Direct Hit is just diet Crit

[UkcsAlias]

Crit always increase both Chance and Damage when you up it, making it an exponential stat. That means if you don't have any, it is the ultimate garbage, but if you have a lot it's a godly stat.

DH is a linear stat, because only the chance increase when you up that stat. But the function behind it is literraly the old critical damage we had on older game. I think Direct Hit should have a different effect than just a +25% damage up. Maybe something like a second attack (with reduced damage) added (on which Crit could also occur, but each hit is independant) (This is a crappy idea of course, I'm aware. We just need more thinking about this).

This then just becomes a game of math. Can the crit stat reliably beat the DH stat? If not, go full DH, if yes, go full crit. It will involve an easy number treshold.
Therefor adding complexity that i think just isnt needed as it doesnt benefit anyone.

You want a simple system. As anything more difficult will as a result most players having suboptimal gear, making content harder for you. Adding damage to piety is on that simple as it just changes the materia priorities, and then remains the same for all. No strange tresholds to consider then, but piety does have a side effect that can make it mandatory: spell speed. The more you cast, the faster you burn mana, and therefor need piety to cover. So if we can do something here, piety might not need any damage.

I think spell speed/skill speed are the 2 stats that need more attention. These are far more awkward as they rely on tresholds far more and have near insignificant results (0.02s on a 2.5 gcd is still less than a percent of value, yet 72 points on your crit stat of 2000 is already a 3.5% increase in just its number). The scaling here does a quite bad job, yet would otherwise be the most reliable stat to compete against crit as its scaling is potentialy also exponential (if the removed GCD portion scales linearly downward, the more you get, the more bonus value you generate).
And these used to actualy be able to compete with crit on jobs like blm.

And yes, if this works well, we will get a more complex case as now you need to find a balanced value. Which might not be what we want. But spell/skill speed has a side effect that might not be noticed: it can make uptime easier during mechanics. This makes it a far more personal thing making it less strict to be optimal. Only in ultimate (where things are strict) these strict values can then matter, which is exactly where we want this.