Materia and Elements

Is it just me or does materia seem pointless at endgame armors and weapons. None of them have materia slots and from what I can tell, crafted equips are basically a waste of time. Sure, you could put it in equipment before you hit level 50 but, I went through gear so quick it didn't matter.

Also, what is the deal with elemental resistance? I kinda wish certain mobs had elemental affinity. Like if you did fire on a fire sprite it would heal them instead of damage them, or casting cure on undead. I heard in FF11 they had some crazy stuff with elements. I am not saying to rehash old stuff, but it would make it more interesting at least.

Crafted gear with the appropriate melds can generally tend to be better than darklite, even if the ilvl is lower. I'd hardly say that makes them "a waste of time".

Yoshi-P removed elemental affinities on mobs because he felt it led to class favouritism in parties, specifically for boss fights - he didn't want players preferring to manaburn enemies with BLM just because a mob had a weakness to fire or ice.

And you only have to look to FFXI to see how elemental affinity has been abused in the past (the infamous Cure Undead exploit is a case in point), which only influenced Yoshi's decision.

I've never played XI, but I was curious as to why I could literally burn fire sprites.

I equipped some Earth elemental materia to reduce some damage from Golden fleece which casts stone but noticed no difference.

Maybe I was already capped prior, but there has to be some goood use from the elemental materia.

I need a group that's willing to try

There's a lot of high level players who prefer the level 70 crafted sets over the darklight, or even over allagan or AF2, due to materia.