Is materia even that important? Or does everything just, for the most part, scale?

Scale to your level.....I ran out of space. I'm wondering if materia even makes a big enough difference to make them worth investing into.

Anyway, I was experimenting to see how big of a difference materia made with my healing. So with my Level 50 Conjurer I have a felt hat with Healing Potency+12 and a wand with Mind+35. I used Cura about 15 times and generally my cures were as low as 1128 and as high as 1500. I figured without my materia I should see a difference that would make the materia worth having right? Nope

Next thing I did was take off my hat and used a different wand (same wand, no materia). My heals did at least 1060 and at most around 1460(ish...can't remember the exact number.

So...my question is, are stats broken in the game? Am I missing something? I expected my cures to heal at least by 200+ HP with the materia I have. I'm a noob when it comes to materia so please help me understand.

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Originally Posted by KamikazeMan

So...my question is, are stats broken in the game?

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Bingo!

/10chars

I dont think its broken, so much to try prevent overpowering of like +200 mnd giving like 600+heal.

Or it could be broken idk.

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Originally Posted by viion

I dont think its broken, so much to try prevent overpowering of like +200 mnd giving like 600+heal.

Or it could be broken idk.

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If Materia would make the game <insert made up number> times easier, they should just make the enemies harder with materia in mind.

Except that most of my healing with and without materia is the same. It wasn't always a 100hp difference in healing. I think the game mostly scales the spell with your stats and increases it a tad bit with materia....at least with healing. If it's NOT broken then Healing Potency materia is virtually useless unless you can manage to get 2 HQ Healing Potency IV materia melded into a wand and hat (4 IV in all). It might have to do with the spell scaling that came with 1.20...maybe it knocked around the effect of certain materia.

I do think it helps. At least for mages... the int and attack magic potency is pretty clear to see.
However, don't blindly follow what other people do. and skill > all!
Such as + 60 attack magic potency give you 100 more dmg out of thunder (base is 700ish)
in the meantime, only give 100ish more dmg for thundara (base is 1350ish)
+60 int can expect 60ish more on thunder but 250 more for thundara combo
so int is good, but should con go int? I doubt it... there is no combo dmg for con...

Stats used to be broken in 1.18 but were revamped in 1.19. Many of the abilities and stats have been, again, altered in 1.20; however they are far from all "broken" as many on this forum assume.

The above poster Deli has graciously posted his data on the effect of MND and Healing Magic Skill on Cure/Cura. The tentative result is that if you were to place a +15 healer hand IV in your weapon and hat (+30 total), you would raise your Cura from about 1050 average to about 1150 average. This comes out to a rough 10% increase in your potency/efficiency. If you were to double socket some pieces, this effect would be even more noticeable.

The reason the OP has issues with his "eyeball testing" is that there is inherent variation in the amount of HP you cure in this game. The variation is roughly +/-5% of the true average, meaning your values can have quite a wide spread. If you consider the above example with 10% increase in potency, if you only cured yourself 2-3x in each set you may not even notice a difference. In addition, when the OP mentions doing 1500+ on a Cura, he's clearly spiked a "Critical" hit, it just doesn't appear in the log. These things need to be taken into account.

Beyond this, INT makes a huge difference on the damage of spells on higher level mobs. Alternatively MATK makes a huge difference on mobs at lower levels. These things are so obvious that you could even eyeball test them and notice a difference.

If you've gotten this far in the post and truly care about how stats work in this game, I suggest visiting BG forums. There is an ongoing stat testing thread there that may be of interest to some. While there is some good information on official forums, game mechanics and testing are not this forum's strong point. It is true some stats still don't "matter", but most do now. The community in XIV is very weak (due to the game essentially flopping and now currently attempting a revival under YoshiP). As a result, you will not find these formulas plastered on the main forums or on a wiki, but they do exist for those who care enough to check non-official forums.

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Originally Posted by Kaeko

If you've gotten this far in the post and truly care about how stats work in this game, I suggest visiting BG forums. There is an ongoing stat testing thread there that may be of interest to some.

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Awesome advice, thank you.

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Originally Posted by Kaeko

Stats used to be broken in 1.18 but were revamped in 1.19. Many of the abilities and stats have been, again, altered in 1.20; however they are far from all "broken" as many on this forum assume.

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As much as I respect your contributions to theorycrafting in this game, I'm going to consider stats "broken" until the day Santa runs become impossible. I mean, Ifrit and Moogle are both allegedly balanced around single-materia gear, yet Ifrit was completable in Santa suits, and I have no doubt that a Moogle version will be up before too long. If the stats matter so little that you can complete current end-game while effectively naked, something is broken. . .

It makes a difference, but not enough to justify wasting your time or money in it. There's a few reasons why not one big one is because Artifact Armor is coming out soon and it's very likely (given how SE updated XI the same path it's been updating XIV) that AF will replace all other gear in the game right now. Pure speculation though.

