Why does this game hide essential character info?

Its one of those weird equations that takes your level into consideration. Higher level means you need more of that stat to get the same effect. You can see this happen in Diablo 3 as well, though they go on depth and tell you what you get out of your current stat values.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Why were folks still farming Sky Gods in FFXI a decade after the content was added?

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They are still trying to get a Diorite to drop to pop Ullikummi, to finish off that Byakko pop set.

Welcome to why I don't do the gear treadmill in this game as much as I do in World of WarCraft and Elder Scrolls Online. It's buried under layers of obfuscation.

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Originally Posted by Ayuhra

Welcome to why I don't do the gear treadmill in this game as much as I do in World of WarCraft and Elder Scrolls Online. It's buried under layers of obfuscation.

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You've got nothing to do. If you're lazy it takes literally 30s to google "FFXIV the balance" and then another couple minutes to set up your class there and get the BiS list of gear for the tier with melds and everything. No need to reinvent the wheel. Same goes with optimized rotations and openers.

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Originally Posted by Nora_of_Mira

this is...very not true.

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Are you sure? GCDs for example aren't really any faster now even when players have skill/spell speeds in the thousands than they were way back in ARR.

You can go look at logs of like gordias savage for example and compare average crit rates from jobs to what the average crit rates were for midas, creator, delta, sigma, etc etc... and see they really don't change that much at all despite the stats getting higher and higher with every tier of gear..

Speed is the same thing. Why is it that if you get synced down to say 50 and lose over 1000 points of spell speed your flare cast or your fire 3 cast isn't really any slower?
Because the stat makes no real difference at all. It just keeps getting higher and higher and doesn't really do anything.

This is why they can't make stats transparent, because they have no consistent value or effect. If you make a comparison to FFXI as an earlier posted said it was exactly the same there. In as much that stats effects were hidden yes they were.
However the effects in FFXI were measurable and consistent. You could easily work out that the 15 dex stat on Byakkos Haidate would result in a 3.75% increase to your ninjas hit rate because stat effects were consistent 1 accuracy would always result in a 0.5% boost to your hit rate. 2 dex would always equate to 1 accuracy for a 1 handed weapon user. the same was true with pretty much every stat. although hidden the effects were measurable with a high degree of precision.

It just doesn't work in 14 because the stats don't have a consistent value. A few jobs have demonstrated it quite well over the course of the game since ARR.. Where magic numbers for skill or spell speed would allow you to squeeze that extra heavy shot into something like a raging strikes window. But then suddenly you can't do that anymore because now you don't have enough speed.... So you need to pile on even more speed stats just to do what you used to be able to do with less points in that same stat...

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Originally Posted by Nora_of_Mira

the problem is that tank gear never has any native direct hit, so literally any direct hit melded is a DPS increase.

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Technically yes, But because Direct Hit only affects your chance to DH, while crit not only increases your chance to Critical but also increases the damage when you do crit, there is a point where the double dipping of crit becomes stronger than the DH increase point for point and becomes priority meld stat #1.(The above also doesn't apply to WAR, who wants det/CRT more than DH since all of their burst is guaranteed DH anyway)

At the beginning of Stormblood, it was the same. DH was king for tanks since they naturally couldn't get any, but midway through Sigmascape to the end of Alpha CRT became stronger point for point than DH. Some people have mathed it out to happen somewhere in the 3500 point range of crit, and several BiS builds for tanks are already melding crit to reach that point. The best simulated PLD builds for example are ditching several DH melds for CRT ones.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

snip

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This is another 'technically' situation.

Because of the fact they need to stat squish every expansion to prevent players from hitting 100% crit rate/100% DH rate or GCDs of 1.5s, substats are still doing something, you just need more of it for the same effect. Main stats are relatively unaffected going from expansion to expansion. But at the end of the day, more stats is still making you stronger. You have a much higher chance to crit with 3500 than with 1600 at level 80, the stats are making you more powerful. The substats just operate more on a 'staircase you gradually ascend only to be pushed down it at the end of the expansion.' type of thing.

