Is Materia useful?

So far I've attached materia only when story and quests required it to achieve higher level crafts easy.

Beyond that I don't know why I leveld these DoH jobs to 50 to attach materia because (and correct me if I'm wrong) no gear past ilvl50 has any slots in them.

The stats on materia look very cool but who actually uses these?

Spending that much gil on mid-level gear is a total waste of money no matter how you look at it.

So is materia useful for anything else than getting the melding achievement? If so then how do you use the system?

Clearly I'm missing something here because I can't understand what this (admittedly really cool) system is used for.:confused:

While starting a new raid it can be usefull to have lvl 90 crafted item with full materia since they are better than lvl 90 ones and maybe better than lvl 100 ones ( depending of what stat you prefer ) But the rest of the time materia is mostly useless for fights.

Materia is most useful on noncombat classes. It's required to mine/harvest the highest level items as well as craft the highest level items. For combat it's mostly just useful for maximizing stats on the highest tiered crafted items (currently 90) before/ instead of replacing them with higher level tome purchased items/ drops.

The level 70 crafted jewelry was really nice back in the day, as none of the non-crafted jewelry for DD and Healing jobs had any Vitality on it. By loading this crafted jewelry up with Vitality materia, you could really improve your survivability. When they added The Binding Coil of Bahamut - the first content in the game where Accuracy really started to become important - materia could be used to add additional Accuracy to pieces that didn't have it already.

Nowadays, though, there's no high-level crafted jewelry, and gimping your jewelry to level 70 just so you can attach Vitality may be more of a sacrifice than you'd be willing to make.

I meld materia to low level gear as I'm leveling up alt jobs. Frankly, I do this just because I can with a decent bank-roll and all DoH / DoL jobs leveled. There's no real reason to do so.

Materia melding is absolutely essential for higher level DoH and DoL. DoL is a bit easier but DoH is incredibly demanding for materia. Most of my DoH gear has either 2 or 3 over melds, The jewelry is common but all left hand gear (except the new head piece) plus the off hand are unique to each job therefore must be done 8 times. And the requirements on which materia to use are very specific in order to meet required levels to craft three star items. Since the update, the requirement has changed which has forced me to clean off the materia on my off hand tools and rebuild them with different ones.

Just to redo those off-hand tools will take 32 Craftsman's Command III and 56 Craftman's Competence III assuming nominal success. RNG can be a killer though. The first off-hand I remade I had to use 20 Craftsman's Competence III to finally get a successful meld (the probability of success on that one is supposed to be ~15%). At around 14K gil each, that works out to 280K gil worth of materia for just the one meld.

I even needed to craft new DoL gear WITH MATERIA in order to get the needed gathering for my Miner Retainer to access the highest level Exploration ventures (that one also needed me to quest another new Forager's Dolabra as it was not possible to meet the gathering threshold without it).

Outside of combat: Yes
Inside of combat: Sometimes
Before level 50: Some
After level 50: No

So basically like I said in the OP outside of DoH the whole materia system is pretty much irrelevant.

I don't understand why none of the raid gear can have slots?
I would love to tinker and customize my gear. It just seem like a waste of great potential.

Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way since people seem ok with all of the loot locking out materia system.

It's absolutely necessary for crafting and gathering. For battle classes, if you're behind the curve and have a ton of money, I guess you could get the i90 crafted gear and overmeld it.

If you dont craft/gather or PVP, then yes its useless.

I used melded Gryphonskin accessories on my tank and they were better than i90 options at the time. Those Gryphonskin pieces became really useful when I hit 50 on MNK, DRG, and BRD because I could jump right to a higher ilevel without sacrificing very much in stats. They were/are still great for lower level content where you don't need as much VIT so you can do more DPS.

I use melded gear for crafting/gathering, where it is essential.

And I use melded gear for PvP, where it is also essential.

SE could make materia even more useful but I think it's at a pretty good spot where it is. When 2.2 came out, people (who had the gil) could switch immediately from i90 non-crafted to i90 crafted, just to get a jump on content. The advantages of this are probably pretty short-lived but still handy nonetheless.

I look at crafting as a fun mini-game that compliments the main game nicely. Nothing about it is needed but you'll want to do it: to be self-sufficient, to make lots of gil, to craft minions (if you're into that), for convenience leveling other jobs, and to be ready for the time where you do need it for something.

That something may not be endgame related (SE has indicated this is their intent) although one could hardly have done their relic quest without a level 50 someone to meld the materia to the weapon. Perhaps when airships come out, someone will need to build them and who knows what the future holds. Get them to 50 just to be safe :)

Here is your answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvdf5n-zI14

I heard that if you get five you can trade them in for one.