't heal everything, even in game. Buffs have a point upward and debuffs point down. If they've a blue bar they can be cleansed via esuna. Other than that they cannot.

Glad you've enjoyed the content! Always trying to decide on what to cover next. haha

Blue magic was from the new world we might visit someday

I think we will, it has potential to be an expansion.

That's more technology than actual magic. They aren't casting spells so much as they're letting a machine syphon their aether for them.

Well seeing as Sage combines Modern Medicine with Magic they're noticeably potent when compared to magical arts that're thousands of years old.

Yes. As the lore is currently presented. There's nothing stopping a powerful enough Dark Knight with a properly crafted/enchanted weapon from making said object float or channel Aether like a Noulith. Of course, given the weapon's size and weight it wouldn't be whizzing through the air like a Noulith, but in theory, it is entirely possible to possess similar traits.

Imagine your personal pool of aether like a cup of water that can be refilled. If you continue to try and cast magic after the cup has been emptied, your own life force gets used instead. This is the danger in using your own aether for spells with heavy costs.

@@SynodicScribe Sorry I think I phrased my question poorly. Here's what I meant. In the conjurer questline, they say using your own "life force" is dangerous. Question 1: Is "life force" the same thing as "personal aether"? Question 2 (if #1 is yes): Why is Raise physically harmful for conjurers and not for red mages, scholars and summoners, who use personal aether? I may just be overthinking. It's been bugging me for weeks though lol. I understand if you aren't able to answer. You probably get a ton of comments and questions every day. Thanks!

@@MinecraftMartin What the conjurer quest line was trying to explain is that using magic beyond your talent/skill will shorten your life or kill you. The little girl wanted to use only her own aether for everything. But the Pad'jal understand that healing magic demands more aether than any other school. So for someone so young and untrained to attempt such things would steadily kill her. This is why using ambient aether or complex mediums are necessary as a healer. To use anything less would exhaust/kill you given time.

You'll have to be more specific. "Dark Magic" is used to explain a variety of things. lol

@@SynodicScribe I mean the one from Dark knights x)

@@KalaamNozalys Of course! Their Dark Arts is extremely potent for being an extremely young spell school. We must understand why!

@@SynodicScribe Given the limited amount of research paper on the subject, would you recommend looking for an actual practitioner to perform a study ?

@@KalaamNozalys Seeing as I already dabble in the Dark Arts on a regular basis that wont be necessary. Been a DK main since Heavensward. haha

Mages are more common than you think! Like most things, it just take a lot of training and work to get the hang of it. Like the Thaumaturge quest proves, some people simply don't have a knack for magic, which it comes more naturally to others. Yet the kind of person in between those two types is the most common. Sure they might not be a born arch mage, but they're not talentless either.

Revives and Raises are the same thing. So no, they cannot bring back the dead.

Thx for the answer😀

@@WinterStorm28 I think “death” when we lose/have no hp left is just unconsciousness rather than dead.

@@mikoto7693 getting ripped to shreds and blown to bits is but a flesh wound to the WoL

Because I constantly see questions like. "Why didn't I just heal Haurchefant?!" So now people know why.

Skilled summoners can use the spells of the primals they killed as well

*snorts*

Glad to be of help!

The two iconic time magic (Jikuumahou) attack spells are already in the game: Meteor (and its lesser forms) is the Black Mage LB3 Gravity/Graviga is the Astrologian AoE spell. In fact, Astrologian is very much a Jikuumahoshi. One of the issues with the translation of the earlier japanese games is that the translation of Jikuumahoushi didn't really work with character limits in earlier games. So the correct translation for the job (and the magic type) in FF5, FFT, FFTA, and FF12 should be 'Spacetime Mage' which use 'Spacetime Magic' because Jikuu means 'Spacetime' not 'Time'. This is also why the job had spells like Meteor, and Gravity, and Float, and Reflect, to go along with the Haste/Slow/Stop/Quicks. And while astrologians might not be effectively using the Time aspect of the Job of Time Mage, they're definately heavily involved in the Space aspect of Time Mages.

​​@@DracoSuave Astrologian, especially pre-Shadowbringers was very much the stand in Time Mage. It had abilities that "stopped time" or allowed them to "extend time" for their buffs. i miss this aspect a lot, but with that said, Astro still stands in as the games Time Mage.

