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! :)

This is all very well informative! I haven’t ever tried Tanking before (I’ve never invested in an MMO as much as I have with FF14), partly because I play on my PS4, which can make it somewhat hard to target that one annoying enemy that decides to target the Healer instead of the Tank. Thankfully an AoE attack fixes that.


But back on topic, even though Tenacity sounds like it is more valuable, the invisible stats for it say otherwise. In truth it almost sounds useless. Sure, I do wish enemies do less damage to me since they sometimes do a ton on me, but that could be a number of things outside of my gear. I just also never expected to spec my Warrior Tank how I would my DPS classes.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

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.

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Honestly it sounds like to me that you’re better off speccing the gear to be for Gunbreaker, Dark Knight, and Paladin, since doing so would make three jobs be at their top potential, while Warrior would still be good overall. It would pretty much be if you want three jobs to be at their best versus only one.

Anyone else wish we can get multiple copies of the special gear? So we wouldn’t have to worry about replacing Materia? Or better yet let us have Materia set for certain jobs instead of stuck on the gear so we don’t have to worry about it affecting all the jobs the gear can be used for!

Please forgive me for asking this n00b question here: When it gets to melding I often see statements like "Crit -> Direct Hit -> Determination -> Tenacity". I'm not sure how to interpret this.
Does this mean: Meld as much Crit as you can, then meld as much DH as you can, then Det, then Ten?
Or is this related to the final stats like: Crit stat should be higher than DH, which should be higher than Det etc.?
Sometimes the gear itself seems to make the latter impossible. With my full equipped Rinascita gear (have only one Radiant's Ring, which is melded with +48 Crit, but everything else isn't melded yet) the stats are: 1673 Crit, 1612 Det, 861 Ten and only 400 DH. How in the world would I get DH up, so it exceeds Det?

[edit] Above is for my PLD. My warrior is only lvl56 now. One of the points is: at lvl56 you can remove materia without losing it. But on lvl90 you can't just swap materia. Which is the reason I didn't meld anything yet in that lvl90 gear.

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Originally Posted by Qujah

Please forgive me for asking this n00b question here: When it gets to melding I often see statements like "Crit -> Direct Hit -> Determination -> Tenacity". I'm not sure how to interpret this.
Does this mean: Meld as much Crit as you can, then meld as much DH as you can, then Det, then Ten?
Or is this related to the final stats like: Crit stat should be higher than DH, which should be higher than Det etc.?
Sometimes the gear itself seems to make the latter impossible. With my full equipped Rinascita gear (have only one Radiant's Ring, which is melded with +48 Crit, but everything else isn't melded yet) the stats are: 1673 Crit, 1612 Det, 861 Ten and only 400 DH. How in the world would I get DH up, so it exceeds Det?

[edit] Above is for my PLD. My warrior is only lvl56 now. One of the points is: at lvl56 you can remove materia without losing it. But on lvl90 you can't just swap materia. Which is the reason I didn't meld anything yet in that lvl90 gear.

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That's your melding priority. As much crit as possible, then direct hit if you can't fit crit in. Det is okay if you for some reason can't do either, tenacity should be avoided in ALL cases.

It's literally just crit if you can then direct hit which you always can since it doesn't exist on tank gear. Dunno why but the raid designers only care about testing your dps and nothing else so every tiny drop you can get counts
Used to need skill speed depending on ping but that's not such a big deal anymore

One thing you can do is the cheap augmented sets you can get with poetics at 60/70/80 can deck them out in nothing but tenacity since the materia for it are basically considered garbage and really cheap. They last you the whole 10 level quite easily and the ungodly amount of tenacity makes up for the terrible healers your likely to be paired with and then some

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Originally Posted by Qujah

Please forgive me for asking this n00b question here: When it gets to melding I often see statements like "Crit -> Direct Hit -> Determination -> Tenacity". I'm not sure how to interpret this.
Does this mean: Meld as much Crit as you can, then meld as much DH as you can, then Det, then Ten?
Or is this related to the final stats like: Crit stat should be higher than DH, which should be higher than Det etc.?
Sometimes the gear itself seems to make the latter impossible. With my full equipped Rinascita gear (have only one Radiant's Ring, which is melded with +48 Crit, but everything else isn't melded yet) the stats are: 1673 Crit, 1612 Det, 861 Ten and only 400 DH. How in the world would I get DH up, so it exceeds Det?

[edit] Above is for my PLD. My warrior is only lvl56 now. One of the points is: at lvl56 you can remove materia without losing it. But on lvl90 you can't just swap materia. Which is the reason I didn't meld anything yet in that lvl90 gear.

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As Videra said it is just your melding priority. Always meld crits first into everything you can meld it (if you end up overcapping on an item, a.i. you want to meld 36 crit into an item but it only has 20 left until it reaches the cap and you would lose 16 crit from that materia, then meld something else), then meld direct hit into everything you can't meld crit into.

Sometimes you want to meld Determination because it gives you more dps than Direct Hit due to stat tiers, but that's really just an optimization thing.
You can find the different stat tiers here if you actually care about that https://www.akhmorning.com/allagan-s...stats-overview

Thank you all, this explains a lot :)