What is the trick to affixing materia correctly...Follow

Without maxing out the stat you're hoping to improve?

I'm still learning even though I've gotten ARM to 46 (almost 47) as of last night, I affixed some materia and noticed that if you are using an HQ piece of gear you can easily get ZERO stat bonus from the materia....

Now it's inconsistent because sometimes it will take materia, and sometimes it won't... and I haven't found a guide that addresses this particular issue.

How do you know what stat to go for when looking at materia?

I have gone for the stat that does not appear on the gear, for instance if the gear has STR, DEX, ACC, and CRIT I will put +Parry... but then it could still not work, which is why I'm confused.

Is there some trick I'm unaware of to find out the best materia to put in? I'd rather learn this now before I get into the really expensive materia.

Thanks!

Edited, Oct 11th 2013 8:49am by Hairspray

Shouldnt be too hard.

Just go into it asuming that whatever stats are already on it are capped. And take those values as the maximum for additional melds.

If a ring has +6 STR and +10 Skill Speed, it will pretty much mean that another attribute can only be brought to +6 max. For example +6 STR and one +4 VIT and one +2 vit Materia on it. You can use two materia that give +4, but the second one will cap out and only give you +2 regardless.

The second is the stats, those, looking at skillspeed can be brought up to +10 then, think Parry, Accuracy, Determination, spell speed and things of that nature.

There are some strange pieces that give +6 to an attribute, +10 to a stat, but then also a random +5 to determination. But as long as you simply assume that whatever is on there is already capping the maximum stats for that piece, you shouldnt worry.

Likewise, a NQ piece has lower caps than a HQ piece. And the higher the level, the more you can usually fit on there.

There's also very specific exceptions such as Tools and some ilvl 70 armor that puts several gear spots together, but you shouldnt worry about those too much just yet.

I asked about stat caps for level 50 crafting gear and some helpful person posted this link.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/99135-Crafter-Lv-55-Relic-Materia-Stat-Caps

I believe that the pop up window when you are setting up the meld (before you confirm and go through with the melding attempt) will show you if you won't get the maximum boost from the meld. So at the very least, if you see that when you choose a grade III materia, you could try a grade II or a grade I and see if you get the same message.

I did not notice that, thanks!

I'll have to look more closely at that window.

(I'm on a PS3, not sure if the UI is different than the PC version for this or not.)

Perfect! Thanks for posting this.

I'll have to check that more closely from now on.

I've read the exact opposite: that both NQ and HQ have the same stat cap. The advantage for HQs, in that case, would be that it's harder (if not impossible in some cases) to hit the cap on the NQ.