Attack and Strength the Big Mystery

[Sasagawa]

Ok Guys

As a veteran player of nearly all Final Fantasy titles to date I would like to just clarify something I have noticed in game as a general observation that I think a lot of archers will benefit from.

I hear alot about certain end game builds etc and having lots of archer buddies is a topic for debate alot of the time.

heres how I understand the relationship between attack and strength in FFXIV.

Strength = Potential Max Damage

ok so strength is the multiplier on damage potential I.e whats the maximum damage I can do with x weaponskill or x attack. True for all classes

Attack = Damage cap.

Basically Attack puts a cap on your damage potential, a low attack = low damage, this is true for all classes.

So i am an archer who has 175 strength with no attack food and no attack gear, basically I am wasting all that strength due to not having the required amount of attack to meet the potenital I have for damage.

Thus the use of attack food > then Str food.

All i can say is this will be true even after the 1.20 update you will start off with a base automated stat be given the option to augment with garnet rings etc but if your attack is not high enough you will never reach that damage peak.

Now Im not an archer I play glad (DD, I think not) but I have advised other DDs in my LS to test this theory for me and it indeed works.

The problem is that there is a constant trade off between Attack + Str then to make things even more complicated the amount of % extra damage your crits do is determined by your dex + str,

So what Im saying is that there is realistically three builds

An all rounder - DPS

A spike Damage -SPK

A Crit Damage with low weapon skill output.

Now I am not saying you will reach a cap i.e once str > then attack, what I am saying is that you will get diminishing returns and those points may be better spent elsewhere.

Something to think about anyways.

[Murugan]

No I would say it is more along the lines of STR affects base min damage, and ATK raises max damage ceiling.

I have tested bringing STR down to 74 for Divine effect on Shephards pie, my light shots were lower however my fully buffed light shot (trifurcate/3x multi) were on average about 15% higher. In the end it seemed to be a wash so I went back to a high STR model (mostly for parry on other classes) until the patch.

I may try it again just for kicks when our LS tries crazy big/fast Battle Regimens as my spike damage will be vastly more important then.

In general however you are right ATK>STR, but since there is no "STR food" I'm assuming you meant the option of taking STR down to 74 for divine bonus on shephard's pie and I'm not sure that is the clear cut winner (in all situations).