Paladin Melding, Stat Priority, and Consumables — Dawntrail 7.1

This guide aims to help you make informed gearing and melding decisions before obtaining a best-in-slot set. For best-in-slot sets, see the Paladin best-in-slot page.

The stat priority is as follows:

1. Weapon Damage (main-hand weapon only)
   • Greatly affects all damage
   • Proportional to item level
2. Strength
   • Significantly affects all damage
   • Proportional to item level
3. Critical Hit
   • Affects both critical hit rate and critical hit damage
   • Priority meld on gear pieces that are not already capped on crit
4. Direct Hit
   • Affects direct hit chance
   • Best filler meld for remaining slots
5. Determination
   • Affects all damage
   • Is sometimes melded in best-in-slot sets in one or two slots due to stat tiering
6. Tenacity
   • Affects all damage and gives passive damage mitigation
   • Rarely melded due to weak scaling
7. Skill Speed
   • Affects weaponskill recast, as well as auto-attack and DoT damage
   • At level cap, skill speed is the one of the least efficient substats on Paladin, but can still have niche use in optimization -- aim for 0 additional skill speed, i.e. 2.50 GCD

When comparing two pieces of gear, the one with the higher item level is usually better regardless of the substat types. This is because all tank substats contribute DPS, and higher item level gear provides both more Strength and more total substats. This is especially true for main-hand weapons because weapon damage has a huge effect on your damage and increases with item level.

2.50 (base skill speed) is the preferred weaponskill GCD for Paladin. The rotation functions fine with faster speeds, but it is inefficient.

The Critical Hit substat affects both critical hit chance and critical hit damage. This double-dipping in scaling makes it so that every tier of crit is better than the last. This makes it the priority meld for all meld slots that will not overcap on it. When choosing between two pieces of gear, however, it is often not worth it to take a lower item level gear piece in order to gain more crit.

Tenacity provides a slightly worse damage-increase-per-point than Determination, and it also provides a slight damage mitigation bonus. However, encounters in FFXIV often do not do enough damage for the provided mitigation to play a role at all, especially if you are using your mitigation abilities effectively. In addition, you will often find yourself being overhealed due to required raid-wide healing, negating any accumulated value Tenacity has given you.

Since the mitigation aspect is negligible, and the damage increase is worse than Determination, which itself is worse than Direct Hit, Tenacity is rarely melded even for raid progression scenarios. Despite this, it is not a substat to avoid at all costs and is rarely worth dropping in item level to avoid.

All FFXIV stats work in tiers, meaning that effects are gained in discrete amounts at certain thresholds. This is easiest to see with skill speed, which affects your physical GCD recast time; not every point of skill speed decreases your recast time since recast times come in multiples of 0.01 seconds.

Direct Hit melds that could be Critical Hit melds, as well as Determination melds, can sometimes be found in best-in-slot sets, despite being lower priority substats. This is because they result overall in fewer wasted stat points.

The best food will vary depending on your gear due to the stat tiering discussed above. Usually, you will want to choose between the highest item level foods since they provide more total substats. The best option as of 7.0 is Vegetable Soup or Fruit and Aloe Jelly. Food is included with listed Best-in-Slot sets.

Strength potions can also present an appreciable increase in DPS by providing a small boost in your opener DPS and then one or two more times later in the fight. This can help for optimization or for when your raid group is pushing up against an enrage timer. As of 6.4, the latest Strength potion is the Grade 1 Gemdraught of Strength.

To make the most informed gearing decisions, you can also use XIVGear.