For those shouting about the the uselessness of the system because you do not need or the benefit isn't game breaking I would like to point out that is by design. It is not meant to stunt growth or stop a persons ability to proceed it is meant to maximize your minimums. They cap all the primary stats for you on ilvl appropriate gear for balancing to make it easy to know where the average player will be and to adjust accordingly.

If you have a meld gear is the best and required people would be forced to stop and get materia gear and in turn make dungeon drops useless. So what comes down to is a extra feat, for the more hardcore to get just to be a bit better. The issue comes with having that system along with "rewards" for dungeon equipment you can't make that meaningless if it is easier to just buy something better which makes a development decision we are coming to with stagnation of crafting which stagnates materia use giving players of the must be rewarding ideal a reason.