Advice for a new Warrior and Materia?

I just decided to give Tanking a try, and I started with Warrior, since I’ve seen that class pretty much solo the final boss in one of the lvl 90 dungeons, and because I’ve heard it was pretty newbie friendly.

So far everything has been fine and I have made it to lvl 60, but after deciding to get some materia for it, I’ve ran into an odd question and issue.

All of the guides I’ve read online at least somewhat conflict with either each other or from stats needed for a Tank, mainly Tenacity.

Some guides say to focus on Crits, Determination, and then Tenacity, saying Determination is better for the Tank. But Tenacity doesn’t only increase damage, healing, etc, it also deceases incoming damage. Some even said I should increase Dex! I know that’s false since Dex is only for Rouges, and I think Mechanists too.

So my question is what Materia would be best for the Warrior, or rather overall stats? I’ve read the return rate of Determination is better than Tenacity, but that’s just for damage. I do still have time before I reach lvl 90, but I want to plan ahead so I don’t enter a max level dungeon and get whooped because I didn’t spec properly. :p

The reason why tanks avoid Tenacity is because incoming damage is quite low in this game and tanks have plenty of skills to mitigate it. It's better to just kill the enemy faster by going for more DPS stats. Tenacity does increase damage dealt, but not by much as other stats.

However, unlike the other 3 tanks, Warriors value Tenacity slightly higher than Direct Hit due to having a number of skills give or have a 100% chance to Direct Crit (crit also increases the damage dealt by crits so it's still good).

Assuming you're only gearing for warrior and not share gear with other tanks, you'll want to value Crit > Det > Ten. Skill speed isn't really needed for Warriors.

Well firstly, when it comes to dungeons you can easily do them without melding materia. Not that it hurts but dungeons are easy enough that you can easily complete them without, so you don't have to worry about goofing up because you didn't meld correctly. Usually you start worrying about that when you step into Extreme/Savage.

WAR is kind of the odd tank out when it comes to melding materia, since usually it's Crit > DH = Det (and sometimes Skill speed to meet a certain threshold) for every other tank, but for WAR it's Crit > Det > Tenacity. I'll just copy the explanation from the balance for why DH is skipped.

"Why is Direct Hit not desireable?
Direct Hit as a stat only increases the DH Rate% of the skills, and not the damage.
As we have multiple skills that already have baked-in Direct Hit, any DH melds quickly lose value, giving Tenacity a chance to shine (dimly)."

In other words since WAR's biggest damage abilities already do guaranteed direct hits, DH adds no value to them. I'll also note Tenacity is usually useless for any of its effects, and only gets melded on WAR just to squeeze out an extra bit of damage rather than for its defensive effects (which is kind of unfortunate imo). Enemies generally don't hit hard enough to justify it.

So basically what I’m getting is that Tenacity is pretty much useless to for all of the Tank save for some minor things, so focus on damage Materia like I would for a DPS job. Which means focus on Critical and Determination overall, with Critical being the most important one.

Good to know for when I get to level 90! I know I don’t need it now, but since the ones for lvl 60 is a few hundred Gil, or even less than 200, per one, it wouldn’t hurt to get some.

Thanks for the replies! I got so confused when I saw that the guides were conflicting and some saying to focus on the damage Materia for a Tank job! You’d think Tenacity would be more important overall. I am glad I did choose the Warrior as my first Tank job too, since it’s pretty much just a tangy version of a DPS job, which I usually main and have five jobs at max

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Originally Posted by Espon

The reason why tanks avoid Tenacity is because incoming damage is quite low in this game and tanks have plenty of skills to mitigate it. It's better to just kill the enemy faster by going for more DPS stats. Tenacity does increase damage dealt, but not by much as other stats.

However, unlike the other 3 tanks, Warriors value Tenacity slightly higher than Direct Hit due to having a number of skills give or have a 100% chance to Direct Crit (crit also increases the damage dealt by crits so it's still good).

Assuming you're only gearing for warrior and not share gear with other tanks, you'll want to value Crit > Det > Ten. Skill speed isn't really needed for Warriors.

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Tenacity also doesn't scale as well as Critical Hit, Determination or Direct Hit.

That's pretty much the reason why it's an undesirable stat. Because Tenacity does 3 things at once, decrease damage taken, increase damage dealt and increase healing, it scales worse than stats that only do 1 thing. Problem is that both less damage taken and more healing are entirely unnecessary in the current combat design, which means the weaker scaling of Tenacity is just a flat out detriment.

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Originally Posted by Espon

The reason why tanks avoid Tenacity is because incoming damage is quite low in this game and tanks have plenty of skills to mitigate it. It's better to just kill the enemy faster by going for more DPS stats. Tenacity does increase damage dealt, but not by much as other stats.

However, unlike the other 3 tanks, Warriors value Tenacity slightly higher than Direct Hit due to having a number of skills give or have a 100% chance to Direct Crit (crit also increases the damage dealt by crits so it's still good).

Assuming you're only gearing for warrior and not share gear with other tanks, you'll want to value Crit > Det > Ten. Skill speed isn't really needed for Warriors.

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What if my other tanks shared the same gear wise? (Half of Lv90 augmented green gears and half of lv90 radiant tome gear) i mostly play warrior as well but sometimes i switch it up with my other lv90 tanks to play. Do i have to re-meld the materias? XD I think i meld materias wrong for my warrior >_< i went with DH and DET lol

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Originally Posted by Rayne6665

What if my other tanks shared the same gear wise? (Half of Lv90 augmented green gears and half of lv90 radiant tome gear) i mostly play warrior as well but sometimes i switch it up with my other lv90 tanks to play. Do i have to re-meld the materias? XD I think i meld materias wrong for my warrior >_< i went with DH and DET lol

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If you aren't doing ultimate or early savage raiding, then it really doesn't matter.

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Originally Posted by Rayne6665

What if my other tanks shared the same gear wise? (Half of Lv90 augmented green gears and half of lv90 radiant tome gear) i mostly play warrior as well but sometimes i switch it up with my other lv90 tanks to play. Do i have to re-meld the materias? XD I think i meld materias wrong for my warrior >_< i went with DH and DET lol

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If you have all tanks then you unfortunately need to decide which to prioritize. Do you want the better melds for GnB, PLD and DrK or the better melds for Warrior?
Because all other tanks need a certain amount of skill speed to make their rotations align properly and then go for Crit -> Direct Hit -> Determination -> Tenacity.

Direct Hit and Determination are very close in terms of how much dps you gain from them on paper, the reason Direct Hit is usually valued higher on all tanks except warrior is that it doesn't exist on tank gear naturally and going from 0% chance to get an extra 25% damage to currently roughly 13% chance is preferable to a few flat % more damage.




As Mikey said however, if you're just doing casual content and don't care all that much about your dps then it really doesn't matter. What I would keep in mind for the future is that Critical Hit is by far the most valuable substat (outside of necessary skill speed to make your rotation work) because it increases both your Critical Hit chance and your Critical Damage modifier.

Thanks guys, appreciated! :)