Stats And You!

[Deus]

This is simple stuff. You don't need to wait for developer confirmation when you have the capacity to test it yourself. It is incredibly surprising to me how they are not able to explain their own workings of STR and Attack Power, but the community can.

While I GREATLY respect you for going out there and testing yourself (you are right that laziness is a factor), you need to understand that eyeballing effects and proving your conclusions to the community differ by a huge amount of effort, time, and complexity. You can make theories all day long but without data to back it up, it will always be useless. It will take hours and need to conform to thorough and rigorous precision and empirical process, or it will not be accepted. I have defined a lot of these guidelines here:
Section III: Empirical Testing Guidelines

We never got official answers on the damage formula for FFXI. Even 10 years later we STILL do not have a good understanding. Players of this game even now with this hardcore base are unable to understand FFXIV's stats system. With new players, especially this generation of competitive MMOs, they are not going to accept FFXIV's obscure stat system or attempt Forbidden materia craft. If Square Enix wants players to go the extra 10 miles exploring forbidden materia craft and contributing to the game's economy, they need to define the incentive to do so. Otherwise it will just be endless forum bickering over who is right and who is wrong with regards to weights in the damage formula, and people will continue to waste their time and money investing in their gear. Everybody loses. So devs, please work on getting a formula out there so we can get a better understanding how to compare all these parameters.