Should relic stats be tweeked?

[Almalexia]

If you don't consider 10%-20% of your damage significant, then the difference between 310 str to 350 str must also not be significant to you either... DPS on monk isn't as effective if the damage of the weapon is nerfing a fifth of your damage. I guess for you min/maxing is just maxing. If the GC claws didn't require as many sets at it did, it could easily become a better weapon than garuda.

The combo system renders AA a means to an end; weapon DMG has been reduced to a) the dividend of the DPS calculation, and b) base damage for Shoulder Tackle. Then again, it has probably been this way since 1.19, only we as a community never considered DPS as a factor in the damage calculation until it appeared as a weapon stat.

Unlike FFXI, where MNK relied on AA more than burst damage from WS, all DD in FFXIV have a fairly consistent AA:WS damage ratio. Even if you manage to botch several combos, WS damage will still take the majority of your parse. So, that "10-20%" of your damage is not significant, because there's 80-90% of your damage that's doing, well, most of the damage. And if losing DMG to raise DPS "nerfs a fifth of your damage," you're recouping it in WS damage where most of your damage is coming from in the first place.

To keep this relic related, I agree MNK relic is not the top of the heap. It's probably the "worst" of the relics, without knowing the power behind enhanced Shoulder Tackle. Refresh+5, MP+70 and evasion are junk. The ATK is generous and DPS is the best MNK can get, but the true worth of Sphairai among its relic brethren will be decided by tackle damage. The only reason to get Sphairai otherwise is because you enjoy and frequently use MNK.