Physical DPS (Drg in my case) and Materia

Simple question, what is considered more important or what ranking would you give them (1 being the best, 4 the worst):

Critical Hit Rate
Determination
Direct Hit Rate
Skill Speed

Also, when adding materia to equipment would you guys add to the stat that has no points allocated to it to bring it up or add to the ones that are almost maxed and max them out? Which would have a better impact on overall dps?

I went the route of adding materia that would max out stats (yes I know I didn't need 2 quickarm VIII's on the armguards, could have gone less since it only added +12).

What are your thoughts on which stats to improve for DPS?

Here is a screenshot of my current setup with the materia I have added.

https://i.imgur.com/BNXmxl1.png

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Originally Posted by Polorboy

Simple question, what is considered more important or what ranking would you give them (1 being the best, 4 the worst):

Critical Hit Rate
Determination
Direct Hit Rate
Skill Speed

Also, when adding materia to equipment would you guys add to the stat that has no points allocated to it to bring it up or add to the ones that are almost maxed and max them out? Which would have a better impact on overall dps?

I went the route of adding materia that would max out stats (yes I know I didn't need 2 quickarm VIII's on the armguards, could have gone less since it only added +12).

What are your thoughts on which stats to improve for DPS?

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The short answer is that it does not matter much - the difference between best and worst materia is usually just a few percent.
Skill speed can be useful in a few cases if it allows to weave in an extra ogcd attack between two normal attacks, but in most cases the base value from your stats is enough. And even when it is useful it is only a case of adding "enough" of it.
Skill speed also improves your Damage-over-Time abilities, but rarely enough to maatter.

Crit is more useful the more of it you have, since it improves both the chance of getting a critical hit, and the damage a critical hit makes. Dragoons have some abilties that give them a guaranteed critical hit, or improves your chance of getting a crit, so it might be worthwhile to stack up on Crit to make sure those attacks hit as hard as possible.

Direct Hit and Determination are both useful. DH increases your chance of getting a direct hit which makes 25% extra damage compared to normal, while Determination gives a small guaranteed boost to all your attacks.
On average DH tend to end up with a slightly bigger damage improvement, but that's just on average. Determination is better if you do not want to trust in luck.

If you try to max out a stat on your gear, or try to improve a low stat, that really does not matter at all.
What matters is your total stats summed up over all your gear - how you get there isn't important.

Trying to add materia beyond the maximum your gear supports is just a waste of stat points though. It can be a good choice in a few special cases, but usually not.