This is a crafted work of fiction, but in any good work of fiction there is always an internal logic that is (or should be) internally consistent with itself. Stories that fail to maintain this usually suffer for it, unless the lack of consistency is the point (and obviously this is far from the case for FFXIV).
They've visibly put a lot of thought and time into making aether a big part of the game world, going so far as to make primals into beings made of pure aether and making an entire continent whose premise lies on "how do they compensate for a lack of aether". It goes without saying that aether is a large part of how combat works in the game world, and trying to make sense of it without consideration for it just isn't going to get you very far.
They've visibly put a lot of thought and time into making aether a big part of the game world, going so far as to make primals into beings made of pure aether and making an entire continent whose premise lies on "how do they compensate for a lack of aether". It goes without saying that aether is a large part of how combat works in the game world, and trying to make sense of it without consideration for it just isn't going to get you very far.