Ultimately in my opinion, playing better and knowing your job will accomplish more than materia. Also having more skills from other classes doesn't hurt at all.

Edit:
And also stats are broken in the way that you need A LOT to make any real difference. Still not as bad as 1.17 and stuff though.

As the above post said Skill > Stats even in games like WoW where stats really matter this is still the case.

Santa run is a good example of skill/experience being more important than stats. (well knowing where to stand and what to do)

One thing you didnt seems to consider is that it's possible to put multi materia on an item. Your exemple is with +12 healing magic potency (I don't take mnd in consideration since it doesnt make a big difference) and your healing are like 75-100+. (for info there's a min/max cure so that's why you don't get always 100 hp+).

Now consider it's possible (with hard work) to put 2-3 materia on an item. Healing materia goes on head and wand and the max one is +20 (so the +12 isnt good at all). So, someone, with work, can have, let's say, up to +40 healing on hand and wand (if he puts materia III III and IV). So if your healing +12 made +200hp/cure, that would mean the guy with about +80 healing potency would cure for about 1k-1.2kHP + /cure...

Think about it ^^

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

As much as I respect your contributions to theorycrafting in this game, I'm going to consider stats "broken" until the day Santa runs become impossible. I mean, Ifrit and Moogle are both allegedly balanced around single-materia gear, yet Ifrit was completable in Santa suits, and I have no doubt that a Moogle version will be up before too long. If the stats matter so little that you can complete current end-game while effectively naked, something is broken. . .

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Some stats are more potent than others for their effects. For example, stats for each class that give AA and damage bonuses are very effective and noticeable.

As for Ifrit in Santa suits, it would only ever matter for the physical hits Ifrit lands on the tank. Everything else is Fire magic based, and thus completely ignored the defense value of your gear. So while it means absolutely nothing in terms of survival when the DPS and healers in Ifrit wear full Santa, it makes the difference of higher damage taken on Ifrit's AA for the tank. Considering Ifrit's slow AA and leniency towards spamming Fire-based attacks, a skilled pair of healers can easily get you through it.

It sounds more impressive than it actually is.

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

Some stats are more potent than others for their effects. For example, stats for each class that give AA and damage bonuses are very effective and noticeable.

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

As for Ifrit in Santa suits, it would only ever matter for the physical hits Ifrit lands on the tank. Everything else is Fire magic based, and thus completely ignored the defense value of your gear. So while it means absolutely nothing in terms of survival when the DPS and healers in Ifrit wear full Santa, it makes the difference of higher damage taken on Ifrit's AA for the tank. Considering Ifrit's slow AA and leniency towards spamming Fire-based attacks, a skilled pair of healers can easily get you through it.

It sounds more impressive than it actually is.

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Did moogle nude when we thought it was going to be a wipe.... Gear is useless.

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Originally Posted by Jinko

As the above post said Skill > Stats even in games like WoW where stats really matter this is still the case.

Santa run is a good example of skill/experience being more important than stats. (well knowing where to stand and what to do)

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Skill > Stats in WoW, yes, but not to the point where you can do raid bosses naked.

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

Some stats are more potent than others for their effects. For example, stats for each class that give AA and damage bonuses are very effective and noticeable.

As for Ifrit in Santa suits, it would only ever matter for the physical hits Ifrit lands on the tank. Everything else is Fire magic based, and thus completely ignored the defense value of your gear. So while it means absolutely nothing in terms of survival when the DPS and healers in Ifrit wear full Santa, it makes the difference of higher damage taken on Ifrit's AA for the tank. Considering Ifrit's slow AA and leniency towards spamming Fire-based attacks, a skilled pair of healers can easily get you through it.

It sounds more impressive than it actually is.

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Odd, because I don't think it sounds particularly impressive. All it does is make me wonder what SE is trying for. I mean, do they really think a game is going to do well when wearing anything more than your underwear makes you over-geared for the current level of content?

Stats matter so little it's hilarious. I just lol at people who have spent millions to get double / triple melds and it makes such a small difference.

Although I bet if you have all 5-meld gear using Tier III's/IV's it would add up to a nice difference. But the time / money / luck to get 7-8 pieces of gear with 5 materia would be insane.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

Odd, because I don't think it sounds particularly impressive. All it does is make me wonder what SE is trying for. I mean, do they really think a game is going to do well when wearing anything more than your underwear makes you over-geared for the current level of content?

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Just because a few of the top skilled players in the game are able to do something "impressive" (when, as NoctisUmbra already pointed out, is hardly the case) after an extensive number of runs and overal good knowledge of certain encounters, it doesn't mean the whole thing is broken.

