Quote Originally Posted by Lucke View Post
Can't be DEX. They'd have to change the way DEX works then.
Whether STR or DEX determines your attack power is assigned arbitrarily. There is no "ranged attack power" and "melee attack power"; there is simply "attack power", and the stat that determines it could be whatever the devs feel like.

Furthermore, there is no difference between a "melee" attack used at 4y and one used at 15y (e.g. Piercing Talon is, from the point of view of your attributes, a melee attack even though it has a 15y range), just like there is no difference between a "ranged" attack with melee range (i.e. Repelling Shot) and a ranged attack with a 20y range. The attack types are basically assigned arbitrarily based upon the class itself (e.g. every attack used by a melee attacker is categorized as a melee attack even if it's not used in melee or if it has more in common with a magical ability than a physical ability, like Circle of Scorn or Flash) which is assigned entirely separately from what stat is used to determine the attack power of a given class.

As such, it's entirely possible for the devs to make it so that ROG/NIN uses DEX rather than STR without changing anything on the back end.

On top of all this, using the tooltips as an argument as to why ROG/NIN is going to use STR rather than DEX is confusing correlation for causation. It would make absolutely no sense for the devs to have the tooltip for DEX refer to increasing the attack power of some melee attackers if there are no melee attackers that use DEX in game currently even if they planned on adding a class that used DEX using melee class later on since it would just confuse people.

If anything, it makes more sense for the devs to make ROG/NIN use DEX instead of STR: the fundamental thing that a class's mainstat assignment determines (the assignment itself, not the mainstat) is who you share gear with. If ROG/NIN were to use STR, it would share STR gear with 2 other class/jobs while DEX gear would be the sole providence of ARC/BRDs.

As an aside, people like to bring up the whole "2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 melee DPS, 2 casters, 1 ranged" set up for the job spread largely because that's how the class/jobs are spread out according to the Limit Break system. A better way to look at the spread (from a design/composition standpoint) is "2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 melee DPS, 3 ranged DPS" (since BRD, SMN, and BLM all do DPS from range) and see the ROG/NIN as the class that evens out the melee/ranged disparity.