Stats in FFXIV / Base Damage

[KumaAkuma]

1) Make sure your acc is okay.
2) Cap primary stat.
3) Cap secondary stat.
4) Attack

[Enfarious]

1) Make sure your acc is okay.
2) Cap primary stat.
3) Cap secondary stat.
4) Attack

I'd change this order, and for melee classes in general:
1) Acc (hitting as hard as possible means fk all if you don't land a hit)
2) Attk
3) Primary (Str imo should always be viewed as Pri, since melee's benefit directly from STR since it also gives attk)
4) Secondary

Before you jump on that, it has some real numbers behind it, I won't say my test set is massive but. Fighting Stullenworm me and a 50 DRG friend of mine over 3 fights he consistently did ~10% more dmg from AA and ~5% more on every WS, I tossed Crits and just went w/ normal hits since crits are just an increase on normal damage anyway.

My Str > his by 15
My Pie > his by 28
My weapon bdmg > hit by 22
His attk > mine by 35

His 35 attk outshone my everything else. So yes you can make a standard weapon better than an Ifrit's because at the end of the day reaching the attk<>def cap has more impact than having a 200dmg weapon vs a 150 dmg weapon. Your Pri/Sec stats have an impact, and it's noticable but not nearly as much as the impact that attk has.
You may or may not have looked through other testing threads and seen that more often than not it's found that a level 1 weapon can keep up with(won't outshine) a level 50 weapon if you attk>pri>sec stats are all up to snuff. Not unlike the brokenish def/vit/mnd that makes running in naked not hurt nearly as much as it should.