Defeat the next endgame "raid" naked, on a somewhat random party of people that haven't run the fight 50+ times, and then we talk about stats being useless as you say.

Uhhh... I posted this in another thread but I think it belongs in this one...

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SE spent a lot of time and effort to overhaul the stats in this game and they hardly make a difference, at least nothing too noticeable.

SE spent a lot of time and effort to introduce materia into the game and it does so little, that I don't find it to be worth wasting my time or effort to do anymore
-Not to mention forcing players to get rid of 'dated' gear and upgrade (this is minor though)

Players spend millions of gil on a single piece of materia and the value of it is minor in my opinion. You as a person put value in things, but to me it's like....
-Spray painting a rock Gold and fooling someone into buying it for a large sum of money

SE claims to have "balanced end game content" around gear + 1 materia... how so when I can top damage with no gear, healing materia hardly gives noticeable gains, and tanks really just need 'some defense'

Basically... the materia system is just a sham to drain money out of FFXIV because the effects on stats mean nothing. Spend all the millions of gil you'd like but your gains are so minute that one could argue it's not even worth the time / effort to obtain them. Although you could argue it's the players who put value in the materia not SE, to me all materia is worth about "tree fiddy" (south park refence ).

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Originally Posted by AdvancedWind

Defeat the next endgame "raid" naked, on a somewhat random party of people that haven't run the fight 50+ times, and then we talk about stats being useless as you say.

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This group is not going to lose because of gear. Their first and overwhelming problem will be lack of coordination and cohesion.

I ran a few test yesterday with 380 mind.

I did notice that cure 1's were healing for 600-620 (non crit) and cure 2's were healing for 1200-1280 (non crit).

So stacking mind does make a different but it could have diminishing returns and it could have a cap.

On a side note, +50 mind gave less healing potency then a +18 healing potency however the cures were still higher with the mind then the healing potency.

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Originally Posted by Meatdawg

On a side note, +50 mind gave less healing potency then a +18 healing potency however the cures were still higher with the mind then the healing potency.

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Interesting, Though i think this is a case of the actual weight of "x.pot stats" when it comes to the math magic being a relative unknown. The day when we know that 1 m.pot is worth x mind for curing will be a wonderful day.

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Originally Posted by viion

I dont think its broken, so much to try prevent overpowering of like +200 mnd giving like 600+heal.

Or it could be broken idk.

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Stats are no longer broken -- They've been fixed already; The problem is players don't know the exact soft and hard cap per level -- They're extremely high because the base stats are already pretty high (100+ per stat base) so until we figure out stat caps, people still say the stats are broken.

Even healing can critical, so there's just a lot of factors, plus there's the fact jobs are coming which will be further specialized so to say "materia doesn't matter" for example is incorrect because they certainly do matter, it's just the stat caps are unknown because through the limiting testings players have done it shows the benefit/diminish of + stats is pretty inconsistent at level cap (which is usually when diminishing returns are common) but not the benefit per level.

I think the issue seems to be geared more towards lack of difficult content rather than lack of stats actually doing something. To me, when someone tells me a stat is useless, they mean 380 of X and 200 of X will yield similar results. This is certainly not the case in 1.20 for most things, which is why I would argue that most stats aren't broken.

Now on the other hand, if you're going to argue that "stats are broken" because whether or not you have no/bad gear and good gear does not affect the outcome of endgame content - then I don't really have a clear answer for you. When you argue by saying "Santa Hat Ifrit" that just tells me Ifrit is easy... not that DEF does nothing. Because it clearly does do something.

I am talking about 1s ans 0s. If you ignore the difficulty of content; or the need for good gear to perform endgame tasks, then stats clearly do make a noticeable, "parse"-able, testable difference. If you wish to extend the argument towards "is good gear necessary to complete content?" then I see your point, because the endgame content is pretty easy, even naked once you understand the fights. Looking back at the OP's thread title I can see why we would argue both ways here.

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To throw in some actual constructive criticism since we're essentially entering a paid FFXIV beta starting tomorrow...

Why do the TP gain and ACC formulas change in instanced fights?
By making it so you never miss and always gain an inflated amount of TP in these fights, you are completely removing the purpose of ACC and the concept of TP conservation. It's extremely rare to see any melee care about ACC, despite the fact that on non-instanced high level mobs, it is extremely critical. I promise people would care more about ACC if they allowed players to miss instanced targets. Also, it doesn't make much sense that on Ifrit, I can toss a Bronze Javelin for literally 1 damage and get 500 TP. Why did they fix it so that all hits >0 on Ifrit give 500 TP?

Stats certainly arent broken, they add up when they are stacked across various gear or double/ triple melded. Gear with improved stats does help but it certainly isnt "needed". IMO they should boost the effect of stats as well as mob difficulties. Just needs tweaking, but its nice to have something that works vs. what we had before where only def,hp, and mp mattered.

