Quote Originally Posted by Conradus View Post
You're melding it to the wrong thing. I don't know about level 30/35 gear, but looking at the melding caps for top-level gear it seems that you could get good results by melding to a body piece, or to your secondary (and possibly primary) tool.
Yep. There's a place for everything. Cotton Halfgloves only have Control on them to begin with, so they could take CP and/or Craftsmanship materia without bumping into their caps, for example.

There might also be a point where you'd meld a materia even though you know you're not getting its full effect. If the rest of your gear is already stuffed with materia, and melding a +3 CP, even though it only actually gives you +1, gives you that last CP you need to be able to use <insert crafting skill here> one more time per synth, it might be worth it. There are also things like ACC caps to think about (e.g., a SCH needs a certain amount of ACC to keep Energy Drain from missing in Binding Coil; a single point of ACC can be worth a lot in that case).