Why does this game hide essential character info?

[Nora_of_Mira]

It just doesnt work in 14 because the stats dont have a consistant value. a few jobs have demonstrated it quite well over the course of the game since ARR.. where magicnumbers for skill or spell speed allow you to squeeze that extra heavy shot into something like a raging strikes window. but then suddenly you cant do that becasue now you dont have enough speed.... so you need to pile on even more speed just to do what you used to be able to do with less points in that stat...

in regards to the raw stat values from the past and now, yes that is correct. But the actual effect gained by the stats isnt computed by just raw addition (having twice as much Skill speed doesnt make 2x as fast etc) Like someone said before, our character level has to be in the equation somewhere that causes this "slower feeling" power gain.

The main thing i was taking from your post is skill/spell speed make no difference but DRG BiS currently has 3 skill speed tiers to choose from. IMO, it kind of has to be this way since we cant just level over expansions and somehow reach a 1.5 GCD.

however, if people expected that from HW to ShB we would be reaching ridiculously low GCD and super high crit rates, thats unfortunate. I cant see SE balancing it that way and we'll never be able to know how they change the potencies of stats from expansion to expansion, sadly.

Technically yes, But because Direct Hit only affects your chance to DH, while crit not only increases your chance to Critical but also increases the damage when you do crit, there is a point where the double dipping of crit becomes stronger than the DH increase point for point and becomes priority meld stat #1.(The above also doesn't apply to WAR, who wants det/CRT more than DH since all of their burst is guaranteed DH anyway)

At the beginning of Stormblood, it was the same. DH was king for tanks since they naturally couldn't get any, but midway through Sigmascape to the end of Alpha CRT became stronger point for point than DH. Some people have mathed it out to happen somewhere in the 3500 point range of crit, and several BiS builds for tanks are already melding crit to reach that point. The best simulated PLD builds for example are ditching several DH melds for CRT ones.

thanks, im not able to keep up with all the different tank melds atm as I'm still only gearing up DRG.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

So the fact that I know that I have to meld Direct Hit on my PLD to get the most DPS out of my gear is an exploit?

How?

I thought there was a point where crit overtakes direct hit for tanks in general for dps gains. Is that not the case?

[Nora_of_Mira]

I thought there was a point where crit overtakes direct hit for tanks in general for dps gains. Is that not the case?

the problem is that tank gear never has any native direct hit, so literally any direct hit melded is a DPS increase.

[MariaArvana]

the problem is that tank gear never has any native direct hit, so literally any direct hit melded is a DPS increase.

Technically yes, But because Direct Hit only affects your chance to DH, while crit not only increases your chance to Critical but also increases the damage when you do crit, there is a point where the double dipping of crit becomes stronger than the DH increase point for point and becomes priority meld stat #1.(The above also doesn't apply to WAR, who wants det/CRT more than DH since all of their burst is guaranteed DH anyway)

At the beginning of Stormblood, it was the same. DH was king for tanks since they naturally couldn't get any, but midway through Sigmascape to the end of Alpha CRT became stronger point for point than DH. Some people have mathed it out to happen somewhere in the 3500 point range of crit, and several BiS builds for tanks are already melding crit to reach that point. The best simulated PLD builds for example are ditching several DH melds for CRT ones.

snip

This is another 'technically' situation.

Because of the fact they need to stat squish every expansion to prevent players from hitting 100% crit rate/100% DH rate or GCDs of 1.5s, substats are still doing something, you just need more of it for the same effect. Main stats are relatively unaffected going from expansion to expansion. But at the end of the day, more stats is still making you stronger. You have a much higher chance to crit with 3500 than with 1600 at level 80, the stats are making you more powerful. The substats just operate more on a 'staircase you gradually ascend only to be pushed down it at the end of the expansion.' type of thing.

[Fhaerron]

I thought there was a point where crit overtakes direct hit for tanks in general for dps gains. Is that not the case?

In Stormblood, yes. The caps are different again now, probably in half a year we will need to use a mix of DH & Crit again. Really depends how the caps are going to be and how much we get of x stat on our gear.

WAR's do benefit from DET too IIRC. I don't really use WAR in savage so I don't keep updated on that job.

[Shurrikhan]

The interface does give some explanation as to what each stat does in general terms if you hover the cursor over it in the character screen. However, they're deliberately not going to explain in detail what the mathematics do under the hood as that sort of information players would then use to exploit the game deliberately. And even keeping it secret has not stopped players already doing just that. Unfortunately, you're not going to get an in-depth explanation from the development team about this I'm afraid.

Taking the (normally unnecessary) effort to be less ignorant about the core elements of one's game is not cheating.

Edit: You know what feels an awful lot like cheating, though? Developers hiding what stats do so they don't have to balance them well.

[KageTokage]

Being able to actually know the stat thresholds in games like WoW was really helpful as some stats like skill speed are genuinely useless until you hit the next breakpoint that actually lowers your GCD.

[Nora_of_Mira]

Being able to actually know the stat thresholds in games like WoW was really helpful as some stats like skill speed are genuinely useless until you hit the next breakpoint that actually lowers your GCD.

this is still the case, which is why The Balance exists to do all the testing and number crunching for the community.

[MomomiMomi]

It's been like this since FFXI. That's about 17 years. Don't expect any change.

The reasoning they gave back then was that they wanted the players to figure it out as a community. They still do that with a lot of things in the game today ("communicate with your fellow players to learn how to progress"), so it's likely still the same reasoning.

[Gurney]

It's been like this since FFXI. That's about 17 years. Don't expect any change.

The reasoning they gave back then was that they wanted the players to figure it out as a community. They still do that with a lot of things in the game today ("communicate with your fellow players to learn how to progress"), so it's likely still the same reasoning.

Also in 11 we did not have to worry about gear being outdated every few months, ex: Rajas ring was a lvl 30 ring but was the best TP ring to use even at lvl 75 and up. Yes each job had several type of gear sets to use depending on what they were doing. I had 80 inventory slots and when I played my PLD I only had 9 slots open to hold things due to all my gear sets I would use. Theory crafting in 11 was really part of the game if you did a lot of end game things, and you could go to BG and FFXIAH to find info on the best gear setups to use.