Gear level vs. Materia item level

Hello All

I'm confused about something concerning materia's melding.

I take a concrete example to describe: I have a chest gear level 380. I have a quicktongue mat. V and a savage aim mat. V, both specified for item level 160 min.

Problem: For the speel speed one, melding works. No worries. For the critical hit one, I get a notification that the selected item's level is too low to maximize it's potential... :confused:

Question: What do I fail to understand? Why is one working trouble free whereas the other - although of same level - doesn't?

Thanks in advance
Lu

Each piece of gear can only have “so much” of a secondary stat before it’s maxed out. If you look at the bottom of the melding window each stat will be listed as

Critical hit- x/y
Spell speed a/b

And so on indicating how much of the stat that the item can hold and how much it currently has. When the amount of stat points a materia is designed to add to the piece of gear exceeds how much stat is allowed on the item it will say the gear piece is too low to maximise the materia (for example if your item has 120/135 crit and you are trying to add 30 crit then it will say that your gear is too low to maximise the materia)

The proverbial item level of the materia is irrelevant

So in your example your item isn’t maxed on spell speed but it’s maxed on crit

Thank you so much!

For combat classes and jobs, all green, blue, and HQ crafted gear over Lv50 will have vitality, your job's main stat, and two substats. One of the substats will be higher than the other. The higher substat is the max value for substats on that piece of gear, and melding more of that stat won't do anything. You can meld the lower substat or a substat that isn't naturally present on that piece of gear, but only up to the value of the higher substat.

For example, the Cruiser Gloves of Aiming have
Dexterity +392
Vitality +419
Critical Hit +241
Determination +169

The higher stat, Critical Hit is maxed out for this piece of gear. You could meld Determination +54 for a total of +223, but a second Determination +54 would only add +18 bringing it up to the cap of +241.