Garuda Weapons are weaker than Mog!!

[Frein]

You have multiple stats for a reason. So what if your stat cap is lowered, you can then pump up another related stat. For instance if my STR cap is lowered thanks to Garuda, I can give some much needed love to my attack stat. If that cap is lowered (im not sure if those stats lower), then I can give much needed love to my crit attack stat until that hits some cap.

This is what I mean by thinking outside the box. You forget other game elements exist because you've narrowed down your focus to a very very very small range of numbers. In this way, Garuda can easily balance with Ifrit weapons...well in theory anyway. It depends how much the stat caps lower, and by how much that actually affects your dmg output. In the end to call them trash is probably a gross exaggeration. You, as a player, have to learn to adapt to different styles.

For this reason I say the dev team is smarter than all of us. They know the intricacies of the game and how different stat combinations work out, combinations we havent even really studied or tested yet!! How can you say then, with such conviction, that Garuda weapons aren't even viable. Obviously dev team takes something into account that you don't. Instead of blinding yourself, try expanding your knowledge, remaining open-minded, and testing the millions of other possibilities out there.

These stats have already been tested. Most classes only have two attributes that affect damage and they're STR and whatever seconday stat the class uses. Both are capped (for WS, AA caps even earlier) at IIRC roughly ~350 and ~310 respectively when using Ifrit's weapons. Both caps are very reachable simultaneously, after which you'll have to focus on other, less effective, stats like attack power, or even worse, crit power/rate. The catch is, of course, that those stats are less effective, so your plan to circumvent the stat caps by loading up on ATK isn't going to produce the desired result of giving equal performance.

I don't need to test every gear set separately to draw reasonable conclusions because the individual stats the items are comprised of have been tested.