Is there a conspiracy for lvl capped players to ignore materia?

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Originally Posted by Asari5

of course... but melding is far easier compared to making a player competent.
a melded incompetent player will do more dmg than an unmelded incompetent one

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Yes, and that will speed up a dungeon by... Seconds.


You won't go from a 20 minute run to a 15 minute run, for instance.

I'm not saying materia has no impact, just that the impact on those targeted by this thread would be basically unnoticeable.

Its a boring system, i run only "Casual-Content" (aka no Savage, no Extremes, and so on...), and my skill is high enough to do enough damage even without materia... so i usally dont bother with them.

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Originally Posted by Darkstride

I don't disagree that time is limited. I also agree that melding is typically a simple thing to for little to no cost or effort. It seems like a no-brainer.

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Yes and no. The how is a bit obtuse especially if you don't have a DoH of the appropriate level but not overly complicated.

OTOH what to meld requires a bit of research and that starts wandering into "why bother?" territory. Just tossing in random substats isn't going to do a lick of good. Heck even the "right" substats could be very wrong because of how substats work. If you graph points vs. benefit the chart is stair-stepped instead of continuous. In other words you have to hit a threshold to get the benefits and anything over is a waste until you hit the next threshold. Last tier DNC had to meld in a ton of Crit. This tier a little Crit then Determination.

TBH if somebody's going to get pissy about it, I'd throw in Tenacity melds because I gave away all my Piety materia. Or just ignore them and possibly file a harassment report depending on circumstances.

IMO slotting materia isn't worth the hassle unless you're doing content where you need that edge. EX, Savage, Crafting.

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Originally Posted by DragoAskani

The game even tells you there is an npc for it in some side quests at around lvl 30. So you skipped it is what happened.

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Those NPCs weren't always there, its possible for veteran people to not realize they exist.

Regarding the OP: I personally don't care enough to do it. I'm not raiding and in dungeons it doesn't really matter anyway. (call me lazy if you want, I don't really care)

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

Yes and no. The how is a bit obtuse especially if you don't have a DoH of the appropriate level.

OTOH what to meld requires a bit of research and that starts wandering into "why bother?" territory. Just tossing in random substats isn't going to do a lick of good. Heck even the "right" substats could be very wrong because of how substats work. If you graph points vs. benefit the chart is stair-stepped instead of continuous. In other words you have to hit a threshold to get the benefits and anything over is a waste until you hit the next threshold. Last tier DNC had to meld in a ton of Crit. This tier a little Crit then Determination.

TBH if somebody's going to get pissy about it, I'd throw in Tenacity melds because I gave away all my Piety materia.

IMO slotting materia isn't worth the hassle unless you're doing content where you need that edge. EX, Savage, Crafting.

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I only meant 'simple' as far as actually affixing the materia. It used to be problematic, needing a crafter, but there's a vendor for it now that makes it pretty easy to have done on your own. Assuming you already know how materia works, actually having it placed on your gear is pretty low-effort.

I agree with you though.

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Originally Posted by DragoAskani

I remembered wrong. Its a an ARR msq quest. So you just didnt bother to read what they were telling you.

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Neither Life, Materia and Everything nor Waking the Spirit refer to the materia melding NPCs. The former is part of the MSQ before Ifritt and that one only tells you to learn how to craft (assuming Gobbiespeak didn't make your eyes cross) at least according to one dialog transcript I've just read. The latter is a blue quest that opens up materia transmutation.

Is there a conspiracy for lvl capped players to ignore materia? Yes, yes there is.

A bunch of us held a meeting and voted to ignore materia towards the end of ARR when the ilevel 130 gear first came out. We've been on the sidelines ever since, because outgearing content is by far the easiest way to ignore the gil sink that used to be Materia. Frankly, I'm surprised that materia still finds its way onto gear that is not meant for, say, Eden Savage runs.

It doesn't help that there is no single current "how to Materia-lize your way to better stats" article on the Internet. Just periodic pot-shots at players who will never see a Real 'Extreme' Instance and don't want to play yet another mini-game called "I must have BiS gear in order to run the daily leveling roulette". Heck, most people don't even have 'Expert Roulette' on their duty finder these days.

