Can someone explain weapon stats?

Such as weapon damage/magic damage, auto-attack, delay, etc.

I've looked this up but all I've found were old threads still speculating on what all this means.

I'm particularly interested as to why, for a given ilvl, ranged weapons (BRD/MCH) are some 4-6 (can't recall atm) weapon damage lower than the other melee classes.

Honestly, it's very self explanatory. Weapon attack is the attack value of the weapon and if it says magic damage then it effects spells rather than physical attacks. Auto-attack is damage that your auto-attack does and delay is the time between auto-attacks. Very basic.

When it comes to BRD and MCH weapons being lower damage, that is slightly more involved. To put it simply, the devs believe that BRDs (there were no MCHs when this change was made) are able to output damage while being more mobile and offering more raid utility than other jobs made them a bit too good. As a trade off they lowered their weapon damage to balance them out.

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Originally Posted by Gokuhan

Honestly, it's very self explanatory. Weapon attack is the attack value of the weapon and if it says magic damage then it effects spells rather than physical attacks. Auto-attack is damage that your auto-attack does and delay is the time between auto-attacks. Very basic.

When it comes to BRD and MCH weapons being lower damage, that is slightly more involved. To put it simply, the devs believe that BRDs (there were no MCHs when this change was made) are able to output damage while being more mobile and offering more raid utility than other jobs made them a bit too good. As a trade off they lowered their weapon damage to balance them out.

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Yeah, but it's funny how people still expected BRD to do a huge chunk of high damage with Paeon or Ballad up back then.

I wouldn't mind a decent explanation on Skill Speed considering nearly every piece of equipment in a Dragoon's armory has a shit tone of skill speed.

Is it's only purpose to speed up oGCD skills charge rate?

More importantly what's the cut off for it's use. Like SkS points to charge time.

If it doesn't help a DRG over all then there is really no point in SkS > Det/Crit on gear.

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Originally Posted by Ninster

Such as weapon damage/magic damage, auto-attack, delay, etc.

I've looked this up but all I've found were old threads still speculating on what all this means.

I'm particularly interested as to why, for a given ilvl, ranged weapons (BRD/MCH) are some 4-6 (can't recall atm) weapon damage lower than the other melee classes.

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Some reading, the reason there's not a lot of info is the main prominent people who figured this stuff out got banned from OF.
https://dervyxiv.wordpress.com/
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...A-DPS-Paradigm

Rule of thumb is Weapon Damage = x10 Main stat = 10x secondary stats. That said, it does vary by job and secondary stat. Dervy's blog above is a great tool for a few of the jobs and to give you a good idea of how it works. Just remember if you hold back on a weapon with 2 less WD because it has CRIT instead of Skill Speed, you are effectively losing out on the equivalent of 200 CRIT.

So even though the secondary stats are still Crit>DET>SkS for DRG loosing weapon damage (and by extension STR) is actually Cheating me worse. Good to know. I'll still enjoy it when I have the gear to put Crit and Det bother over 600 with out using lesser items. (Still got my 190 Alex NM ring till I can .make a Crafted one)

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Originally Posted by Kaiser-Ace

So even though the secondary stats are still Crit>DET>SkS for DRG loosing weapon damage (and by extension STR) is actually Cheating me worse.

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That's it exactly, weapon damage trumps all. As far as Skill Speed is concerned, it's main purpose has always been to lower the OCD, however it's usefulness has always been up in the air and it can cause people to easily run out of TP during long fights, so in a recent patch it was changed to also give a slight boost DoT damage.

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Originally Posted by Kaiser-Ace

I wouldn't mind a decent explanation on Skill Speed considering nearly every piece of equipment in a Dragoon's armory has a shit tone of skill speed.

Is it's only purpose to speed up oGCD skills charge rate?

More importantly what's the cut off for it's use. Like SkS points to charge time.

If it doesn't help a DRG over all then there is really no point in SkS > Det/Crit on gear.

