Why No Melds?

[Claire_Pendragon]

This is how RPG work pretty much since pen&paper roleplaying games were invented. Telling your buddies around the table "no, I don't want this neat sword we found in that cave, I want to remain as weak as possible" is not something you hear in a regular basis during a game of D&D.
You are trying to make a rule out of an exception.

Your example isnt comparable to her statement.
You're comparing getting something for free, or already in your possession, that has no penalty for use, to having to go out of your way, stop doing the content/adventure you want to do, or stop trying to get even BETTER gear/stronger, to work on a minor upgrade.
While I like doing every step along the way usually, these are 2 different things.

I'm pretty sure that's a made up statistic. You know every 30 points or so of crit is worth 1 weapon damage. Full melding gives over 120 additional crit. That's 4 points worth of weapon damage. Not melding at all is like using a i230 weapon instead of i250. It's a significant difference.

Also, world first statics manage to bypass gear/dps checks with pentamelded gear in the past, because secondaries you meld are not to be underestimated.

I'd say not melding is more a 6% dps loss rather than 1.5%. You're gimping yourself pretty hard and causing runs to go slower.

I as well noticed a rather massive difference in my threat generation when I came back in 3.3 getting all my gear melded.
As DRK and undergeared compared to everyone else, I would need to use my threat combo (against those with full melds) roughly 5-6 times to maintain it for weeping city boss fights.
Once I was fully melded, I only needed 2 enmity combos for 99% of runs, and a 3rd for the rare MNK/BLM who were really geared compared to me.