Please read about Physical Levels and Removing them.

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

A hard cap is something different than what FFXIV has. It's attribute system has soft caps, not hard. Even when you hit 174 points, your stats can go over with gear and will do damn near to nothing for you. Even past 110 you start to get diminishing results. This is what a soft cap is. You can go past this point and your returns will make little difference between 110/115-174. Hard caps mean you CANNOT cross that stat enhancement. When you can, in FFXIV.

If you actually read the letters from the producer, forum posts, and recent interviews you'll know that the whole allotment system, modifiers, and skill effects will be simplified.

The problem right now is the modifiers are too complex and imbalanced and need that simplification...badly. I knew this was coming since beta when I saw how large the stat pool was. I'm just glad they will be doing something about it so we can actually start to make better sense of how to utilize different builds. People are mostly just maxing VIT of MND with little emphasis on anything else. It's boring.