STATS: A Question for the community.

[Raikai]

XIV really needs to overhaul their sub-stat system. It's not broken as it is, but not even having a viable flexiblity in how you can customize, via materia, it's almost pointless to even exist as an option.

I'd propose the following changes ideas for sub-stats

Left side of gear and weapons would have/meld only offensive stats
- Crit
- Determination
- Versatility: A new stat that changes depending on your job. For some it increases proc rates, others may increase over-time effects, dance partner's damage bonus, etc.
- Speed: Merge both SkS and SpS. If we ever see a world not as bound by a 2min meta, this could be interesting for more jobs, or even making Speed potentially affect cooldowns too.

Right side of gear, accessories, would have only innate VIT, and more sockets than we have today, to freely customize uility stats
- Tenacity: Repurposed to be used by all, it reduces damage taken and increase the potency of defensive actions like Shadow Wall, Heart of Stone, Manaward, Radiant Aegis, etc
- Vigor: Increases the duration and reduces the recast time of Sprint and job specific movement actions
- Resilience: Reduces the duration of Brink of Death, Vulnerability and Damage Down status effects
- Spirit: Adds MP regen for healers and potency increase from some no-healer utility healing actions like Second Wind, Curing Waltz, etc

The idea behind the utility stats is that you freely customize them based on your play needs, not your dps goals. For example, a blind prog player may prefer more Resilience, given that they would probably be dying more often. A more experienced one could stack more Tenacity to ease the healing checks. We would probably need some capacity of healer rework to put all the utility provided by other jobs to good use even after prog.

[Connor]

I’d be all for them revamping or whatever the substat system. Most of them just feel pointless, (mostly) everyone melds the same things anyway, and there’s not really any actual variety (“do you want damage up melds or damage up melds” lol). Something more interesting and flexible/versatile enough that players can make their own decisions.

Heavens forfend us getting any sort of individuality in this game, am I right? (Sarcasm lol do it now YoshiP or I’ll slap this Moogle)

[Shurrikhan]

Versatility/Mastery would be nice, even if it'd ultimately just be treated as something you're forced to stack and play around ("Oh no, even more of my contribution is dependent on having a 99th percentile BiS SAM in my party!"), as would having meaningful GCD tiers again.

The other major factor for me, though, is just wanting to see each point actually be able to do something, %-wise. By end of this expansion, a full-SkS build now, even with a 20% Greased Lightning and 13% Shifu instead of the 15% and 10% of old... still almost certainly won't be able to hit as low of GCD numbers we could already do in Heavensward and Stormblood. There's just less palpable impact from our stats than we used to have (and, imo, should have).

[Carighan]

I think this doesn't go far enough.

I like the idea, but as long as stats such as "crit" are around, this'll never balance well either, in fact as per your example you have to force focus on secondary stat selection by excluding damage-gaining stats from the right side. Also, this again implies player agency is entirely removed from the left side as one stat will be supreme and you just slot that everywhere you can.

So what I think ought to possible is:
- Truly utility-based stats like your Vigor, Tenacity, Resilience and Spirit (I feel Resilience will become the go-to for DPS sadly, but eh, at least it's their own choice to not believe in themselves :P ).
- A variant of crit that decreases your hit chance (with no ability to fix it). Overall it'd be a damage gain, but you risk breaking your rotation mid-burst-window with this, so it's your choice. Higher average damage but risky?
- Something like your versatility could only work if it had no damage-benefit, as it's class-specific this can be done!
- Speed only if classes balance so that it's a player choice whether to play faster or not, say the faster you act, the less damage/healing your GCD cause? Maybe even offer the opposite, Impact? But make both a wash, "Select your own GCD speed"-stats?

[Shurrikhan]

Also, this again implies player agency is entirely removed from the left side as one stat will be supreme and you just slot that everywhere you can.

One stat will always be the mathematically better when playing perfectly in the manner most optimal for it. So long as the gap is smaller than what's consequent to typical random variance in otherwise identical simulations, though, that's hardly relevant. And yes, stats can be balanced that tightly, if a little effort is put into that process for a change.

The only salient point here is Speed, which would require any among (though could benefit from multiple among)

• job-by-job balancing, or better yet either among...
• an underlying resource that makes the outcome of stats more granular (as Speed otherwise benefits only by ratio), such as using Stamina and allowing anyone to, by toggle or by queue-override, snapping-preferences, or the like, overclock their GCD by up to 20% at cost to idle time later or
• an overlying resource being shared between multiple stats and players being able to determine exactly how much of Stat A (rather than B or C) they want to spend that shared resource towards in terms of output (e.g., which ratio of GCD reduction + whatever chosen amount of leniency).

For instance, let's say we just have... Red, Yellow, and Blue gear, and "Purple", "Orange", and "Green" stats.

Red gear carries some amount of "Essence" that you can then spend on Purple or Orange. Yellow can spend its stats on Orange and Green. Blue can spend its stats on Purple and Green. Naturally.

Purple might include...

• Speed (+GCD speed),
• Chain (+DoT tick speed), and
• Alacrity (+recast speed);

Orange would include...

• Precision (Crit Chance),
• Break (Crit Damage), and
• Power (General potency modifier);

Green would include...

• Strategist (+allows abilities to be used up to X% sooner or overcharge up to X% more at proportionately increased or decreased potency),
• Hero (+bonus LB generation from one's damage, mitigation, or healing and over time proportionate to player count), and
• Versatility (two among bonus mitigation, healing potency to others and natural regen speed for self, or damage, avoiding that of one's own role -- better for PLD's external heals than Precision/Break).

Accessories, meanwhile, might have just one option per stat color (thereby two options per item):

• Purple - Scout (bonus movement speed + like Strategist but for Sprint, at higher growth rate + X% leniency for positional snapping completing gap-closers/-makers safely and Y% of a yalm of lenience for snapping out of danger on non-split mechanics, etc.)
• Orange - Tenacity (bonus Defense and Magic Defense)
• Green - Vigor (bonus MP and HP recovery per tick)

[mallleable]

A concept that's been rattling around in my head is one where players can open up their job's soul crystal, and assign stats to individual job actions. Players can do things like make an action crit more, reduce its cast/recast time, give it charges, increase procs, reduce MP cost, increase its healing, etc. Yeah, there would likely be a mathematically best set up per job, but it could open up a lot of room for experimentation.

[Shurrikhan]

A concept that's been rattling around in my head is one where players can open up their job's soul crystal, and assign stats to individual job actions. Players can do things like make an action crit more, reduce its cast/recast time, give it charges, increase procs, reduce MP cost, increase its healing, etc. Yeah, there would likely be a mathematically best set up per job, but it could open up a lot of room for experimentation.

It could. More than I'd personally want to deal with --especially compared to just having primary stats matter and making each kit draw from multiple of them, such that a DRG could be more purely physical, more based around Wyrmwind Thrust, Gierskogul, Mirage Dive, and Nostrond, etc., faster-hitting or harder-hitting even before [or in place of] Skill/Spell Speed-- but done right, it'd be pretty fun.