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.

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Originally Posted by SeriousxSarcasm

Ok, I've gotta ask since no one seems to know, What is "stat weights"?

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They are tested results of how much each stats have effect on your damage compared to each other. For example, SMN stat weights are:

• WD: 11.835
• INT: 1.000
• DET: 0.192
• CRT: 0.287
• SS: 0.195

The base number used as a starting point for the comparison is your main stat: INT. The value of INT is set as 1 and then all other stats are compared to it. For example, 1 point of weapon damage is worth 11.835 INT, 1 point of Crit is worth 0.287 INT, and 1 point of SpS is worth 0.195 INT.


Individual DoT and HoT ticks can crit, yes.

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Originally Posted by Taika

They are tested results of how much each stats have effect on your damage compared to each other. For example, SMN stat weights are:

• WD: 11.835
• INT: 1.000
• DET: 0.192
• CRT: 0.287
• SS: 0.195

The base number used as a starting point for the comparison is your main stat: INT. The value of INT is set as 1 and then all other stats are compared to it. For example, 1 point of weapon damage is worth 11.835 INT, 1 point of Crit is worth 0.287 INT, and 1 point of SpS is worth 0.195 INT.


Individual DoT and HoT ticks can crit, yes.

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Ok tyvm for explaining! (btw, sorry about the ramble-filled reply before. I scribbled it out at 6am just before work, and rereading it, it's an embarrassing pile of word barf LOL).
I might have to rethink my build, but no promises on a crit build. The OCD control freak in me cringes at the idea of building on such an RNG-based stat. D: I can imagine some fights go amazingly well, and other times your numbers are just complete poop. XP I'll see what works. My main goal is to maximize my DoTs, so SpS/Crit might work for that. Although if I go straight SpS/Det I'll have more sustained numbers that (assuming they stack on DoTs the way I assume they do) outweigh crit on it's own... hm.

I'll have to do some testing, after more research it doesn't look like other SMNs have figured out if the stability of Det outweighs the rng of crit by the end of a fight. I'm more interested in the practical application of stats over the numbers-on-paper part of it, if that makes any sense.

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Originally Posted by SeriousxSarcasm

I might have to rethink my build, but no promises on a crit build. The OCD control freak in me cringes at the idea of building on such an RNG-based stat.

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Do run a crit build, because not only does crit affect the frequency of critical hits but also damage done when you do crit which is HUGE. Over a long fight it will be MUCH better than det.

Think of it like this:
if you max out your det and it gives you an increase of 500 every hit, then you max out your crit and you crit 50% of the time between 800 and 1200 extra your median increase is going to be around 600 with crit vs det
these numbers are pulled directly out of my ... um, well - but crit will give you a much better bang for your buck. SE's RNG algorithm is pretty close to a true random and over a long fight this does even out to better numbers with higher crit; my advice is to follow those guides and you will see your DPS improve quite a bit

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Originally Posted by Llus

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But hear me out (I will also be pulling numbers out of my butt, because I haven't done the proper testing, but here is my reasoning). SMN damage isn't like BLM (or most other DPS Jobs). I will never see a 20K Fire IV crit. XD The best I can hope for is a 5K Ruin III LOL.

I believe the average crit rate is around 20%. So if I use Ruin III as an example, say I cast that 5 times when dreadwyrm comes up (base of 2000 would give me around a 3500 crit). Assuming RNG doesn't hate me, I should get one crit from that. 3.5+2+2+2+2 = 11.5K total. Now, lets say I load up on Det. Even if all it gives me is 2400 on Ruin III (maybe more, like I said, I haven't tested the numbers correctly), that is 11.5K, same amount as crit, and is a guaranteed number every time . And with the amount of little DPS ticks everywhere (all my DoTs, my pet damage, Ruin 1/2/3), it seems more reliable in the end, because what do I do with a bad run when nothing wants to crit?

Also what if I equal Crit/Det? If it give me a base attack of 2100, I assume crit would come out at 3675 instead of 3500. Perhaps it drops to a 15% hit rate, but with the amount of DoTs and everything else, it likely won't be a noticeable loss.

Like I said, I'm not ruling out Crit, because I'm sure Det doesn't give that high of a dmg boost, but I just need to test the evidence for myself. XD If/when I see a significant difference in damage output, I'm not going to purposely gimp myself just because I'm allergic to RNG. XD One point in favour of crit is that apparently my SpS buff from my pet comes when the pet Crits (didn't know that before reading the updated guides), so that was interesting.

Edit: also sorry OP, I sorta took over your thread. You probably know more about SMN stats than you ever wanted to LOL.

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Originally Posted by SeriousxSarcasm

But hear me out (I will also be pulling numbers out of my butt, because I haven't done the proper testing, but here is my reasoning). SMN damage isn't like BLM (or most other DPS Jobs). I will neI believe the average crit rate is around 20%. So if I use Ruin III as an example, say I cast that 5 times when dreadwyrm comes up (base of 2000 would give me around a 3500 crit). Assuming RNG doesn't hate me, I should get one crit from that. 3.5+2+2+2+2 = 11.5K total. Now, lets say I load up on Det. Even if all it gives me is 2400 on Ruin III (maybe more, like I said, I haven't tested the numbers correctly), that is 11.5K, same amount as crit, and is a guaranteed number every time . And with the amount of little DPS ticks everywhere (all my DoTs, my pet damage, Ruin 1/2/3), it seems more reliable in the end, because what do I do with a bad run when nothing wants to crit?

Like I said, I'm not ruling out Crit, but I need to test the evidence for myself. My goal isn't exactly server-top numbers, lol, too busy with irl to ever hope to get that good, so I thought the "safer" stats might work better for me.

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Thing is, Det doesn't affect your damage THAT much. Also you're forgetting skills like Deathflare, Painflare, Fester. A critical hit from these skills DO boost your damage significantly.

Also Spell speed has higher effect on DoTs damage than Det, by the way.

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Originally Posted by mosaicex

Thing is, Det doesn't affect your damage THAT much. Also you're forgetting skills like Deathflare, Painflare, Fester. A critical hit from these skills DO boost your damage significantly.

Also Spell speed has higher effect on DoTs damage than Det, by the way.

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I know, but ty! In an earlier post I was musing about a SpS/Crit build to maximize DoTs. :3 Lol sorry, I edited in after, probably right before you posted your reply (how I doubted Det gave that big of a dmg boost, so I'd have to look at it more).

Either way, I think so long as I know not to put Skill Speed on anything (I've seen it. D: Don't even laugh, I have seen casters do this), I'm not doing too badly lmao.

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Originally Posted by SeriousxSarcasm

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Crit doesn't JUST help your huge hits. It helps all your damage equally, including your DoT ticks. So, even if you don't have a single big WTF burst attack that you can crit for epic numbers doesn't mean it doesn't help. Also, it DOES even out to more damage over time if you boost crit over determination. Part of the reason is that crit not only boosts your rate, it also boosts how much a crit helps. You're essentially double dipping in a way.