Materia Rework Suggestions

I just want to start off with this is not something that is necessary, however I think this could benefit the game in the long run by making all kinds of materia useful and not only 2 (this is mostly the situation right now).

The materia we have the in-game right now are not always going to be useful, especially if you want to do savage raid and/or probably the new criterion dungeon. right now the most useful materia is direct hit and critical hit materia, sometimes people opt to go for determination, however mostly people go for the first two.

skill-speed, spell-speed, tenacity and piety are not being used by the vast majority of the players in the game, you could argue that black mages go for spell-speed, but that is 1 class out of 19 classes (excluding blue mage), you could also make the argument that black mages probably don't go for it that much either, because of all the quick cast spells they have (ex swiftcast, triplecast, but also include things like foul).

I am obviously speaking for myself but also some other people I know that feels the choice of what to meld is not very interesting, as 9/10 times it will be crit or direct hit, I don't know what the solution is to this however.

I know that piety and tenacity was introduced as a replacement for parry and accuracy, however right now as the game is with the values of each substat, there is very little incentive to take those stats over crit, direct hit or determination as a healer and tank (with their respective stats)

I still think the current version of materia we have is completely serviceable, I just think that if there is a way to keep the same kind of class balance as we have now while making the other materia feel more in-line with the other ones, maybe via some random probability.

For example have piety not increase the regeneration rate of your healing over time, maybe change it so you have a chance to have an extra mini-heal or something along those lines, obviously not at the full potency, imaging have two 800 potency heals back to back through 1 cast.

Feel free to add to this post if there is anything you'd want, some ideas you have, or if you just want to discuss this.

Edit: 1. I do acknowledge that I may have exaggerated a bit in my post, however it does seem like everywhere you look people say, just meld critical strikes and direct hit, instead of going for any of the other materia, if I am wrong about this that's fine I'll can
admit when I'm wrong ^^
2. the accuracy materia was changed with determination as the stat, not piety, piety has been there for a long time.

these kind of suggestions don't really add any "variety" at all because there would be no choice in the matter, everyone would go for what causes the most damage and then you're back at square one again.

If you want "customization" or "variety" you play a single player offline RPG.

Here the only real "stat" that matters is PLAYER SKILL.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zaya

I am obviously speaking for myself but also some other people I know that feels the choice of what to meld is not very interesting, as 9/10 times it will be crit or direct hit, I don't know what the solution is to this however.

---

The choice is not very interesting because in FFXIV's combat, at the end of the day, damage reigns supreme, so that's what people min-max for.

It doesn't matter one iota what piety materia does to buff healing if encounters don't actually need that extra healing.

Piety was always a thing. Tenacity did replace parry, but accuracy was replaced with Determination.

Just, for clarification.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Piety was always a thing. Tenacity did replace parry, but accuracy was replaced with Determination.

Just, for clarification.

---

yes that was my bad, I did not remember that part, I just remembered tenacity and that there were some changes to replace accuracy. My bad there

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

The choice is not very interesting because in FFXIV's combat, at the end of the day, damage reigns supreme, so that's what people min-max for.

It doesn't matter one iota what piety materia does to buff healing if encounters don't actually need that extra healing.

---

I absolutely agree with that, I just chose piety materia as an example, however it wouldn't matter if the fight isn't healing intensive enough to warrant melding it, in the end I am aware that damage reigns supreme.

I guess my whole thought process was that it would be interesting to see where some changes to the materia that would lead to some variety in melding. fundamentally I believe FFXIV doesn't need to complicate itself more since it has a solid foundation to build upon and create fun systems.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Piety was always a thing. Tenacity did replace parry, but accuracy was replaced with Determination.

Just, for clarification.

---

Sorry to correct your correction, but for the sake of historical record it was Direct Hit that replaced Accuracy. Determination was always in ARR.

Bah, just have materia automatically add the best stat(s) with different particle effects and such added to your character for each. :p

One change that I think might be a good idea isn't a mechanical one, but a naming one. They could rename Materia to being Major Materia and Minor Materia for the strong and weak materia respectively. I think this could help remove confusion for newer players about why Materia 8s are better than Materia 9s. Also would be an excuse to restart the numbering since we are not at materia 10.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stepjam

One change that I think might be a good idea isn't a mechanical one, but a naming one. They could rename Materia to being Major Materia and Minor Materia for the strong and weak materia respectively. I think this could help remove confusion for newer players about why Materia 8s are better than Materia 9s. Also would be an excuse to restart the numbering since we are not at materia 10.

---

Major Materia I & Minor Materia I, followed by Major Materia II and Minor Materia II, and so on and so on through the expansions, would definitely be a more sensible naming convention than what we have now.

I Just want vitality. Or defence. My character seems to Always take more DMG then other same job/role.. prob cause they have equip with Better defenses, but dunno, seems so strange to me.. (and no.. i dont have vulnerability stacks)

I would point at Monster Hunter for how we should rework Sub-stats in FF14. Without even looking at what they even do, moving to a simple "This Materia Adds +1 to X" and streamlining the number to benefit is a benefit to clarity and thus a qualify of life improvement.

It also has the side advantage of allowing us to remove the various ranks of materia and just have 1 rank of materia, where the bonus it provides tapers off as player level improves relative to the gear they're wearing (For example, level 50 gear on a level 50 player is at full value, while a level 60 player in level 50 gear would get 0 value of the substats).

Expansions are divided into three tiers, and level caps hard reset. This means beyond main stat increases, each tier increase also increases how many substats gear has, in smaller to digest numbers that result in more significant increases per rank increase, instead of having to check an outside resource and having to worry about specific break points.

For example, all substats have 30 ranks, with arbitrary numbers not concerned about balancing the end result.

Critical Hits gain +1% critical strike per +1 Substat.

Haste (Combined Skill/Spellspeed) grants +.75% GCD reduction per +1 substat.

Determination grants +.5% damage per +1 substat.

This provides a clear readability advantage compared to just having "2183" of a particular stat, and the simplification of this approach can allow us to expand into more complex but still easily readable character building options, provided proper restrictions are in place, and if we don't worry too much about things being perfectly balanced.

Pentamelding would need a looking at, but that's for a deeper analysis, not a cursory proposition.