Dragoon Melding, Stat Priority, and Consumables — Dawntrail 7.1

This page covers a generalized priority system for secondary stats for Dragoon. All stats in FFXIV increase in what we call "tiers," where you must add a certain amount in order to gain any benefit at all. Determination and Direct Hit Rate both scale linearly, while Critical Hit Rate, which increases both rate and value as you gain stat points, scales quadratically. All three of these stats work in tandem to maximize the damage of each individual action you perform - Weaponskill or Ability. Skill Speed scales worse than these other three stats for Dragoon, so we try to avoid it whenever possible.

Dragoon best-in-slot sets are listed on our Dragoon Best-in-Slot page. You may find that the best practices on this page will disagree with certain melds on those lists, but these are intentional deviations due to the tiering of stats.

The stat priority for Dragoon is as follows:

1. Weapon Damage;
2. Strength;
3. Critical Hit Rate;
4. Determination = Direct Hit Rate;
5. Skill Speed.

When looking to get new gear, Weapon Damage and Strength will always significantly outweigh the value of any secondary stat. As such, always focus on increasing these two values first and foremost, assuming similar cost investments. This is why most raid groups will prioritize feeding gear to their DPS characters ahead of others.

We generally follow the priority above when melding stats. When it comes to Determination and Direct Hit Rate, however, the discussion becomes more nuanced. We want the two numbers to be relatively close together, generally favoring Determination. Determination also has wider stat tiering, so it's very likely that melds which land you closer to a tier (just over it) will beat out Direct Hit Rate melds almost all the time. A gear tool for all jobs is in the works for Dawntrail, so keep an eye out for that!

Skill Speed only increases the strength of the damage-over-time effect from Chaotic Spring and the damage of basic auto-attacks along with reducing the recast on all Weaponskills. When our Skill Speed is at its minimum value of 400 - a GCD spin of 2.50 - every one of our abilities lands perfectly neatly between two weaponskills as they come off cooldown. This limits drift so that our burst windows never shift, and everything flows perfectly smooth. The faster the GCD spins, the more we begin to drift our abilities, with High Jump and Geirskogul being the first two to see significantly bad drift times. Eventually, this shifts Life of the Dragon out of our buff windows and also misaligns it from raid buffs. For this reason, we try our best to avoid melding Skill Speed and tend to aim for a 2.50 GCD spin. In a vacuum, however, it is worth it to gain some Skill Speed when you also are gaining Strength - it is just not an ideal upgrade.

That all said, there may end up being specific encounters where melding a little Skill Speed can be a gain. If that ever becomes the case, we'll talk about it on the Dragoon Best-in-Slot page.

Potions - gemdraughts, these days - are very simple to understand in this game. The one you want to use will always be the highest tier potion (gemdraught) for the main stat on your gear. For Dragoons, this means we want the highest tier Gemdraught of Strength currently available. An easy way to find that out is to simply search for "Gemdraught of Strength" on the market board. Aside from stat boosting, some groups utilize health-recovery potions for specifically optimized healing and mitigation strategies. In general, you should be using the Gemdraught of Strength, as they bring far more benefit in most circumstances.

Which food you should use is always included in the relevant best-in-slot gearset, as it directly increases your stats and assists in hitting stat tiers. If you need information on what food to stockpile, waddle on over to the Dragoon Best-in-Slot page. Because of its interaction with stats, it is always considered when looking at min/maxing gearsets.