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Actually, it boosts the speed of GCD skills, not off-GCD skills. It also increases the damage per tick of DoT skills like Phlebotomize. That all said, the effect isn't that noticeable unless you stack a LOT of it, but if you DO stack a ton of it then your defining limit on DPS is your TP regeneration, so there is essentially a soft cap on usefullness.

In the end... it's nice, but it's really not as useful as crit or determination.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

..but if you DO stack a ton of it then your defining limit on DPS is your TP regeneration, so there is essentially a soft cap on usefulness.

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Not only do you run into the TP issues. Skill speed 'should be' at a soft spot so it allows GCD/oCD synergy. It can throw off the timings. Such as having Life Surge up every 2nd(?) Full Thrust. I am not sure about DRG new rotations since mine is among 4 non-60s. But at 50 I remember if I had too much SkS (and I did) it would come back up near Chaos Thrust and would sit on CD for a while 5 to 6 GCDs till I got to FT again.

Other examples would be WAR wants just enough to fit 9 GCDs within Berserk duration. On NIN if I have too much SkS I run into mistiming B4B and Duality later on in my rotation. Basically I delay B4B slightly and use it before an Aeolian Edge at some point and ~17s later 'supposedly' get to Duality another AE while B4B is still up. Too much skill speed and I will either have B4B fade before Duality CD is back up or reach AE before Duality is up (or both). NIN also runs into major mudra clipping MORE off the GCD issues with more SkS.

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Originally Posted by Ninster

Such as weapon damage/magic damage, auto-attack, delay, etc.

I've looked this up but all I've found were old threads still speculating on what all this means.

I'm particularly interested as to why, for a given ilvl, ranged weapons (BRD/MCH) are some 4-6 (can't recall atm) weapon damage lower than the other melee classes.

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As others have said WD/MD > Main Stat > Secondaries

To elaborate on a few things as well:
1. Lower WD on BRD/MCH Weapons does not cause them to have lower damage compared to their melee counterparts. The game is balanced around those stats regardless through the class Potency/s Rotations. How it does work though is it makes 1 point of WD better for BRD/MCH than it does for Melee.

i.e. 45 to 46 > 51 to 52

You can go here http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/ and look at the BiS Solver and compare the Melee WD values to BRD/MCH and you will notice that BRD/MCH is slightly higher **

** WD/MD values are compared to the value of 1 Main Stat

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Auto Attack:

Auto Attacks are based on a 100 Potency Attack value which is then broken down by the Delay value.

The base is 100 Potency on 3 Second intervals. So how that works is:

100 Potency/3 seconds * Delay (in this example we'll use a 2 Second Delay) = 66.67 Potency every 2 seconds.

100 Potency/3 * Delay (3.5 Delay) = 116.667 Potency every 3.5s

- Auto Attacks are not effected by Skill/Spell Speed or Increase Action Damage Traits.

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SPD and CRT have exponential gains. Basically they start out low but become better by stacking more.

DET has linear gains. It starts out strong and is always X points is X gain.

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Because of how stats work for each class there is no set X Stat is best.

Look at BLM - No Auto Attack damage and no Off-GCD damage skills, unlimited resources (MP) - Spell Speed is the best overall stat for BLM and only gets increasingly better from the 1st point.

MCH - No Auto Attack with Gauss Barrel on, but - Between the Turret (Turrets are not effected by Skill Speed) and the number of oGCD Damage skills that MCH has, it's average damage is made up of only 60% that would be effected by Skill Speed. That makes Skill Speed pretty bad for MCH even without Auto Attacks. So you would prioritize DET>CRT until CRT reaches +400 and then it's CRT>DET

To put it in it's simplest form: ignore stats and just go by ilvl. If something is higher ilvl it will be a bigger upgrade for you, regardless of if it has optimal stats or not. The only time to worry about stats is when comparing secondaries on equipment of the same ilvl, and even then it makes a very minor difference (think 1%).

This is why there is a lot of moaning about how boring the itemization in this game is. The stats are almost completely pointless...