@@Prismatic_Nomad Yeah, but people gotta remember Time Mage is actually Space Magic too, and Astro is SOOOOO Space Magic. The fact that the Ishgardian Astrologian you meet in ARR at the observatory is literally wearing a FF14-ification of the OG Time Mage gear doesn't hurt.

@@DracoSuave that's fair. I just miss the more time aspected magics from previous games like slow and haste

@@Felrika Problem is, haste wrecks rotations, and slow doesn't work (as a game mechanic) in the combat system against anything larger than a dungeon trash mob, never mind stop and quick. So, what exactly is there for a time-based time mage to do?

You're overthinking it. Aether is just raw energy, what form that energy takes or supplies is up to the mage. An easy unaspected spell like Ruin of all things is just energy that's programmed to assail a target with lethal force. And since it's mostly made of raw magic it harms things differently than a physical strike would. That's really all there is to it.

@@SynodicScribe This might be totally off base, but I personally read ruin as being an attack of essentially dark, unaspected aether-- though rather complexly woven through arcanist geometries. We know that arcanist/scholar/summoner uses dark aether from art of war, which is fairly obviously meant to be using dark aether-- and looking at ruins, they generally seem to be dark aether confined into some type of shell. Of course, at the same time, it could just be intended as a sort of pure-neutral unaspected spell.

@@williamchristy9463 Honestly friend, I have no clue where you keep getting "dark aether" from, especially Art of War which is entirely unaspected. It's all just aether being shaped to fit different molds. Molds created by the incantations in one's book or method of spellcraft. If enough energy is thrust toward a target, it's going to hurt regardless of its polarity. Darkness has nothing to do with it.

@@SynodicScribe This deeply confuses me. Light and dark aren't aetheric aspects whatsoever. Unaspected refers to elemental aspecting. A white mages holy, for example, is also entirely unaspected. Same thing for everything in both the Paladin and Dark Knight reproitore, or foul and Xenoglossy. Light and dark, or umbral and astral, is an alignment which applies seperate from any aspecting on spells. That's made fairly obvious through both the common aether chart, and all depictions of unaspected magic throughout the game's history, including 1.0, for whatever that's worth. Light magic, as used by White mages and Paladins, is umbrally aligned unaspected magic. Dark magic, as used by Black mages, Dark Knights, and reapers is astrally aligned unaspected magic. Neither of these claims should be controversial. Just as tooltips tell you the magic arcanists perform is unaspected, they say the same thing for all light and dark magic, and have ever since 2.0. Considering that case, I don't see how it's unreasonable to argue that art of war, which is coded as a darkness-related spell-- literally a massive purple circle aoe, which looks like it was ripped straight from Dark Knight, is in fact a darkness related spell. In fact, it'd seem to be special pleading to argue that this is the one time the designers were sloppy, and designed a spell that looks like something it isn't. Especially when the class also uses bio, another sterotypically darkness related spell, which was explicitely darkness related in 1.0 (and several other games in the series, most notably FFXI), and even given to thaumaturges, whose entire shtick was the use of unaspected light-and-dark themed spells. And arcanist has healing, which is associated with light-related magic through paladin (and other games in the series), regardless if one wants to say it usually uses water aether in FFXIV. Both of these seem to imply that Arcanist/Scholar/Summoner is filling the same role as Scholar did in FFXI, as the grimoire weidling mage which can cast both white and black magic, implicitely if not explicitely. I broadly agree with you that the spell is molded by the incantations in the grimoire, obviously-- but what I'm saying is that I think it's astral-aligned aether, at least in part, that is being utilized in the construction of the spell. I certainly don't get why you put "Dark aether" in quotes, like it isn't just the darkness/astral equivalent of saying "Fire aether" Sorry for typing an essay, but I wanted to fully explain myself, since I project further pushback.

@@williamchristy9463 I feel like I explained everything as best I can in my videos. You're making points that're never explicitly said. But, I didn't create this lore, I simply tell it. So I'm not gonna pretend I'm an absolute authority. Experience the lore in whatever way you enjoy most my friend!

I know right! I really hope we get Geomancer at some time in the future.

Its possible. Because I think I've seen 1 in action in End walker DPS range role quest

Well technically multiple jobs are able to use a sliver of creation magic. Summoner, Scholar, Arcanist have their pets. Dark Knights can conjure a simulacrum. Red Mages can manifest weapons. Etc. The difference between these spells and true creation magic is that we don't have the aether to make these things permanent. Nothing is stopping you from creating something with magic, but as sundered beings these creations will only ever be fleeting.

