Why is my damage so low?

[Chaletamale]

Potency on spells says one number, but im doing like 1/4th-2/3rd the potency damage on mobs and even quest items. It makes literally no sense. I'm level 50 with decent gear and its like my gear isnt even being added into the equation at all. I understand that maybe mobs have armor or something, but 1/4th on basic trash mobs way under my lvl or even just quest items like in screen shot below? That doesnt make any sense at all

[dangadget]

If what you're referring to is the fact that Riot Blade says it does 300 potency in a combo but you are only doing 100ish actual damage, then there has been a misunderstanding that is completely understandable on your part.
Potency does not equal damage or healing I'm afraid.
It's an imprecise measure of an abilities power.

[Shougun]

At expansion roll overs (50 has peak gear, 60, 70, etc) you can get huge damage boosts, so getting your weapon a rollover weapon would help a lot. At least from looking at your profile, might not be updated all the way yet.

So something like that:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...m/695c329d011/

If you've the tomestones you can just deck yourself out in the tomestone gear of that patch, but you probably are moving so fast you might not get enough tomes before you're already hitting the next roll over. At least from what I heard from people doing MSQ now that it's old, things move pretty fast.

I'd make sure at least every 5 levels you check your weapon. And every 10 other pieces of gear. You don't need to side track your life, or spend loads of gil, but keep an eye out for sure. Big items like weapon (+ shield as PLD), chest, legs, can mean a lot in stats. And as a tank if you miss too much armor and hit a roll over point you can start to take a lot of damage out of no where, like if you were in peak level 50 gear entering a level 61 dungeon.

Of course you can have other issues like broken gear, then that doesn't count to your stats, and as other state if you synced down it'll adjust your stats too (but the sync has some leeway so if you way over gear is different than slightly over gearing lol).

[hydralus]

You're being sync'd down to level 43 to participate in a FATE so your gear stats go down at well.

[Katie_Kitty]

Potency is not the same as damage, it's not meant to be the same as damage. There are under-the-hood calculations that take a potency number along other things and produce a final damage output.

[Canadane]

Potencies are best used for telling the difference in damage between skills.
You'll know that a 200 potency skill is gong to be roughly equal to twice as much damage than a 100 potency skill.

[Mhaeric]

Potency is the relative power of your abilities, not the actual damage. As you gain more in your main stat (STR for tanks, drg, mnk, sam. DEX for ranged and nin, INT for casters, MND for healers) you will see your actual output increase significantly.

This system has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it keeps it simple to compare abilities and talk about relative effectiveness without the complication of player stats being included. The tradeoff is it becomes harder to know what your actual output will be without actually using the ability. Knowing what your raw damage will be ahead of time isn't that important in this game, though, so the advantage of displaying relative potencies outweighs the loss of displaying exact damage numbers.

[lolicon09]

Indeed your gear is decent, BUT you're in a FATE there, which means your level got lowered to the maximum permitted for that FATE. Now, as others already said, Potency is not the actual damage of your skill; It's just a way to easily see how big the actual damage will be in comparison with all other skills. For example, Kaeshi: Setsugekka is a Samurai skill with a potency of 1,200. It doesn't mean that a level 80 SAM will deal literally 1,200 damage, it just means the actual number will be pretty big (like 50k for example).

[Bacent]

Also when you're sync'd below your level your materia doesn't work at all either.

[Chaletamale]

Indeed your gear is decent, BUT you're in a FATE there, which means your level got lowered to the maximum permitted for that FATE. Now, as others already said, Potency is not the actual damage of your skill; It's just a way to easily see how big the actual damage will be in comparison with all other skills. For example, Kaeshi: Setsugekka is a Samurai skill with a potency of 1,200. It doesn't mean that a level 80 SAM will deal literally 1,200 damage, it just means the actual number will be pretty big (like 50k for example).

in this particular case yes it was a fate. but i went to the practice dummies and it was the exact same numbers. i even went to lvl 3 mobs and its the same numbers. so its universally hitting way low numbers.