Why No Melds?

[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)