DPS Gear for PLD

[dramamine]

Your damage is more or less proportional to your STR and Det, with each point of STR being worth around 4 det. From everything I've read, crit/SS tend to have similar effects on your DPS output in practice (SS has a more measurable and consistent improvement for GCD skills with optimal timing but doesn't effect non-GCD DPS, crit effects everything, but the effect is much less significant). I'll assume 5 crit/SS is worth one STR since that's an estimate I've read a lot, even if I think that probably overvalues crit/SS.

Accessories are, unfortunately, the only real choice you can make to your gear trade decreased mitigation for increased damage output. Going full STR accessories adds 90 STR flat out (110 jewelry has 18STR per piece, times 5 pieces). The over-all effect may be slightly more/less than that depending on how your secondary stats change, but STR jewelry absolutely dwarfs any other change you could make.

Reallocating your bonus points to STR is the next best thing you can do, adding 30 STR.

Going full det/crit on your nexus can make a decent difference of about 10STR over the HA sword/shield.

The only i100 piece of armor that might improve your DPS over 110 gear is the Phlegethon's chest piece (lose 5 STR and 30 crit for 27 det and 26 SS... probably a wash, might be slightly better).

Selecting the best 110 DPS gear from the remaining armor pieces nets ~30 crit/ss and ~40 det. That's maybe 15 STR worth of extra damage output.

Added all up it can be pretty significant, but I think the take-away message is that it's definitely worth it to have a STR jewelry gearset, while the benefit of worrying about anything outside of the ilvl of your armor/weapons is much less significant.

The only other thing I'd consider is trying to get a tidal wave shield for doing fates/chests solo, just because an extra 10% block rate can help extend your TP over longer battles. It won't change your DPS by much, though.

[Rbstr]

Yep, it pretty much comes down to getting all the strength in you can.

Reallocating your bonus points to STR is the next best thing you can do, adding 30 STR.

It's actually more effective to swap the bonus points before you swap accessories. Bonus swaps Vit:Str 1:1, the accessories are 21:18 (7:6)
Of course you're probably dropping parry so it's a bit better than 7:6, but it's food for thought.

One important thing is that you make sure to minimize your accuracy to the cap (or just below if you use food) to make sure you're maximizing dps secondaries. I had to run significantly over cap for a while and finally being able to swap down ended up being a fairly large improvement.

[MythToken]

It's actually more effective to swap the bonus points before you swap accessories. Bonus swaps Vit:Str 1:1, the accessories are 21:18 (7:6)
Of course you're probably dropping parry so it's a bit better than 7:6, but it's food for thought.

Technically you are correct, except the accessories also have dps 2ndary gains on them as well, and come at far less of a cost to switch.

And if we are nitpicking i90 hq melds give you more vit/str/2ndary stats than anything else.

[RhazeCain]

5x i110 str jewelry= most Str
5x i110 vit jewelry= most HP
i90 pentameld jewelry= most total vit & str

Full vit to full crafted accessories trades 30 vit for 65 str. Just costs gil.