Why No Melds?

[Khemorex]

i meld my pld first since its the main class i play (i use the machi things for V materia , ive never bought any V materia tho :P ), then my sch ,the rest of the classes i dont care that much coz the ilvls on them are low , and i usually dont play my not so good equipped classes in raids/trials ^^ maybe a dungeon here and there for fun , and then it depends on how much the materia costs if i can get some IV materia for a reasonable price i buy it else not.

i raid only occasionaly per PF , so im not really in a hurry to have everything right away :P (maybe someday ill join a static again , but not for now :P )

[Neophyte]

Why would you? If you aren't raiding there's no point at all in melding. Your gear will suffice for any content anyway and it will be obsolete in a month or two. Makes way more sense to sell the materia than meld with it.

Because I still make money without crafting/gathering with also melding my gear. I have an FC house and I settled my glamour last year. Also I am raiding, but if I see that I don't need the money I'll invest in even the slightest upgrades, even if I wouldn't be raiding.
That's what I learned after playing years of RPGs (and also Action games like FPS) where I saved everything up to the last boss and all I got out of it was clearing the game with a big bank account (or high ammount of rare ammunition which got never used in regards of FPS games).

Money is there for to be spent. There are no interest, nor a pension plan in this game, nor does wealth have any impact like in the real world.
Saving Money doesn't make sense until you know that you need or want a specific piece.
Same thing for food and pots. I rather spent my dispensable money on those and use them than to not spent it at all.

Right now I'm at about 15 million. I have 3 months or so now till 3.45 and will likely get some more millions until then. Why in the name of the twelve should I stick to that money?! Money will rain from the sky with 3.45 again anyway, like with every patch.

All I'm saying is: It's no problem to stick 40+ materia V's into your gear within a patch and still come out even or maybe still make a few millions without being a crafter and/or gatherer or selling runs. Take it or leave it.

[KitingGenbu]

No point in Melding since a majority of the population doesn't even Savage which its only noticeable on.

[Laerune]

I stepped down from farming tomes and doing raids. Since melds are mostly needed for doing endgame raiding/crafting and I do neither those two, I see no reason to meld my gear.

[Moomba33]

I started melding my upgraded Lore gear but I soon realized I cared more about getting the gil from selling them than about having melds.
I don't run current high end content and don't worry about min/maxing my battle classes.
I love having extra gil around for rare minions and my occasional forays into crafting and gathering.

[RukiaFae]

Most people are already over geared for everything except the latest raid. So if you don't raid there is really no point. Plus they are practically throwing gear at us now. You only get a few weeks out of melded gear before you're changing it out for something else. Once I get I'll 270 I may add some melds while waiting on the expansion.

[RyuSaarva]

Upgrading gear or replacing it takes away your Materia, so I'll leave Melding V-Rank materia for the hardcore raiders...

Imma just stick with putting IV-rank ones on my gear because I won't miss that when it's gone.

no, overmelding V materias is for the harcore raiders.

[FunkYeahDragons]

If you're not raiding on a job, why make it a priority? That's time and money a player might want for something else. I do Savage but I don't meld non-raid jobs because I can do other things with it (gear crafters, buy crafted gear for raid, housing, glamour, take a break and play another game, sub for other groups, play with Wondrous Tails, etc).

It's "cheap" and "easy" until you think about how much time you do need to invest in beast tribe quests for one of the quests that gives you materia, or the price spikes on popular melds like Acc or Crit this early in a raid patch. And how often you'd be remelding as you replace and upgrade gear for a very minimal increase in EX roulette.

Plus, Weeping City. Last night I paid 350k for an Acc V rather than get a free one from that place. Others are welcome to my money if you'll run it in my stead.

[Voltyblast]

Snip

Crit is useful yes, but you can do it without it just fine. Plus it's the only really useful stat to meld on so...it's pretty much guaranteed you want it all the time. Same for Determination.

Strength can be only melded on accessories (if it's tome gear), and even then you're just fine as it is for 90% of the content. Oh, I'm a tank: I can safely say this without issues.

Accuracy for healers is good only if you like to maximize your damage while healing, which again isn't a big deal if you don't bother. Unless you are really wanting to maximize your efforts, you don't really care. I certainly don't and I heal just fine!

SS is the only stat I can think that benefits one class only...which is a shame because it's quite weak and BARELY increases your attack speed. I played BLM a lot lately and while it was an increase in dps, it was a very small margin for each stack of SS put.
Most other classes don't really need it because they get more benefits from Crit and Det anyway.

So what's more useful than these? I think the best question would be "What are these materias needed for?"

I'm not really casual because I do like challenges (i would gladly try extreme but SHEESH the toxicity is unbearable) and I occasionally do some harder stuff to keep my attention up, but I sincerely never found a use for melding materias that wasn't Raiding or Extreme primals. You can easily finish a dungeon without a single meld, you can pvp without melding too (although I'm sure hardcore pvpers would recommend certain materias), you can pretty much do ANYTHING without melding materias into your gear. So I ask again: why even bother?

So unless you are a raider, you like to min-max, you're heavy into BiS and all that stuff, the answer is "Yes, those are useful". If not, then I don't see the point of wasting money on armors and weapons that WILL be weak in the next patch.

PS: and ironically, spending money on glamour is not a bad investment. At least they don't get oudated with each major patch! x)

[Dement]

I've seen a few comments from people with crafted gear that don't meld it because it will be replaced too fast. These should absolutely be melded with something. Melding increases the rate of spiritbonding so you can buy that crafted accessory for 700-800k (my server). Meld it for cheap or free if you use 1s, 2s, 3s, or do beast tribes. Then you should have it spiritbonded within a week or two of very light content and can convert it and sell it for a chance of getting 40-50%ish of your original cost back.