Your only options at this point:

1. Write that article (I freely grant use of the title above) and ensure everyone you ever meet in any instance reads it. I liked this one a little bit: https://latetothepartyfinder.com/materia-melding-guide/, but it directs you to some other Discord/Web Site where you get to play the mini-game "Try to Make Your Gear Look Like This".

2. Live with the fact that people are people and materia hasn't been the same since SE removed the Carbonized Matter requirement for melding. The market crashed, and botanists and miners have never been the same since.

</tongue-in-cheek> (Look that up on the Internets. Woo.)

I personally didn't put any materia in my gear. I'm not a savage raider and I rarely do anything other than roulettes and group maps.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I play on Light, and just wat?...
People in my experience are very relaxed.

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That's why I said sometimes. It's probably not common enough in general that you would see it.

Only in EU have I seen people kicked for lack of contribution several times. I just don't see it everywhere else. I think it's because people are more casual on Aether, Primal and Crystal.

the npc's cant do penta for one, need crafting for that

second, I have noticed sometime the materia isnt showing in the slots for others

I don't bother slotting materia until I have a gear set that will stick around for awhile. The boost you get from materia IMO is really small anyway as it just adds some points to specific sub stats but the gear pieces themselves cap what you can do in this regard. You'd probably see materia used almost always if instead of additional points to a specific sub stat they granted or improved traits or passive skills.

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Originally Posted by DinahDemiurge

The expert roulettes give you free materias, extracting is easy, yet almost no players I see use materia. Am I taking crazy pills? Also your soulbind is faster when you have materia equipped do what's the deal? Someone please explain why so many choose to not have extra power?

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Because that extra power doesn't increase throughput enough to make a noticeable difference outside of Savage/Ultimate and most players aren't doing Savage/Ultimate.

Extraction is a mostly dead source of materia for the majority of players who have reached level cap because they're overgeared for the content they do and so don't gain spiritbond. There are also much faster ways of getting materia than spiritbonding, like hunt trains. I

Don't worry about whether or not someone is using materia. Worry about whether the boss is dying. If it's not dying, it's far more likely to be a mechanics failure than a lack of materia.

In previous expansions, I didn't usually bother, since getting the materia could be a pain. But now, the game throws so much free materia around that I do it just because I can. (Doesn't hurt that I finally got around to leveling my crafting jobs to do it myself.) I have most of my gear sets fully slotted and I've still got 80-ish crystals to trade in. It's just silly.

I mostly do sycned dungeons and don't care about first hour clears of new savage or ex content. So where or not i have any slotted matters little to me.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

I don't bother slotting materia until I have a gear set that will stick around for awhile.

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This is pretty much the same for me. If it's for my main job and it's a set that I will likely keep around for a while (or if it's just at a point in the patch cycle where I have a crapload of materia I can just burn without caring) then I'll slot up to as high as I can get without overmelding.

If it's just an alt job that I know I'll do nothing more than run the occasional dungeon on, I'll usually leave it unslotted unless I've decided I'm going to take it into something a little more taxing.

As for why a lot of players don't seem to slot at all? Basically, it's really the fault of the game. The impact of materia isn't felt enough in the vast majority of content in the game and the game itself does almost nothing to even tell (or remind) players that materia even exists. A lot of level capped players aren't really "choosing" to not use materia; they actually don't really even know what it is.

If it's just a basic alt I rarely play, I don't bother with materia most of the time. I always do it for my main job of each type, though (ie melee, tank, ranged, caster, etc). And all my crafter and gatherers of course.

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Originally Posted by Rowde

Imagine checking someone's gear in casual content.

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Is that really so strange?
Even in dungeons as a tank I'll peek at the healer and as a healer I'll peek at the tank so I know if we'll be going full throttle or not.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

To increase access to the materia and make it more likely they will use it, but as I explained most people are overwhelmed or uninterested by anything beyond just playing and doing the story. A lot of people going through the story don't understand what all the things in their inventory are and whether they are important.

