FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

[Mezlo]

So I've been reading around and all equipment has a stats cap that even if you add more materia on to it, it won't exceed the cap for that certain stat. It's weird though, well for ffxiv anyways because not much is really hidden compared to ffxi, but the stats you can meld to a piece of equipment and the cap amount aren't known. Alot of people make reference to xivdb.com, but i've looked up all the militia gear i just bought for my whm and I'm not seeing where the stat caps are listed. The best info I've founf is that if you by an HQ piece of gear, the stats that gear has are already capped. So, you can add additional stats but you would only be able to add those that aren't already listed on the piece of equipment.

Does anyone have anymore succent info, or a website that does list all the caps? It would make sense that a stat cap for a piece of equipment is based off of equipment level and whether it's HQ or not.

Also, if you're bored and looking for something helpful to do, I'm looking to pickout 2 melds for each piece if HQ militia gear i just bought for my whm. I'm thinking this gear once double melded should be able to hold me off until i can replace it with DarkLight armor. So here's the set:

Militia Robe HQ
vit +14
int +14
acc +23
ss +16
2 materia slots

Militia Hat HQ
vit +8
int +9
acc +14
crit rate +10
2 materia slots

Militia Ringbands HQ
vit +8
int +9
mind +9
acc +14
crit rate +8
2 materia slots

Militia Duckbills HQ
vit +8
int +9
mnd +9
crit rate +14
ss +8
2 materia slots

Militia Tights HQ
vit +14
int+14
mnd +14
crit rate +23
ss +13
2 materia slots


I know you can put up to 5 pieces of materia per piece even though there is only 2 slots, but I dont think I;d want to invest that much in a piece that's just going to be replaced onced I get the DL piece. Just looking at the stat that is omitted from all of them, determination, I'd be thinking of double melding that since it affects healing amount and nuking amount. Pieces that don't have mind, like the body, I'd probably double meld mind but I dont know if that's what would be best. Looking at the stats, the piece look like they could also be used well for BLM. So if the melds could help both jobs that would be great too...

Any input is appreciated!

[Dux]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

Regarding the number of slots vs the number of attached materia, the slots represent only the number of materia you can meld with a 100% success rate.

Once you try to meld beyond the number of available slots you get a success rate presented to you before you attempt the meld based on the number of melds already on it and the tier of the materia you are trying to meld.

Any materia melded to a piece of gear wether it be in a slot or not may result in no actual increase in stats. You can easily check this yourself in the melding window that when you select the gear and the materia you want to meld will show you the actual benefit should the meld be successful.

If you are not getting the full bonus then the result will be in red, something like INT +3, if you get the full stats it will be in white. It is worth noting that if you was to try and meld a Tier4 INT to a body and the meld window says you only gain 3 out of the possible 4 INT, you can not downgrade to a Tier 3 INT and still get 3 (even though the T3 gives 3 INT), in my experience you will get 0 INT. The order in which you meld materia makes no difference to the bonuses you gain it will only effect the chance of success.

It is true that the stats change per piece of gear and this is most pronounced when you are comparing between gears that are in difference disciplines such as DoH and DoM gear. However for gear within a discipline, say crafting, there is almost no variation at all. When I get home I will drop in some investigation I did in melding DoH gear which helped me decide which materia to slot in which pieces and you will be able to see that the bodies of GSM, WVR, TAN and CRP are almost identical in every way (assuming I can find it).

I havent found a resource that lists every single piece and their stat caps but give that it is very easy to test this yourself and doesn't cost you any materia you may spend more time trying to find the information than if you had sat down with some materia and pressed the half a dozen mouse clicks to check it for yourself.

[Mezlo]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

Thanks for youe response Dux!

As far as what to meld, would you agree that +crit rate is one of the major stats, or like Mal said yesterday, the new Haste in FFXIV ARR? Also, would you agreee that for picking out a stat to meld, it's best to pick a stat thats not already on the equipment? So in my list above:

Robe doesn't have +crit rate or mind, so maybe a double meld on mind? or better to split or double up on crit rate for my WHM?

Hat doesnt have mind or det, so double up on mind? If i did det it could also be used for blm, so maybe det?

Ring doesnt have det, so double up on that?

Duckbills dont have det so double up on that?

Tights dont have det so double up on that?

From my reserach, for whm i think the order of most important stats were:

Weapon Damage > Mind > crit rate or det? > something else

Again, not sure, just wanting to get feed back.

