CRIT RATE vs DET vs TENACITY vs DIRECT HIT

[SyzzleSpark]

DH is best because it provides the most damage, which is what fight design in this game rewards. Damage/DPS>everything else, regardless of role. After DH is Det, then Ten (been a while since I checked scaling, Det may be roughly equal to Ten at this point). Crit will be better in the future when we have more of it. IIRC DH scales linearly, which is why it is so good now. Not sure about Det/Ten. Crit is exponential, so it gets better the more of it you have, but we don't have enough on gear right now to reach that breakpoint.

For the most part, the mitigation component of Tenacity is only useful during bleeding edge progression and even then only on fights that have very harsh HP/healing/mitigation checks. As soon as you get more HP/defense/magic defense through even just 1 or 2 minor left-side ilvl upgrades, the mitigation benefits of Ten become dated/extraneous.

I would say that even if you are a very casual player, Tenacity becomes useless compared to DH/Det the moment you clear a fight. Think of it like training wheels. This is why you will probably hear a lot of people telling you to use Tenacity builds on your gear, but always meld DH no matter what, because it will continue being useful even after you clear. If you meld Ten, eventually that money/time spent will be wasted, whereas melding DH, Det, or in the future, Crit, will continue being useful. You don't want to meld something that has a limited shelf life and depreciates over time.

I see you are a GLA/PLD so here is a PLD BiS I threw together to illustrate what I mean.

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/13KDK

This set favors pieces with Ten over all else. If there is no Ten on either the Genji/Lost Allagan pieces, pick whichever one has no Skill Speed. However all the melds are DH. A build like this would get you the best of both worlds if you're not aiming to be super hardcore.

For my builds, I usually simply default to whatever has no Skill Speed on it regardless of Tenacity, and then meld DH from there, but that is because I personally hate Skill Speed because of my latency (damn DC relocation) and because I play DRK.