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To be fair the inventory system is a nightmare and you get enough weird items that things will start to become unintuitive for a player still learning the ropes.

Materia, glamour prisms, crafting mats, cooking mats, dark matter, dyes...

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Is that really so strange?
Even in dungeons as a tank I'll peek at the healer and as a healer I'll peek at the tank so I know if we'll be going full throttle or not.

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Nope. Pull first ask questions later.

Doesn't matter how good, or even adequate, someone's gear is if they still don't understand what their buttons do. For example, checking the tank's gear at the beginning doesn't let you know they aren't going to use any defensive cooldowns, or their invuln, or don't know that Reprisal and Arm's Length can be used as defensives on big pulls.

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Originally Posted by DinahDemiurge

If that's the case why does SE give away top tier materia like candy in normal 80 dungeons ?

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Well it's certainly not because you need them in those dungeons. Because anything below Extreme is designed to be clearable by pretty much everyone, no optimization required. So.. don't expect to see people care too much about 'that extra power' they don't need in a DF instance.

Melds add roughly 8-12% extra damage that you can push without any playstyle changes or added effort. It's free real estate, and a fully melded party will clear dungeons a few minutes faster than an unmelded party. You'll recoup the time it took to meld in only a few dungeons.

I think that most players simply don't meld out of lack of knowledge; There are occasionally weird players who intentionally object to doing it, as have turned up in this thread, but 99% of the time it's because the game simply hasn't done a good enough job explaining melding to the casual user.

In my experience, most players like easy ways to get stronger, and are happy to learn about materia melding. I wouldn't recommend trying to explain it to someone mid-dungeon, but if you meet someone through your FC or a linkshell that is unmelded at endgame, take some time out of your day to walk them through basic melding and they'll usually be glad for it.

Since I came back only a few months before EW and don't do group content harder than regular Roulettes, it's just not worth it to meld my stuff. If my FC gets back into raiding or doing content that requires squeezing out every tiny bit of extra damage/mitigation/healing/etc, then yes, I'll be melding a lot more, and a lot more frequently.

Part of the reason you may be seeing more people without melded gear is the stage of the cycle we're in. I'm going to take a wild stab and say that most of the player base who meld the most frequently (raiders) are taking a break or are leveling jobs. Either case is likely to decrease the frequency of encountering people with fully melded gear in content for public consumption.

reason i do not do it, is that it makes very little difference to most classes. A 300 increase to spell speed may save you like 0.1 second with slide casting, which is not enough to really matter. For tanks the difference in hp / defense is also negilable. Critical strike is only one worth socketing to critical more often, but critical damage is pointless.

Hence why i do not do it, to much work not worth it

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Originally Posted by Rowde

Nope. Pull first ask questions later.

Doesn't matter how good, or even adequate, someone's gear is if they still don't understand what their buttons do. For example, checking the tank's gear at the beginning doesn't let you know they aren't going to use any defensive cooldowns, or their invuln, or don't know that Reprisal and Arm's Length can be used as defensives on big pulls.

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That is a valid approach, but I'm sorry to hear you don't regard any other approach as valid.

I saw a lvl 80 sprout Ultimate Legend yesterday in full raid gear with absolutely no melds.

I know when I was new, I was completely overwhelmed by stats and I didn't know what any of meant. People linking me to the balance helped even less, I don't like throwing stuff in blindly. But this, I don't genuinely believe you make it to savage raiding and clear ultimate without using melds.

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Originally Posted by Dreamsoap

I saw a lvl 80 sprout Ultimate Legend yesterday in full raid gear with absolutely no melds.

I know when I was new, I was completely overwhelmed by stats and I didn't know what any of meant. People linking me to the balance helped even less, I don't like throwing stuff in blindly. But this, I don't genuinely believe you make it to savage raiding and clear ultimate without using melds.

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I mean... For most players raiding UWU and UCoB right now... materia literally does not matter.

Ultimate Legend comes from Ultima Weapon Ultimate, which is a level 70 duty.
When you level synch down, your equipment's innate stats get reduced down to whatever stat cap is relevant to that iLVL, and your materia no longer provides any bonuses.
Unless you're doing something very specific with your stats, like wanting to reach a specific skill/spell speed tier, you get far better stats just wearing current gear and letting it get squished down than you would get from farming up the pieces for an at level set so you can use materia.

