Best materia melds for PUG Players

[armandojc3]

So im not a raider and I am never a part of a well planed party. I pug 98% of my gamplay. I dont do extremes.

So my question is, what would be the best materia or materia priority for Ninja and Dragoon? In my situtation.

Thanks!.

[SpiritualOcean]

Many people prioritize crit because the more you have the more frequent AND more powerful your crits become.

[Sylvain]

Many people prioritize crit because the more you have the more frequent AND more powerful your crits become.

True

On the other hand, if all you do is pug normal content, melding materia is, imo, a huge waste of money.

Nothing in normal mode has any enrage and require at most "mediocre" dps to be done before people die of old age.
If anything you could put vit meld into your accessories to survive better, not that surviving normal mode would be hard, but still, it would probably keep you alive with one more vuln stack.

So, to summarize,
crit (in general) would be the best, but it's a waste of money as dps simply doesn't matter the slightest in normal mode as there are no enrage.

[Rongway]

a huge waste of money.

You can meld a full set of blue gear without buying materia. Cracked clusters are not hard to come by, and Lv70 dungeon mobs can drop VIes outright.

[whiskeybravo]

I don't think it matters whether you raid or not, there's empty spots on gear to put materia in. Now, if you're talking about penta-melding crafted gear or something, yea you should probably only invest in that if you're pushing for early clears of raid content or you just have an exorbitant amount of gil to spend.

So, with that being said, the best DPS stat to meld is going to be Crit. Followed by Direct Hit. What you're able to meld depends on what stats exist on the gear in question. If the gear already has max crit you won't be able to meld more, so you'd look at DH. If the piece is capped on both Crit and DH then you'd look at either Determination or Skill Speed. Determination would probably be the next best DPS stat to meld, but there are considerations if you are trying to achieve a certain GCD time or just like the feel of play at a particular skill speed (for example it's very jarring to go from a high-speed build to a slow one, so a bit of it is just personal preference.)

But general rule of thumb would be to cap Crit where you can, add DH if Crit is capped, and if both of those are capped your next best DPS stat is Determination but you may want skill speed to taste.