Sub-Stats: Variety and Tuning

[Shurrikhan]

Personally, these are the only stat changes I'm itching to see:

Direct Hit

• Direct Hit chance growth per point reduced from 1% per 39.5 to 1% per 40. It therefore now contributes an added 1% of effective damage on average (4% chance of a bonus 25% damage), per 160 points, up from 155. This value, 160, will be the new standard for all secondary stats.
• Direct Hit can now also affect self-healing abilities such as Equilibrium.
  
  Determination
• Determination has been buffed slightly, to 1% of damage per 160 points of Determination. Direct Hit’s multiplicity with Critical Strike still gives it a slight lead over Determination, especially where benefitted by multiple simultaneous raid buffs, though Determination has the added benefit of affecting healing spells, such as Clemency.

Speed

• Skill Speed and Spell Speed combined into a single stat, Speed, which now affects Attack Speed, Auto-Attack Rate, Ability Damage*, and Periodic Damage.
  (*Does not affect the damage of abilities restricted only by resource generation, such as Shinten or Hellfrog Medium.)
• (Attack) Speed now additionally shortens animation times. What can double-weave at low Speed can now also double-weave at any amount of Speed.
• Speed now adjusts auto-attack rate, rather than auto-attack damage. This will improve its value to Paladin, Ninja, and Dark Knight.
• Speed now has linear returns, decreasing the character’s GCD by 1% of the remaining value for, at SB levels, every 160 Speed, rather than varying anywhere from 1% per 166 points at 2.49 seconds to under 130 by 1.9 seconds and below. This will decrease its power at very high amounts to oGCD-less classes but should ultimately make it more evenly useful for all jobs and at all stat levels.
• Speed's damage increase to periodic damage and the rate increase to auto-attacks now identically increase at 1% per 160 points, rather than following a unique modifier. In other words, that portion of contribution works identically to Determination.
• On the whole, Critical Hit and Direct Hit will still outpace Speed between rotational breakpoints when assuming perfect meta play, as the individual power of abilities will often be worth more than their nominal average power as through increased frequency, given that their best periods of use may be less frequent than access to the given skills, and due to the multiplicative nature of stacked raid buffs, but this should give Speed a far fairer chance. Put most simply, Speed over time allows for greater flexibility, while Critical Hit, especially, allows for highest possible maximization.
• Full List of abilities with damage and/or healing increased by Speed: Geirskogul, Nostrond, Jump, Spineshatter Dive, Dragonfire Dive, Mirage Dive; Steel Peak, Shoulder Tackle, Wind Tackle, Riddle of Wind, Fire Tackle, Earth Tackle, Howling Fist, Elixir Field; Hissatsu: Guren, Hissatsu: Seigan; Dream Within a Dream, Bhavacakra, Ninjutsu, Ten Chi Jin; Bloodletter, Rain of Death, Perfect Pitch, Empyreal Arrow, Sidewinder; Gauss Round, Richochet, Rook Overdrive, Bishop Overdrive, Flamethrower; Energy Drain, Bane (damage modifier), Fester, Painflare, Deathflare, Ahk Morn, <All Pet Commands, including Enkindles>; Fleche, Contre Sixte, Corps a Corps, Displacement; Assize, Tetragrammaton, Asylum; Lustrate, Indomitability, Exogitation, Energy Drain; Earthly Star, Essential Dignity.

Critical Hit

• Critical Hit now has effectively linear returns. Base cost per % of increased critical strike chance or critical strike damage bonus has been decreased, but costs now increase at the same rate by which critical strike chance and the critical strike damage bonus synergize for added returns per point, leaving its damage gains per point roughly equivalent to that of Direct Hit, Determination, and Speed at 160 points per % damage increase.
• Critical Hit still remains the lead stat for perfect play in meta compositions, but by an incredibly faint margin, while no longer falling short of Direct Hit at any point. This means it starts at identical value to Determination outside of raid buff compositions, identical value to Direct Hit in raid buff comps, and then gets faintly, faintly stronger at extreme amounts. Bards and Monks may be slightly curtailed at extreme levels of Critical Hit, as the linear scaling will pull back the effectiveness of Critical Hit at over ~2500 stat.

That said, I'd be even fine with losing Tenacity and Direct Hit, at least until such time as we can easily change one of the two secondary stats on each piece of gear, Tenacity is more significantly survival-oriented, and Direct Hit is more distinct from Critical Hit.

[Kabooa]

Personally, these are the only stat changes I'm itching to see.

I disagree with this block fundamentally because you work against your own post up there.

Speed still remains the only 'gameplay altering' stat. Everything else is just basically interchangeable with each other.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree with this block fundamentally because you work against your own post up there.

Speed still remains the only 'gameplay altering' stat. Everything else is just basically interchangeable with each other.

Ultimately, I'd like more than those suggested changes, but as I said in my first post, that won't be possible without context.

You'd need systems like some manner of Stagger, where by the rate at which damage is dealt does matter, which in turn requires greater control in each toolkit. (At present, if a DRG wants to DoT a newly arrived add, it can take up to 10 GCDs for the DRG to be allowed to do so without utterly screwing over his sustained damage, at which point... it's typically not worth applying at all. Outside of single-target fights, they are controlled by their rotation more than they control it. Their last leg for flexibility was removed when Lance Mastery buffed the second dragon weaponskill and F&C and WT's base damage were increased. Prior to that they could at least choose to trim a doublet of dragon skills, ending the combo at FT or CT, if the BotD growth would be excessive, giving a maximum of 6 GCDs until they could respond.)

You'd probably need variable cooling rates, whereby cooldowns could be made to "cool" faster, stripping a flat amount off their cooldowns (which allows them to still sync up later) but in a continuous fashion.

You'd probably want ways that elements could actually act differently from one another.

You'd probably want elemental resources that could be spent in multiple ways. Wind, for instance, could offer increased movement when activated, or -- automatically --- allow a queued skill to automatically cause you to teleport forward into range enough to complete a strike upon GCD refresh (i.e. without loss of uptime) at proportionate cost or a cast to complete itself early when movement would otherwise cancel it (just) short or completion, again at proportionate cost.

You'd probably want the ability to push back mobs a bit and to be pushed back by them, giving tank and melee toolkits and their relevant stats more to leverage.

You'd probably want potency-based (or, potency-to-percentile) status effects and (de)buffs, so that the synergist arsenal can be augmented by stats in different ways.

You'd almost certainly want a pandemic or roll-over mechanic, such as by causing replaced buffs or debuffs to add the square root of their duration to that of the same-effect application replacing it.

You'd want combat that actually allows for and encourages the infliction of status effects.

You'd want combat in which not everything can be meat-shielded or even drawn off the non-tanks such that they might actually value survival stats (especially if all stats, at least by role total, had diminishing returns so that you're encouraged to hybridize).

I can go on for many a step more...

Every single one of those things holds back a stat, set of stats, or a system as a whole involving stats that I'd love to see but literally cannot get meaningful returns or augmented gameplay from until the context is set.

Saying you want this stat or that, or that you want customization in forms X, Y, and Z, does nothing if the surrounding game cannot yet support them. Your time would likely be better directed looking at the necessary systems, the excuses or selling points by which they can be entered into the game, and the roadmap that can see the best results most quickly.