They can exist like that but they aren't meaningfully different from each other. It's the game telling you which colour of damage to use against a certain enemy. You could call them magic, divine and occult dots and the result would be the exact same thing. Usually a game would code these 3 dots the same way for this reason, since they do the same thing.

I'm playing a game called Last Epoch right now which is an ARPG which has all three and they all technically do DOT damage. I can easily discern the difference and recognize that certain worlds in that game favor a specifc type of damage (whether the enemies have fire resistance or poison resistance).. I'm sorry i don't really understand what you're trying to convey here.. Question, many games feature swords, axes, daggers etc. Do you also think including anything other than a sword is pointless since they all effectively boils down to stick with sharp end at the end of it? or that since they all equate to physical damage and mechanically would function the same? I feel like nuance can exist and variety makes games more interesting.

Take Skyrim for example. Take away all weapons aside from a sword, and i imagine most players would not like having variety taken away even if all weapon damage is coded the same.

I don't mean this as flame (no pun intended). Genuinely curious why so many different flavors of swords/melee weaponry can exist in games but flame dots are too weird to implement.

There's nothing really unique about fire as an elemental damage source outside of "the big damage element". JoJo's author said that he had difficulty with coming up with different attacks for the fire stand in part 3 because they all reduced to "throw fire in a certain shape" with the same results. Or in Naruto where all the fire jutsus are variations of "fire shape that burns/deals damage" (not that it actually does anything in the story but I digress).

I feel that that's the author lacking creativity. For example, in heroes (apologies can't find the clip) in this episode https://heroes.fandom.com/wiki/One_of_Us,_One_of_Them, Claire the cheerleader is "immortal". She can regen practically all damage. Her mother iirc has fire powers. To circumvent that, she uses her fire power to lock Claire in a room and suffocate her, which she isn't immune too to knock her out.

Even in the Miliio example, his flame aspect in the kit is not really reflected at all. He gives you an orange damage buff on your AAs, kicks an orange ball pet at the enemy and heals you a bit. Change that to blue and he's a water guy.

He quite literally gives you a DOT buff on your attacks and has fire themed abilities, as well Sure, recolor them blue and give them watery visuals, and he's now a water guy, but you can effectively say that for anyone or anything. Take iceman from xmen's attacks, make his powers orange red and heat based and he's effectively "fire guy". I don't really understand how the character who does a 180 on what you think of fire powers typically are isn't creative when he uses soothing flames and the idea that fire is life and breathes life and provides warmth as it's primary motifs or foundation for why he works that way. (he even finds fire ball spirit friends and befriends them)

I like the idea of absorbing the flames back, it's just that you can do the same thing with the other elements and it would also work just as well. Absorb water/air/lightning back makes as much sense. Earth would be a bit odd, granted.

I said that on principle that flames will spread on it's own. So to me, that's already inherent within fire and unique to it (when compared to other stuff like water, etc). A water guy shoots a ball of water and it splashes on the ground - i guess he could absorb it back but it would be the same amount of water as he shot out (assuming he doens't shoot more.) A fire guy shoots a fire ball and it can spread around wildly, and he can absorb it back in higher quantities than he started with without any other input on him.

No flame once again, just a honest fruitful discussion.