If the true mentality behind why they made it so you would have to augment the pieces to store them, is so the dev time was not wasted by making the augments themselves then it is very bad design. I could list off every merit for every job I play and tell you why the augmented gear is not worth augmenting for most people, or at least for me. If I do not use a merit, I should not have to augment the gear for me to store it.

So far as I recall, the merits themselves are to promote diversity, however this make it so I must upgrade pieces of gear I have no use for thanks to my play style & choices, just to store it so that it does not take space. An example of this, my RDM gear. I main RDM, I do all I can to max out my gear for my RDM, each piece of my Relic+2 has a use for something except my legs. Head augments are Dia III & Slow II, now, Dia is useful, I have it merited, however Slow II isn't, so it has no use for me. Body is Chainspell, this is fairly useful. Hands are for Phalanx II, I use this, it has use. Then we come to the legs & feet. Bio, Blind, and Paralyze, none of which are merited, thus no effect. So for my diversity, I get nothing.