Current problem with battle materia

[Rufalus]

There used to be some orange status resist ones and white elemental resist too. Once everyone agreed that damage output is the only thing that matters, they pretty much weeded out any real options. If they just removed materia slots at this point and increased the base gear stats to compensate it wouldn't really make any difference to the game. Healers are designed to have enough MP without needing piety melds.

[Zebraoracle]

It's just how substats work in 14, unfortunately. We have very little substat deviation with builds, unlike WoW where some builds scale with different substats.

Here it's, generally, as much crit as you can get, followed by direct hit, skill/spell speed to comfort, and det when you can't do anything else.
You have very few deviations from this, such as spell speed black mage, because unfortunately crit is king.

In WoW, some specs prefer haste over other stats, some specs prefer mastery over other stats, some specs prefer crit over other stats.

Welcome to 14's job/combat design.

[VeyaAkemi]

This isn't something I particularly care about, because, look at it this way... it still wouldn't be my decision.

To elaborate, if there were a thousand different substats, and a thousand different jobs, each of which used a different substat for very specific builds, there would already be a guide explaining the optimal pick, made by someone who is smarter than me or at least more invested in this sorta thing than me, and there would be zero actual input for me to give, it'd be the exact same process of going to the NPC, trading an Anthocluster for the right bead, and shoving it into my gear, rinse and repeat until all the slots are filled, the only difference is that the menu would be more of a hassle to navigate.

With that context what difference it makes if I am picking always the same, or always a different one?

[DixieBellOCE]

This isn't something I particularly care about, because, look at it this way... it still wouldn't be my decision.

To elaborate, if there were a thousand different substats, and a thousand different jobs, each of which used a different substat for very specific builds, there would already be a guide explaining the optimal pick, made by someone who is smarter than me or at least more invested in this sorta thing than me, and there would be zero actual input for me to give, it'd be the exact same process of going to the NPC, trading an Anthocluster for the right bead, and shoving it into my gear, rinse and repeat until all the slots are filled, the only difference is that the menu would be more of a hassle to navigate.

With that context what difference it makes if I am picking always the same, or always a different one?

Every game system ever created.

[Amenara]

Should just rename this to "Current problem with secondary stats" as the materia is only a symptom of having secondary stats that are essentially dead stats or even better, detrimental for most jobs and crit being king over everything else.

[RitsukoSonoda]

TBH Materia being slotted actually doesn't matter much in endgame content and not at all in anything else. So I just slot things by personal preference.

Tanks: Tenacity and Skill Speed
Physical DPS: Skills Speed and Red stuff
Magical DPS: Spell Speed and Red Stuff
Healer: Spell speed and Crit.

I don't like tea in my pie... >.>

[Renalt]

I don't like tea in my pie... >.>

Is cream ok?

[Ranaku]

TBH Materia being slotted actually doesn't matter much in endgame content and not at all in anything else. So I just slot things by personal preference.

Tanks: Tenacity and Skill Speed
Physical DPS: Skills Speed and Red stuff
Magical DPS: Spell Speed and Red Stuff
Healer: Spell speed and Crit.

I don't like tea in my pie... >.>

Please tell me that is a joke...it does matter...a lot.

[baklava151]

The purple materia at least still see some use and I'd like if more jobs had the option to build sks/sps vs crit, like BLM. That seems to be one of the easiest ways to encourage build diversity even if it's a binary choice between crit and speed.

As far as I know for piety there's at least different tiers you can meld depending on how much of a cushion you want for MP, although I don't know how many people do that in practice but it's there at least. Tenacity on the other hand is a completely dead stat and I don't know how they'd encourage its use other than making bosses whack tanks so hard that they absolutely need it for its damage reduction, or giving it some other effect.

[Rilifane]

The purple materia at least still see some use and I'd like if more jobs had the option to build sks/sps vs crit, like BLM. That seems to be one of the easiest ways to encourage build diversity even if it's a binary choice between crit and speed.

As far as I know for piety there's at least different tiers you can meld depending on how much of a cushion you want for MP, although I don't know how many people do that in practice but it's there at least. Tenacity on the other hand is a completely dead stat and I don't know how they'd encourage its use other than making bosses whack tanks so hard that they absolutely need it for its damage reduction, or giving it some other effect.

The reason it works so well for BLM but no other class is because BLM is the only class that has 100% of its damage on the GCD.
BLM doesn't have a single oGCD flat potency hit, all of its oGCDs are GCD enhancing like Ley Lines or Sharpcast.
But if a good chunk of your dps comes from oGCDs which are unaffected by SpS/SkS then it quickly loses value compared to crit, which aways affects both.

And piety is nothing but "idiot ensurance".
It's a completely boring, practically dead stat. You either have enough to ress those idiots that keep doing the carpet RP or you don't and any excess MP at the end of the fight is just wasted secondary stay.
If anything, piety needs a rework from the ground up because right now it's the worst stat.