Critical hit! Direct hit!

[ReiMakoto]

More or less yes, you can get rediculously low GCD compared to other classes on monk and sam. Youll get issues with allignment and double weaving as a result, but its something you can do. There is a point where to much SKS will cause a DPS loss simply because itll start cutting into that Crit/DH, but its usually still a plausible build. You just wont have as good parses as someone whos optimized.

The game does allow for some of these shenanigans, and it is fun, but it comes with caveats. Youll definitely encounter people who will call you trash for going that high in SKS because to them, min maxing dps is the only way to play the game.

I do not think this is true at all, I ran meme speed DRK in SB for a long time and no one ever commented on it, no one cares, people would only every call you trash if you try to claim its better.

[Barraind]

Anyone played a game where stats felt fun and interesting? If so, what made them that way?

Everquest's stat system for a few expansions (PoP through Dragons) was fantastic if you werent a pure melee class.

As a Paladin, figuring out gear upgrades was a game in itself. I had to balance (get as much as possible):

Secondary/tertiary effects:

ATK - Raw Attack. Capped at 300, items gave between 10 and 50.
Flowing Thought - Mana Regen. Capped at 15, items gave anywhere from 1 to 5.
Shielding - Flat damage reduction from a mob DB (mob damage base was DB + DI* (random 1-20 modified by its atk vs targets AC)
Avoidance - Chance to avoid. Capped at 20 (I think), items gave between 1 and 6 per piece.
Combat Effect - Increased Proc Rate, capped at ???, only 1 or 2 items had that stat at the time.
Strikethrough - Mitigating enemy parry/dodge/block. Capped at ?, really rare at the time.
Haste - 1 source, either 41 or 46%


Base stats:

Weapons with weapon procs (Either a group heal proc or high threat proc [Armor debuff, dd with a stun component, or straight +threat] for tanking, and then either no proc, or a DD without added threat for times not actively tanking)
The highest AC possible
resists (5 of them) - Capped at 550, gear at this point capped everything by the time you had half your gear though.
Raw Stats - This mattered a couple times while you started the gear process, but you ended up capping them all even with the AA's and buffs that increased your caps by the time you got partially through gearing. Only a couple ever mattered anyway.


Focus effects:

Beneficial Mana Preservation
Beneficial Spell Range (for heals)
Beneficial Duration (for buffs and HoT's)
Improved Healing
Detrimental Mana Preservation (This was only important for 1 expansion, because they changed it to only work on spells with a cast ime of 3 sec or longer, and the only detrimental spells paladins or shadowknights ever cast were instant or sub-1 second)
Detrimental Spell Haste (see det mana pres)
Det Spell Range (to tag things farther away, or to be farther when CC'ing them)

Some of those were found in focus effects that combined beneficial and detrimental, but at a lower %, so you might have Mana Preservation AND Beneficial Mana Preservation, because one covered detrimental and the other was for beneficial.

In that era, gear would have between 1 and 3 secondary / tertiary effects on them, and (on about half of the items) either a focus effect or an effect that was 5/1, 10/2, 15/3 or 20/4 ATK/HP Regen.


Everything did different things, there was LOTS of debate about which of the possible gearing options was the best overall (it was impossible to cap everything needed for your class with all the focus effects you wanted), so we had to weigh some amount of shielding vs avoidance, some atk vs ac, some amount of damage/threat generation vs survivability, ect.

You had to figure out what items that dropped were upgrades you could use right away, what items needed you to pick up other items first, which final boss items fromt he last expansion were still BiS, which raid zone you needed which pieces from.

Then they started putting atk, mana regen, spell damage, ect on every piece of gear and rolled half the stats into other stats. You now just treadmill gear from one set at the start of an expansion to a new one at the end.

[Melichoir]

Makin’ it visible and increasin’ the value of secondary stats (an’ materia even moreso) stat wise would do a lot ta make stats more fun, I think. Fer a start.

Knowing how the stats scale is both a blessing and curse, cause itll help you plan stuff but it also means people will min//max. To make stats more fun, you have to conjunction it with skill flexibility and stat ability. Meaning skills have to be open to be affected by stats in multiple ways while also giving each stat multiple functions. Take RO for example, AGI gave you ASPD and EVASION, Dex gave you HIT + Damage minimum + DAMAGE for ranged weaponry, VIT was HP + Damage reduction, STR was melee damage + Weight limits, Luck was Perfect Evasion + Crit Rate, etc. Stats had multiple effects so you could pump stats that would normally be good for certain classes into another class. Priests relied on Int/Vit typically for bigger heals and more HP. But you could pump STR, Agi, Luck, and build a high aspd melee priest that was a buff god with decent sustain. Stats would need to have multipurpose uses and skills within classes that could take advantage of those uses and allow for customization.

