Printable View
Is it worth it, going for the blue items, when you can meld up to 5 materias to normal items? Sure, the cost can be high, since the success rate is low. Or have the developers shut that door with giving you more stats than you can meld for, in the blue items?
It can depend on where we are in a patch, but in general it goes: end-game savage gear > fully over-melded crafted gear > melded tomestone gear > crafted gear with anything less than full melds.
It's also a bit more complicated than that, since BiS gear isn't always those items in that order. One crafted piece might be BiS for one location if the secondary stats are good enough compared to the savage gear in that spot. And of course, the first time someone is doing new Savage content they're not going to have any Savage gear, so crafted gear has an important place in progression.
And this all comes with the caveat that this is for the end-game savage meta. It doesn't really matter that much in all other content where melded tomestone gear is more than acceptable.
The main thing to keep in mind is that current craftable green gear is always lower in iLvL and stats than current end-game blue content gear, so the latter is always better until next craftable set shows up.
Mainly, green overmelded gear is used by raiders that pursue first day/first week clears - they need to squeeze as much damage as possible for this. If you aren't part of this gang, you don't really need overmelded sets. You can still use them ofc, since they're a bit better than previous Tier BiS sets. And well, remembering Stormblood and WAR BiS sets, sometimes you can meet crafted overmelded items (usually accessories) in BiS. It all depends on stats they give and the situation changes from patch to patch with new gear being released. BiS is always a Frankenstein of different sets (most of the time token + savage gear)
"Worth" depends on your level of investment. Crafted overmelded gear are at their best when they first come out, as something raiders can put together and meld to get into the new tier as quickly as possible. After that, they fall into either glamour or for people really impatient.
For the average player, especially for gearing jobs that are not your main, I recommend just cruising on the newest weekly tomestone, supplemented with stuff from the newest raid and the uncapped tomestone. Keep your favourite job well geared but don't fuss too much about the others. Take special care with your weapon; tanks will also want to be more up-to-date on armour especially with chest and legs.
It's filler until you can get your hands on the higher ilv blues. As others have mentioned, its value is at its highest when the patch is released since access to the blues is gated. Sometimes, blues still carry unfavorable secondary stats that could possibly throw you into a different Speed tier, and/or some will see a favored secondary stat such as Crit rate take a huge hit by switching to the blues. While those losses are kind of a bummer, the loss to your primary stats by staying with the crafted gear when you have access to the higher ilv blues is a no-no in most cases.