How to choose materia for each class?

I'm not sure if this is really a New Player thing since I already have raid-ready gear, but it seems to be a good place to ask

I've been searching a lot for what materias to meld on my Dragoon, but I find no answers. Not only that, I want to level and play other classes, and I feel this may happen again in the future

So the question is: how do I choose the materia to meld for my class? I know BLM needs skill speed, but that means melding it in every slot possible? Should I put some int for more damage, or determination, or crit?

Thanks for the help

The playerbase typically does research to find out which stats are the most important for a given class, usually referred to as "stat weights". For the most part yes, you want to stack as much of it as possible. Though, in cases like acc and skill/spellspeed, you may have a certain threshold you want to reach, and then avoid adding any more after that point.

Also, when it comes to main stats like int it's important to take into account stat caps. Every piece of armor has a maximum for each stat based on it's ilvl and slot. For HQ crafted gear, dungeon drops, and tomestone gear, most of the stats on there are at or near their cap, which means you won't be able to meld more intelligence. This also means you may need to meld the second-most important substat, such as melding crit onto BLM gear that is already capped on spellspeed.

The newest, player tested stat weights can be seen here: https://dervyxiv.wordpress.com/stat-weights/

As a DRG, you'll want certain amount of accuracy (700 for current Savage and extremes), a certain amount of skill speed (check guides to see what you need for your rotation), and then Crit > Det for your melds.

Crit is usually a good bet for most jobs followed by a secondary stat either skill speed or determination.
And blm is actually Spell Speed, perhaps just a typo on your part :)

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

Also, when it comes to main stats like int it's important to take into account stat caps. Every piece of armor has a maximum for each stat based on it's ilvl and slot. For HQ crafted gear, dungeon drops, and tomestone gear, most of the stats on there are at or near their cap, which means you won't be able to meld more intelligence. This also means you may need to meld the second-most important substat, such as melding crit onto BLM gear that is already capped on spellspeed.

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As of a couple patches ago, the melding window now shows all the relevant stat caps along with the gear's current values, so when planning to meld something, start by bringing up that window and selecting the gear, as though you were ready to meld something onto it. Then you can check the numbers at the bottom of the window to first see what you're able to meld. Do that before deciding what you want and collecting the materia for it.

As mentioned, your primary stat is likely to already be capped from the gear's initial stat boosts, in which case you can't meld any more. But if you have a piece where you can add more of your primary, go for it. The most common case for that is tanks, who have Vit as their real primary stat, but Str adds just as much to their damage (making it sort of like a pseudo-primary stat), so they'll sometimes get Vit jewelry and meld Str to it or vice-versa.

In some cases, it's possible to make NQ gear end up as good as HQ gear by melding more materia to it, though I'm not sure if that ever occurs with combat gear. (I know it can with certain DoH / DoL gear, but those only have three relevant stats to deal with, so the gear is maxed if you can get all three to their stat caps.) With combat gear, there are more relevant stats, so you'd likely end up having to give up a secondary stat meld in order to finish maxing out your primary with materia on NQ gear. (I'm not sure how useful that would ever be.)

I've heard spellspeed and crit for BLMs. For my SMN spellspeed is the biggest (can increase the amount of ticks in a DoT), and Crit/Det should be roughly equal, Since Crit Ruin III is nice, but Det adds so much to DoT and pet damage that I really don't understand the SMNs that can advocate a purely Crit build... :/

As for Dragoon? I honestly have no idea. Not many people go into the nitty-gritties of really kitting out their DRG Job. *comes back from googling*

So, STR > Crit> Det > VIT > SkillSpeed > DEX from what I can tell. Most of your gear will probably have STR capped out, so you check the crit and see if there's room for that, if not then just go down the list I guess? They say Skill Speed isn't the greatest because you can run into TP problems if your skills come up faster lol. Either way, you should probably have room for either Crit or Det since most of the time I see gear with one or the other. But which ever one you choose to prioritize (Crit/Det), there's not really a wrong answer since the both are a DPS increase. But most DRGs seem to swear by Crit builds.

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Originally Posted by SeriousxSarcasm

For my SMN spellspeed is the biggest (can increase the amount of ticks in a DoT)

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Actually, spell speed doesn't increase the number of ticks. It simply straight up increases the potency of DoTs and regens. A small difference, but it does mean it doesn't need to hit breakpoints get more ticks in, it's always useful.

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Originally Posted by SeriousxSarcasm

I've heard spellspeed and crit for BLMs. For my SMN spellspeed is the biggest (can increase the amount of ticks in a DoT), and Crit/Det should be roughly equal, Since Crit Ruin III is nice, but Det adds so much to DoT and pet damage that I really don't understand the SMNs that can advocate a purely Crit build... :/

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Actually, for SMN, the tested secondary stat weights are CRIT (0.287) > SpS (0.195) > DET (0.192).

If you use Ariyala's to compare different gear pieces and sets you can compare their stat weights (BiS solver --> Show stat weights).

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Originally Posted by Taika

Actually, for SMN, the tested secondary stat weights are CRIT (0.287) > SpS (0.195) > DET (0.192).

If you use Ariyala's to compare different gear pieces and sets you can compare their stat weights (BiS solver --> Show stat weights).

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Ok, I've gotta ask since no one seems to know, What is "stat weights"? Is that how much you get scaled from the numbers? Or is it just people saying "these ones are better"? 'Cause All the guides I look at say SpellSpeed is your biggest ally since the new game updates.My thinking is even with a lower scale the fact that you get more DoT ticks (which is where a vast majority of my DPS comes from) would make a huge difference. And it still doesn't discount Det needing equal attention since it raises your overall Damage, and Crit damage would then scale off of that damage as well (last I checked it was 1.5x more than a normal hit, but admittedly, it's not considered completely accurate). That's just where my reasoning took me, I'm not one to follow BiS religiously tbh lol since half the time you see people explaining why it's often not the best build.

Edit: What I mean by that is that from a purely number standpoint, BiS looks great, but when tested actually in game, there isn't much difference damage-wise over the course of a long fight if you go Det or Crit. Det gives you more stable and consistent damage, whereas Crit gives you big damage, but relies a lot on RNG to do it. Although it's not likely to happen, you could potentially go a whole fight with only one or two crits, and you've gimped your base damage by not putting anything into Det. In the end, most people agree that they work out to roughly the same amount of DPS when actually applied in game, and a balance of the 2 is what you want if your focus is on dealing consistent damage instead of trying for "server-top numbers."

(also just curious, but does anyone know if DoTs can even crit?)

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

Actually, spell speed doesn't increase the number of ticks. It simply straight up increases the potency of DoTs and regens. A small difference, but it does mean it doesn't need to hit breakpoints get more ticks in, it's always useful.

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Ohhhh, ok ty for clearing that up. :) I'm gonna double check/cross-reference those sources then, because if they got that wrong, they likely got other info wrong as well.