Question regarding RDM stats and weapon choice.

[HaroldSaxon]

Do you have any source so I can support the claim? I would like to convince a RDM friend to not waste money on the weapon.

Nemekh from the Theoryjerks has said this on The Balance:

Main BiS for getting into raiding is pick the highest ilvl pieces, meld vit6 on right side and make sure to meld non spell speed dps6 melds into the remaining slots. Optimising on the micro level isn't really worth it when you're going to end up replacing and upgrading
Now with the Byakko vs crafted, the differences between are going to be very minor keeping into account the crit and dh on + overmelded stats vs the byakko stats, extra int and weapon damage
Keeping it simple, there's more wd, int and vit on the byakko. While RDM wants to minimise sps it is not a 0 value dps stat so people shouldn't treat it like the plague unless they are stacking so much their mana is barely lasting 5 minutes
Given that you already have the byakko, unless you have a ton of gil which I'd doubt given your being a newer player, don't worry too much about investing in a crafted rapier which will be more of a sidegrade
other crafted pieces like legs are solid but again gil and overmeld materia constraint consideration
Sigma normal gear is perfectly viable
The helm and hands are pretty much strict upgrades over their genji counterparts

It may reduce gcd but spell speed is still not a very good stat for Red Mage, you benefit far more with DH or Crit. Only reason i have some SS melded on my gear is i play both Red Mage and blm. (God i wish we had seperate gear)
Good ol SE did the same thing with weapons again like they did a SB launch give Rm stats moreso for blm (ss) and the blm stats ... ugh
Myself i went with the crafted weapon on Red (despite both Primal and tome weapon having slightly higher WD) it is not a waste of money, the tome weapon would be a waste tomes as you can probably clear sigmascape and then have the best weapon

I never said Spellspeed was good. I was just clarifying why Spellspeed isn't good on BLM, but its also not completely useless.

[Maero]

And i was just stating that spell speed is not good at all on Red Mage and although not useless it is almost to the point of being so

[Vorx]

Spell speeds are like others said not a main concern. An RDM's Jolt alone is faster casting then any magic, its like 1.something, it would be better to use a different Materia then waste space on spell speed.

[JohnnyDevo]

An RDM's Jolt alone is faster casting then any magic, its like 1.something

?

RDM's jolt is 2s cast 2.5s recast, like all of its other short-cast spells. And the 2.5s recast, which is what spell speed is most relevant for, is shared among all RDM spells.

To expand, though, on the real reason that spell speed is bad for red mage, it's very simple. Ogcd abilities and weaponskills are both unaffected by spell speed. Those put together make up about 30-35% of a red mage's damage. Therefore, 30-35% of red mage's damage simply doesn't benefit from spell speed. Whereas every other stat buffs 100% of red mage's damage. This is what puts spell speed in last place for red mage. Make note that spell speed is not a zero-sum or a negative stat for red mage, but it IS lowest value.