Quote Originally Posted by Deceptus View Post
Weapon damage literally matters to everything.

I did a test yesterday:

I unequipped everything on my PLD, equipped a lvl 1 sword (6 weapon damage) and shield and went into Sastasha.

I was doing 45 damage every aoe to mobs. They were going down SLOW.

Now, this was taking into account the LOTS of strength I innately gained by leveling to 80. I think I had 325 or so.

So I was lvl 80, had a LOT more STR than I would have when synched and STILL only did 45 damage to mobs. At LVL 80

POTENCY MATTERS, BUT WEAPON DAMAGE DICTATES LITERALLY EVERYTHING

Again. I think people are vastly underthinking just how much weapon damage actually effects damage numbers in ilvl synced content.

You know what would put this debate to rest?

A freaking Test Server. A place where the FFXIV developers could put out wild ideas just like this and see the ramifications.
Yes, weapon damage matters when calculating damage, noone says otherwise, however, when comparing damage across the same job, the potency is all that matters as that is how strong your attacks are irregardless of any other stats.

A 200 potency attack is twice as strong as a 100 potency attack, a 700 potency attack is 7 times stronger than a 100 potency attack, a 500 potency attack is twice as strong as a 250 potency attack etc.

Since the point of the post was to compare damage between a level 30 kit and a level 80 kit (in this case, ignoring all stats), the best way to do that is to compare the potencies. This gives an easy way to compare damage potential whilst ignoring all stats.