I'm curious how often people actually check party members in dungeons and roulette type content. I personally just about never check gear unless it's a tank that is taking massive hits and has HP that is yo-yo'ing in an annoying way. Otherwise, ehhhhh.

As far as melding goes, I didn't start until sometime after the Alex raids. It just wasn't something that was on my radar for being required, honestly, I think I forgot it was even a thing. And for the content I run (basic dungeons/roulettes/etc) I always felt I was well-geared. But as mentioned up above, Materia is handed out like candy now, so it doesn't hurt to fill up the slots you can and then sell off all the extra.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

I'm curious how often people actually check party members in dungeons and roulette type content. I personally just about never check gear unless it's a tank that is taking massive hits and has HP that is yo-yo'ing in an annoying way. Otherwise, ehhhhh.

As far as melding goes, I didn't start until sometime after the Alex raids. It just wasn't something that was on my radar for being required, honestly, I think I forgot it was even a thing. And for the content I run (basic dungeons/roulettes/etc) I always felt I was well-geared. But as mentioned up above, Materia is handed out like candy now, so it doesn't hurt to fill up the slots you can and then sell off all the extra.

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Generally 2 things make me examine party members to see gear. Either I want to figure out what pieces they used to make their glamour. Or said party member has noticeably less max HP than expected. The latter generally means they're undergeared and at that point it's figuring out if it's evenly spread or if they're running a few extremely outdated pieces.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Generally 2 things make me examine party members to see gear. Either I want to figure out what pieces they used to make their glamour. Or said party member has noticeably less max HP than expected. The latter generally means they're undergeared and at that point it's figuring out if it's evenly spread or if they're running a few extremely outdated pieces.

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Or when I’m playing a tank into trials/raids. I examine other tanks gears to see if somebody’s more geared up I’ll be off tanking, unless they insist on sitting on sideline.

I'm confused by some of the logic of the anti-melders.

If you feel that a 10% throughput increase that takes under 5 minutes to setup is a 'waste of time', do you think that all other forms of gear progression are a waste of time as well?

Do you simply get to level 80 and completely stop attempting to increase your character power? Acquiring tome gear, 24man gear or relic weapons all take a significantly higher time investment than melding.

If you're willing to participate in any of the above systems to progress your character, why would you draw the line at melding?

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

I'm confused by some of the logic of the anti-melders.

If you're willing to participate in any of the above systems to progress your character, why would you draw the line at melding?

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Melding doesn't increase item level. Item level is needed to participate in content, melding is not.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

Melding doesn't increase item level. Item level is needed to participate in content, melding is not.

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But it does increase one's stats, therefore an increase in damage done. There's no good reason not to meld since materia is practically thrown at people for just about everything. Obviously it comes down to personal choice, but the fact still remains it is simple gains for minimal effort.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

But it does increase one's stats, therefore an increase in damage done. There's no good reason not to meld since materia is practically thrown at people for just about everything. Obviously it comes down to personal choice, but the fact still remains it is simple gains for minimal effort.

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What it largely comes down to is this: Are the extra stats requires in order to enter or clear the content? As long as the answer is no, you'll find tons of players not using materia.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

What it largely comes down to is this: Are the extra stats requires in order to enter or clear the content? As long as the answer is no, you'll find tons of players not using materia.

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That doesn't make it a good decision regardless, but it's still their decision to make.

As far as duty roulette, it only matters in Expert, level 80 trials, or the Nier and Eden raids. Anything else, your gear is synced and materia doesn't work.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

But it does increase one's stats, therefore an increase in damage done. There's no good reason not to meld since materia is practically thrown at people for just about everything. Obviously it comes down to personal choice, but the fact still remains it is simple gains for minimal effort.