I once posted a whole theory on Reddit that Crafting, and Synthesis specifically, is actually a more ritualized and crude form of Creation Magic. We can’t create things from nothing, but we sure can twist and shape raw materials, like creating a whole robe with two passes of a needle. It sparked a large discussion :)

Well I feel like I need to with all the players constantly asking. "Why didn't I heal Haurchefant?!" This. This right here is why.

@@SynodicScribe It's a bitter truth but we all have to accept it

And besides that, apparently one of the traits of that magic is that it retards healing spells. Apparently in the harder versions of the fight with Thordan he uses a similar attack to make healing spells much less efficient on the person hit with it. This is second hand information though that I learned from other players. But that scene after the Vault… so basically I use the versatility of starting off as an Arcanist to play as a Summoner during solo content but Scholar during group content. I didn’t intend on it but when I complained about the wait time for duties one of my FC buddies suggested that I unlock Sch and do the job quests to catch up (since I was about lvl 42 at the time) and just use Sch for instant queue pops. So I did just that, which is how I discovered my deep and abiding love for being the healer. So I got to lvl 50 pretty quickly before going to unlock conjurer then eventually white mage. Now both jobs are lvl 69 and 70 respectively as I work through Stormblood. I think I did do the Vault as a White Mage and I was so mad that she (my WoL) didn’t even try to save him, along with the crying and swearing that I’d make them pay for what they did even if I had to burn down this “Azys La” to the ground. But also by then I’d made peace with the fact FF14 gives us no player agency and that some cutscenes would just suck and I’d have to live with it. Think of all the times that the WoL has just stood there and let evil, or the enemy walk away or carry out their plan. For example tossing Nidhogg’s eyes down a frozen ravine; I wanted for my WoL to keep one so she always has a way to kill Ascians and Alphinaud could entrust the one he’s holding to Midgardsormr or Hvaesrelgyr for safekeeping. Or atop Baelsar’s Wall even if the Griffin had them, if the WoL had just shanked him right after the battle while he’s on his knees or immediately punted him off the edge right away, again crisis averted. There are other examples but these are the ones I remember clearly. Still, getting back on topic I do plan to give Astrologian and Sage a go at some point since I love healing but I admit that I also want to try Red and Black mages too, eventually.

It's very likely that they do, and they channel it through symbols and the like, the same way an Arcanist does. Other schools have already established that to rely purely on your own aether is a good way to cut your lifespan down, and I have to imagine that the amount of aether needed to summon even a facsimile of a Primal would be a very high cost, too much for one's own body alone. I can't say for certain, but that's just what makes sense to me.

Technically any job can draw upon ambient aether with the right training. It's simply that many jobs opt out of using ambient aether because of the eventual drain it can cause on the world. If a Summoner started to draw on Ambient Aether then their summons could exist for longer periods of time. But since that would be no different than actual primal summoning they typically don't do that.

Many jobs only use their own aether and aren't in any danger. It's the reckless and untrained use of personal aether that can shave years off of your life. So long as there is a method to your madness, then your personal pool of aether will recover on its own.

@@SynodicScribe Ah I see! Thank you for the answer! I just got curious because I always found the whole tome thing fascinating. Using runes and symbols like a riverbed to order aether and was wondering. Maybe they can or maybe they do use ambient aether but channel it through the 'code' you mentioned or runes to make their summons last long without constantly draining the ambient aether, like a valve. But then I realized that goes into pure theory craft x'D thank you still!

@@DemonMaluMintus You're very welcome!

The only thing calamitous about FFXIII was bad writing. lol

@@SynodicScribe Lol, how dare yeeee! xD

@@SniperKing-O I know what I said!

Glad you enjoyed ^^

Someone is gonna be ready for the pop quiz.

Ooooo. Nice lore explanation for your choices. Love to see it! ^^

That depends. Does said Black Mage know how to shape their aether in a way that would heal instead of harm? If they do understand, then no, nothing is stomping a black mage from being a healer. Technically. lmao

Time Mage will be abbreviated as TIM

Hoping for Green Mage, personally

Nope, healing magic can come in a variety of forms. For example, healing potions can easily be associated with the element of water.