Why doesn't food increase Strength, Mind or Dex?

It's a little awkward. Like, DD food will increase Skill speed, accuracy, critical chance. Spellcaster food increase Spell speed, piety, accuracy. And then there's these weird food that increases determination which nobody seems to like. Though, tank food increase vit and parry so that's not much of a problem.

Why! Why can't we just have flat damage increase! Isn't it bad enough that I can't make food materia and meld it into other foods?

Isn't determination your flat dmg rate? Someone feel free to correct me if i'm wrong ^^ But i would agree with more food with actual stat increases. My Dragoon friend pointed this out to me today and is a little sad that there is no Str increase food.

I hadn't really noticed this since I have just been boosting my crit rate with the bard, but heck learned something new I suppose

Determination increases out going damage and out going healing by a % i think, were as INT and STR add a set value to your damage e.g. 10 determination could add +0.1% dmg were as 10 STR could add +1 damage (using random numbers as an example so they are not correct).

Determination is indeed a flat-damage increase (but only to skills/spells, not to auto-attack).

The reason they don't have STR or DEX on food is so that every DPS class use the same food, and not have Bard-specific, and Lancer/Monk-specific foods.

There's already the whole variety with Determination+Speed, Determination+Crit, Crit+Speed, etc..

So you don't bust through stat caps probably

Did you know that their is a hidden cap on your base stats? For example, a Black mage has been pumping in nothing but int into his stats all game long. He get's a new chest piece and it has four spots for materia in it. He decides to add four int materia into his new chest piece. When he's done he sees that each materia says "+0 to int." This happens because he has hit the hidden cap on his int. It's better that food doesn't always give you raw stats. Something like determination and skill speed are much harder to max out.

Stats caps are for each individual gear piece, food has no effect on that, please don't mix up two different concepts :)

What's the point of skill speed if there's a global cooldown?

Honest question. It seems as though increasing the speed would have very limited benefits when you have to wait to use another skill anyway.

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Originally Posted by Docent

Stats caps are for each individual gear piece, food has no effect on that, please don't mix up two different concepts :)

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SE has control over how much base stat you can put on your character for balancing purposes, from attribute points to materia. No more stacking to the heavens like in 1.0 where you could put 5 materias of one base stat on all the gear you owned (save jewels) +food +potions. In 2.0 you stack to the cap that they've set on your whole character. You can't use food to blow through that.