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It increases sub stats but cannot increase sub stats beyond the ilvl cap of the item. Many gear pieces have sub stats at ilvl cap or close to it without materia. Substat bonuses aren't as inflated or impactful as some people have been implying and tbh make pretty much no difference at all in the end outside of attempting to speed run something that isn't ilvl synced.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

If you feel that a 10% throughput increase that takes under 5 minutes to setup is a 'waste of time', do you think that all other forms of gear progression are a waste of time as well?

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10% sounds sus but it's been awhile since I looked at the numbers so lets take that at face value. Your 10% comes with a proviso. You'll get that kind of throughput if and only if every piece you're wearing is BiS. If you're rocking full augmented Cryptlurkers you're not going to get there. If the party you've been matched with aren't synchronizing buff cycles you're certainly not going to get there.

And this all assumes you've slotted optimal melds. There are resources out there that tell you what to slot but only if you've got very specific sets of gear.

Telling people to "just meld" is far more likely to get "whatever" tossed in there. That Tenacity is gonna work great on your RDM and don't forget to load up on Piety for your SAM.

A five minute meld job is not ever going to get you 10% throughput. You'd be lucky to get even 1%. Better than that would require a spreadsheet and if I was into that I'd still be playing EVE.

I'm not anti-meld. I won't step into a sync'd EX or higher without proper melds. I don't bother with the rest because what little difference they make simply isn't worth the effort.

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

10% sounds sus but it's been awhile since I looked at the numbers so lets take that at face value. Your 10% comes with a proviso. You'll get that kind of throughput if and only if every piece you're wearing is BiS. If you're rocking full augmented Cryptlurkers you're not going to get there. If the party you've been matched with aren't synchronizing buff cycles you're certainly not going to get there.

And this all assumes you've slotted optimal melds. There are resources out there that tell you what to slot but only if you've got very specific sets of gear.

Telling people to "just meld" is far more likely to get "whatever" tossed in there. That Tenacity is gonna work great on your RDM and don't forget to load up on Piety for your SAM.

A five minute meld job is not ever going to get you 10% throughput. You'd be lucky to get even 1%. Better than that would require a spreadsheet and if I was into that I'd still be playing EVE.

I'm not anti-meld. I won't step into a sync'd EX or higher without proper melds. I don't bother with the rest because what little difference they make simply isn't worth the effort.

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You can tell every single job in the game to at least meld crit>dh.

Completely unoptimized melding with that basic priority is still ~6.5-7% increase on a straight Aug. Cryptlurker set.

For comparison, spending the time to farm tomes and an upgrade item to upgrade from a 510 exarchic piece to a 530 tome piece would be a 1-2% gain, despite taking significantly more time and effort than slotting some melds.



As I said previously, ignorance about melding is completely understandable. Being informed and arguing it isn't worth it is weird though, particularly when most people who don't meld still seem to be willing to do expert roulette, hunts or nier raids for other forms of gear upgrades.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

You can tell every single job in the game to at least meld crit>dh.

Completely unoptimized melding with that basic priority is still ~6.5-7% increase on a straight Aug. Cryptlurker set.

For comparison, spending the time to farm tomes and an upgrade item to upgrade from a 510 exarchic piece to a 530 tome piece would be a 1-2% gain, despite taking significantly more time and effort than slotting some melds.



As I said previously, ignorance about melding is completely understandable. Being informed and arguing it isn't worth it is weird though, particularly when most people who don't meld still seem to be willing to do expert roulette, hunts or nier raids for other forms of gear upgrades.

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I will repeat myself then. Item level, melds do not increase it, gear upgrades do. Item level is required to enter content, melds are not. This is the reason. It's not about stats, its about being able to run the content to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

I'm curious how often people actually check party members in dungeons and roulette type content. I personally just about never check gear unless it's a tank that is taking massive hits and has HP that is yo-yo'ing in an annoying way. Otherwise, ehhhhh.

As far as melding goes, I didn't start until sometime after the Alex raids. It just wasn't something that was on my radar for being required, honestly, I think I forgot it was even a thing. And for the content I run (basic dungeons/roulettes/etc) I always felt I was well-geared. But as mentioned up above, Materia is handed out like candy now, so it doesn't hurt to fill up the slots you can and then sell off all the extra.

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When I run DNC to see who to partner is pretty much it.