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Originally Posted by Nicodemus_Mercy

I thought there was a point where crit overtakes direct hit for tanks in general for dps gains. Is that not the case?

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In Stormblood, yes. The caps are different again now, probably in half a year we will need to use a mix of DH & Crit again. Really depends how the caps are going to be and how much we get of x stat on our gear.

WAR's do benefit from DET too IIRC. I don't really use WAR in savage so I don't keep updated on that job.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

It's been like this since FFXI. That's about 17 years. Don't expect any change.

The reasoning they gave back then was that they wanted the players to figure it out as a community. They still do that with a lot of things in the game today ("communicate with your fellow players to learn how to progress"), so it's likely still the same reasoning.

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They also do it because they want to limit game-breaking things being discovered. FFXI for example, the great TP nerf dealing with asuran fists with relic knuckles. Due to how h2h damage was calculated, this was a 34 damage weapon that gave 20 tp per fist, with 2 attacks per round. After getting tp (2-3 attack rounds, or an icarus wing), they would need to land 5/8 hits (62.5% accuracy) to get 100% tp. Since it was a 34 damage weapon, mnks could still do ~800 dmg with asuran fists, and then have tp to do it again, and again, and again, without ever stopping.

Now imagine if people had stats to crunch together. It could result in some unintended OPness. People mentioned that WoW shows such stats and I remember a fuss over Hunters stacking shaman gear/stats (?) and having a ridiculous arcane arrow.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

It just doesnt work in 14 because the stats dont have a consistant value. a few jobs have demonstrated it quite well over the course of the game since ARR.. where magicnumbers for skill or spell speed allow you to squeeze that extra heavy shot into something like a raging strikes window. but then suddenly you cant do that becasue now you dont have enough speed.... so you need to pile on even more speed just to do what you used to be able to do with less points in that stat...

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in regards to the raw stat values from the past and now, yes that is correct. But the actual effect gained by the stats isnt computed by just raw addition (having twice as much Skill speed doesnt make 2x as fast etc) Like someone said before, our character level has to be in the equation somewhere that causes this "slower feeling" power gain.

The main thing i was taking from your post is skill/spell speed make no difference but DRG BiS currently has 3 skill speed tiers to choose from. IMO, it kind of has to be this way since we cant just level over expansions and somehow reach a 1.5 GCD.

however, if people expected that from HW to ShB we would be reaching ridiculously low GCD and super high crit rates, thats unfortunate. I cant see SE balancing it that way and we'll never be able to know how they change the potencies of stats from expansion to expansion, sadly.

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Originally Posted by MariaArvana

Technically yes, But because Direct Hit only affects your chance to DH, while crit not only increases your chance to Critical but also increases the damage when you do crit, there is a point where the double dipping of crit becomes stronger than the DH increase point for point and becomes priority meld stat #1.(The above also doesn't apply to WAR, who wants det/CRT more than DH since all of their burst is guaranteed DH anyway)

At the beginning of Stormblood, it was the same. DH was king for tanks since they naturally couldn't get any, but midway through Sigmascape to the end of Alpha CRT became stronger point for point than DH. Some people have mathed it out to happen somewhere in the 3500 point range of crit, and several BiS builds for tanks are already melding crit to reach that point. The best simulated PLD builds for example are ditching several DH melds for CRT ones.

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thanks, im not able to keep up with all the different tank melds atm as I'm still only gearing up DRG.

Most of the time it doesn’t matter.

Best in slot here is highest iLevel in all but rare cases where there was a bad decision by the devs or where the crafted iLevel is below the max iLevel but extremely close, and you’re comparing a crafted overmeld with something and meed to actually look at the stats...

Usually if the craft gear has the same iLevel, the stats are the same.

So then you have melding. And for some jobs this is going to only make a 1% difference at best while for others it’s “can do rotation” vs “rotation won’t work”...
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So sometimes not knowing the stats is no issue and sometimes it’s vital...

I guess I’ve just argued myself out of my point...

At the least I would love to be able to see what my actual GCD is... that’s the most common place where you want a specific value not too high or too low...