HQ non DoW and DoW armor worth it?

It is my understanding that a HQ item only gives bonuses to stats inherent to the item (i.e. defense for armor and craft/mcraft/control for crafting tools) and not to bonus stats like evasion, hp, and mp. If this is true, isn't HQ armor for non DoW and DoM pointless since the only bonus is to defense? Or am I mistaken about how HQ bonuses work?

Yeah it's still pretty useless except for one thing: multi meld materia rates are influenced by HQ gear.

Yeah, but HQ makes the meld rate... lower, right? So that would actually make HQ gear more of a pain in the butt to use.

Seems broken to me. I was excited to get a +2 item but it offered nothing of benefit.