[Dux]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

I have no been keeping up with the latest theory crafting threads but it is my understanding that primary stats such as MND, INT, STR, VIT provide the best return on investment.

Secondary stats such as Determination, Crit, Spell/Skill Speed provide much less return as you need much larger numbers to provide a bonus.

Crit does appear to be the stat to push if you have the spare materia after capping out your primary stat, I am not sure that this is because crit is so good or that spell/skill speed gives an even lower return on investment unless you have really high numbers.

Perhaps for DPS the crit is more valuable than spell/skill speed because big crits on damage is, apart from on the pull, always desirable and probably outweights any gain from spell/skill speed given its current weak effect.

As a healer I am still undecided. Healers currently suffer from gaining hate on over-heals so when topping off the tank / DPS or in mob pickup situations such as Coil Turn 4 any crit's generate un-necessary hate for us and bad things can happen. Additionally as a healer if I do actually need to crit to save the tank I am basically relying on the RNG to keep the tank alive, which in itself is quite disconcerting. However, again given spell/skill speeds poor return on investment there is a tendency to push crit (which Allagan gives) over spell speed.

Regarding melding materia which gives a stat not found on that gear, again it will have a cap even if the gear doesn't have that stat to start with. On your hat for example you may find that even though they have no MND you can only meld one Tier 4 MND materia onto it. If you try to meld the second it may result in +0 MND.

[Mezlo]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

It sucks that you have to guess, lol... Since everything else is so spelled out in FFXIV ARR, from quests, to recipes, etc, one would think they'd spell this out too. Maybe in an upcoming patch... One can hope.

[DakAttack]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

Perhaps mind where it's missing and piety everywhere else? Critical hit rate is nice, but the materia for it is definitely the most expensive. It's ~30k per level three on Siren.

[Malacite]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

Wait what? That's not true at all about the downgrading thing I don't know where you're pulling that from.

There's a couple of threads on the official forums indicating the ideal stat melds for DoL and DoH gear and they contradict what you said, as does my own personal experience.

The only way a Tier 3 materia shouldn't give any stats is if you're either already at the cap, or trying to meld it to an item that's too low level. For example if you try to meld a Tier IV materia to anyting below iLV55, it'll say +0 stats.

[Mezlo]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

The only way a Tier 3 materia shouldn't give any stats is if you're either already at the cap, or trying to meld it to an item that's too low level. For example if you try to meld a Tier IV materia to anyting below iLV55, it'll say +0 stats.

That's what he said. It's downgraded because it's at the cap.

[Dux]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

Malacite is right that was an oversight in my original post.

When melding into a slot you always gain the full amount from the materia based on the cap + materia amount.

When you are melding outside of a slot its behaviour changes and lowering the Tier from T4 to T3 can result in the amount received going from say +3 to +0. This may be affected by gear level I am not certain but I saw this occur multiple times when I crafted my HQ crafting gear so I am certain that under certain conditions it is true. Sadly I don't have the time nor the inclination to test this under all conditions, perhaps somebody with more time and motivation than me will produce a set of comprehensive melding data with a spread of iLevel items but it won't be me.

[Aeni]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

Melding materia is tricky because item level is not only the critical factor in determining the cap for stats on that item. For example, I can successfully meld 2 (+3 to gathering) materias to a level 30 chest but am not even able to meld 1 (+3) gathering to a level 30 ring. Same item level, same types of material (in this case, Toadskin leather), same recipe level.

Each item has item budget and when you exceed that item budget, the materia becomes worthless. And unless you know for a certain that adding more materia outside of the available slots will not exceed the budget for that item, you are more than likely throwing away materia after materia trying for a successful meld.

The obvious signs are a red warning when melding a materia to an item. Every stat has a different value, and sometimes a particular materia has a stat that will exceed the budget. So some materia may not work as well as others. That's because the value of the stat has not exceeded the total budget. It seems that SE has prioritized values and weights dependant on the item classification and the quality of the time. HQ items DO NOT NECESSARILY raise the ceiling on the budget. Quite the contrary, as HQ will eat up the available headroom of the budget, making it extremely unlikely for you to add additional materia for that particular sought after stat.

