Is Novus really worth it?

[Radacci]

Also even if you used no damage modifying secondary stats the weapon would be about 2% weaker than one using all crit/det. The difference is very minimal so just don't go broke on it.

this. i quad melded my spear, and triple melded my daggers. quad-nexus did like 2-3% less damage than HA spear (mostly cause of acc stat)
if ppl wanna det/crit, and spend 10mil for it, it's their loss; i dont think i even had to use IIIs for my quad.
rank 1-2 materias are cheap, or super easy to SB yourself, so it doesn't need to cost you more than you want to spend, and the difference is so minimal anyway.
i always laugh when ppl say: ermergerd my crit is gonna go through the roof with this crit/det relic...no it won't...it takes some 20crit for 1% chance to crit for 50% extra damage. so 44 crit on relic, is like 2% increase in crit chance, and 1% increase in dps; and then there's diminishing returns where you start to loose dps instead.
and ya, the stats are boosted as your relic gets higher ilv.