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Originally Posted by Kaeko

To throw in some actual constructive criticism since we're essentially entering a paid FFXIV beta starting tomorrow...

Why do the TP gain and ACC formulas change in instanced fights?
By making it so you never miss and always gain an inflated amount of TP in these fights, you are completely removing the purpose of ACC and the concept of TP conservation. It's extremely rare to see any melee care about ACC, despite the fact that on non-instanced high level mobs, it is extremely critical. I promise people would care more about ACC if they allowed players to miss instanced targets. Also, it doesn't make much sense that on Ifrit, I can toss a Bronze Javelin for literally 1 damage and get 500 TP. Why did they fix it so that all hits >0 on Ifrit give 500 TP?

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You bring up a good point on acc.

I find it odd practice to allow mages to be resisted and need mag acc gear but at the same time mele never miss. (On primal battles)

Mele should miss on the primal fights and it just screams more of lazy programming then anything else. I believe they will introduce "misses" once jobs are in play to even out for the better abilities we will get.

Speaking of, why does lancer have 2 abilities that involve missing first, seems pointless

as far as those + healing potency materias go they are not +%s which is a big fat fail. SE needs to learn what +12 means is it +12 health cured ? is it a possible +12% boost? is it a .000012 chance to increase yer amount cured? its pretty damn retarded (.) same goes for the + dmg potency magic materia and the elemental resist materiat he affects can be so nill they are a waste of a good HP or MP materia lol.

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Originally Posted by Hikozaemon

as far as those + healing potency materias go they are not +%s which is a big fat fail. SE needs to learn what +12 means is it +12 health cured ? is it a possible +12% boost? is it a .000012 chance to increase yer amount cured? its pretty damn retarded (.) same goes for the + dmg potency magic materia and the elemental resist materiat he affects can be so nill they are a waste of a good HP or MP materia lol.

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...? SE needs to learn what +12 means? They made the game, they know what +12 means lol. I think you mean you need to learn what +12 means, you can try to blame SE for a lot of things, but this is purely a player problem (understanding formulas), not SE's.

Can't speak for level 50 vs endgame mobs, but me and a friend have been leveling thaums together from level 1 and paying very close attention to INT and Magic Attack Bonus. Even just a few INT/MAB makes a major difference against exp mobs, especially those of comparable or slightly higher level.

I think a lot of you are expecting to see MAJOR number increases from just a small stat boost, but forget to look at what small increases can score you. Sure, having a ton of INT gear might not increase your magic attacks by say... double; however, if it pushes you to the point where you're killing a mob in 2 nukes instead of 3 you could say you improved your damage by a good third. Unless it's giving you marked increases in the amount of mobs you kill (or live through, etc) there's no real point in having more than that.

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Originally Posted by AdvancedWind

Defeat the next endgame "raid" naked, on a somewhat random party of people that haven't run the fight 50+ times, and then we talk about stats being useless as you say.

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Originally Posted by Fated

This group is not going to lose because of gear. Their first and overwhelming problem will be lack of coordination and cohesion.

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^^This. As it stands, this game has zero gear checks. I'm not asking for anything as obvious as a Patchwerk, but it'd be damn nice to have something where the gear is actually essential.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

^^This. As it stands, this game has zero gear checks. I'm not asking for anything as obvious as a Patchwerk, but it'd be damn nice to have something where the gear is actually essential.

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-Is still looking for testings that shows concerete evidence that stats and materia doesn't matter-

The only evidence that exists still proves it does matter. Even in my testing stats have an obvious effect, it's just not a huge effect like what +10 accuracy did for you in Final Fantasy XI.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

-Is still looking for testings that shows concerete evidence that stats and materia doesn't matter-

The only evidence that exists still proves it does matter. Even in my testing stats have an obvious effect, it's just not a huge effect like what +10 accuracy did for you in Final Fantasy XI.

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I'm not saying the gear has no effect. I'm saying the gear is overkill, because you can beat the content in your undies.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

I'm not saying the gear has no effect. I'm saying the gear is overkill, because you can beat the content in your undies.

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That's a question of content design, not gear. So...

Stats are not broken. There seem to be attribute caps (these were discussed way back when, around launch) with no further information released.

Take LNC for example. STR and PIE increase AA damage. Cool. But stack too much and you see no difference. Why? Diminishing returns.

Solution: Slot something else like HP, DEX or MEva. Problem solved.

Stats are not broken. Materia is not broken. Players' understanding, perhaps yes. Explicit hand-holding from SE is missing... what do you expect?

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

That's a question of content design, not gear. So...

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There are multiple ways for something to be broken. Just because the stats affect what they're intended to doesn't mean there's not something wrong with it. If the class default stats are powerful enough to clear the content, there's an issue.