Unless there's more testing and concrete evidence of the way budget, weights and values work, it's just entirely speculation at this point, and since we're (currently) granted a lot of freedom in our melding choices, there's no obvious signs where an "issue" can occur. For example, someone could meld 8 materia to one time, while another will claim that's BS because he noticed he gets no benefits after a 3rd meld. That's because they may choose to value one materia or another, which affects many of these results.

[Mezlo]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

For example, someone could meld 8 materia to one time, while another will claim that's BS because he noticed he gets no benefits after a 3rd meld.

The most materia you can meld to an item is 5.

[Dux]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

It may just be that once you meld outside of a socket, any materia that has an iLevel lower than the iLevel of the item you are melding too automatically gives you zero.

This would explain why only the T4s had any effect on my crafting gear.

[Malacite]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

Melding materia is tricky because item level is not only the critical factor in determining the cap for stats on that item. For example, I can successfully meld 2 (+3 to gathering) materias to a level 30 chest but am not even able to meld 1 (+3) gathering to a level 30 ring. Same item level, same types of material (in this case, Toadskin leather), same recipe level.

Each item has item budget and when you exceed that item budget, the materia becomes worthless. And unless you know for a certain that adding more materia outside of the available slots will not exceed the budget for that item, you are more than likely throwing away materia after materia trying for a successful meld.

The obvious signs are a red warning when melding a materia to an item. Every stat has a different value, and sometimes a particular materia has a stat that will exceed the budget. So some materia may not work as well as others. That's because the value of the stat has not exceeded the total budget. It seems that SE has prioritized values and weights dependant on the item classification and the quality of the time. HQ items DO NOT NECESSARILY raise the ceiling on the budget. Quite the contrary, as HQ will eat up the available headroom of the budget, making it extremely unlikely for you to add additional materia for that particular sought after stat.

Unless there's more testing and concrete evidence of the way budget, weights and values work, it's just entirely speculation at this point, and since we're (currently) granted a lot of freedom in our melding choices, there's no obvious signs where an "issue" can occur. For example, someone could meld 8 materia to one time, while another will claim that's BS because he noticed he gets no benefits after a 3rd meld. That's because they may choose to value one materia or another, which affects many of these results.

Each item has pre-set stat caps that are based on iLV and the stats already present on the item. This has been confirmed for a while now. What sucks, is said caps aren't readily visible prior to melding.

[Aeni]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

The most materia you can meld to an item is 5.

Hence the preface, "as an example".

It may just be that once you meld outside of a socket, any materia that has an iLevel lower than the iLevel of the item you are melding too automatically gives you zero.

This would explain why only the T4s had any effect on my crafting gear.

This is melding WITHIN a socket. See Mal's post below yours.

Each item has pre-set stat caps that are based on iLV and the stats already present on the item. This has been confirmed for a while now. What sucks, is said caps aren't readily visible prior to melding.

This makes no sense as I could try to meld something within a socket that DOES NOT HAVE THAT STAT and should not yet be capped (I'm not talking about adding +INT to a gathering tool, either). Are you suggesting that there are many items where stats are capped at 0? I could buy that the item budget for a particular item for a particular stat is non-existent, but if there's a ceiling of 0, it makes no sense. Either you have a budget or you don't, and so if there is an item where trying to add one stat results in no gain, that should mean that there is no budget for that stat on that item (maybe for balancing purposes), not that there is a cap for it.

Because we do not know how every item is budgeted, we could go on in circles with conjecture and anecdotes until we go blue in the face, and not really get anywhere. There are simple tests that can be run, like trying to meld STR materia to crafting gear, and doing so for each tiered equipment, so that we can elimnate certain possibilities. I've yet to see tests that are as exhaustive as that, as most discussion centers around stat ceilings (e.g., how much STR can a DRG add until it caps for that piece of gear) Could be that materia isn't so cheap, or people just don't have that kind of free time right now, although I suspect eventually someone will come out with an exhaustive testing process covering all gear from 1 to 50 within the next year or so.

(I also mean documented results, table or spreadsheet, not just, "oh, he said", "my friend said", "I thought I saw something 3 months ago", cause there's so much bullshit even on the official forums that I take everything with a grain of salt)

[Mezlo]

Re: FFXIV melding and equipment stats caps

Well I'm going to try and meld 2 tier 4 +crits to the body and 2 tier 4 minds to the hat tonight. I'll let you know my results. Both stats aren't listed on the item so I should be able to add them, we just dont know the stat caps...