I do not think this is true at all, I ran meme speed DRK in SB for a long time and no one ever commented on it, no one cares, people would only every call you trash if you try to claim its better.

I shouldve added the qualifier of "some", but yes, you will run into people who will hate on you for running Speed meme DRK or Sam cause its not optimal. This wont be everyone, but these are people who do exist.

[RitsukoSonoda]

More or less yes, you can get rediculously low GCD compared to other classes on monk and sam. Youll get issues with allignment and double weaving as a result, but its something you can do. There is a point where to much SKS will cause a DPS loss simply because itll start cutting into that Crit/DH, but its usually still a plausible build. You just wont have as good parses as someone whos optimized.

The game does allow for some of these shenanigans, and it is fun, but it comes with caveats. Youll definitely encounter people who will call you trash for going that high in SKS because to them, min maxing dps is the only way to play the game.

One thing people overlook is all this min/max stat optimizing IMO is lost on a majority of players because their actual gameplay isn't optimized to maximize their uptime using it. After all, your DPS is 0 when dead on the floor or when you're running around and not actually attacking the monster. The latter IMO is easiest to avoid happening for ranged physical DPS jobs yet for some reason I see them dying more often than other jobs when I'm in duties.

[Hasrat]

May be worth considering the effect time/connectivity has had on the landscape of this debate. Anyone with the nostalgia glasses, can you truly believe the game would play out at all similarly if players had the likes of discords and reddits and such available? Would crazy stat builds have remained the norm if the community was able to quickly and easily collaborate and min/max and optimize?

Idk. I have no other MMO experience. But, times change. No way of knowing if what worked then could still work now. Certainly at the very least it takes a different development approach, to make room for that sort of thing. Arguably, by building the game and combat system the way they have, the devs never really intended for much creativity with stats.

[Melichoir]

One thing people overlook is all this min/max stat optimizing IMO is lost on a majority of players because their actual gameplay isn't optimized to maximize their uptime using it. After all, your DPS is 0 when dead on the floor or when you're running around and not actually attacking the monster. The latter IMO is easiest to avoid happening for ranged physical DPS jobs yet for some reason I see them dying more often than other jobs when I'm in duties.

I dont think its all that lost on the majority. Rather, I think its more accurate to say that a small minority of very technically driven and skilled players find out the min/max and write guides or put that info out there, and the broader majority (which isnt as skilled and will not be able to utilize that information to its full extent) simply adopts that information and builds their characters to fit the min max as close as possible. They treat the information as the final word, rather than it just being "This will theoretically get you the most DPS."

It all comes down to the fact someone will always find the min max, write a guide, and hte broader playerbase will adopt it as the end all be all of stat builds and not venture far from it.

[D_C]

Knowing how the stats scale is both a blessing and curse, cause itll help you plan stuff but it also means people will min//max.

People already do that, though. The only difference is everyone would be able ta see it, rather than just those usin’ external sources, givin’ everyone more incentive to do what works for them.

Stats in RO an games like that were lots of fun, yar. I know we’ll never get anythin’ so interestin’ here ‘cause it’s a lot more binary of a system in general. But it’s fun ta imagine.

[NessaWyvern]

If someone plays a BLM and doesn't add in any SpSPD, they're probably not going to have a great time.

I was about to say something like this, it's honestly a nightmare to even have your spellspeed a little low. Dodge an AoE that could kill you, or lose enochian? Mah enochian!

[AriaEnia]

Direct hit, determination or crit for PLD melds?

[Shurrikhan]

Hate to break it to you, but there's always going to be the "one mathematically correct" answer to optimizing a class.

Yes and no. Within a tight balance, where the generally optimal stat lacks significant situational advantages offered by others, there can at least be multiple optimal choices based on how one will face an encounter.

That's not to say XIV second stats aren't horrible. They are. But this mere factoid (a best solution will exist) does not devalue well-made stat systems down to, effectively, the same faults as seen in XIV's.