Do you shame people for their choice of materia melds?

[Nora_of_Mira]

Materia power level is not easily quantifiable, and honestly, I think most people just ask other people who have asked other people (etc) what the best melds for so-and-so are and choose their melds based on that.

Edge cases aside (such as not even having materia on your gear at all or melding stats that just simply have no effect on a certain class, like Piety on Black Mage), does the choice of someone's materia melds draw ire from you if they are not to your liking? If so, why?

Personally, I feel like materia choice is subjective in some cases, but they are an illusion in others. I won't call out someone for melding skill speed on all their gear on Ninja, for example, because I know that they at least put effort into their gear/build than someone who melded nothing and came into content in default i430 AF gear and leveling accessories.

if you or anyone isn't doing Savage content while its current, your melds are nothing but a preference and make little to no difference to your play.

If you're trying to clear Savage content while its current, you better be melding correctly.

On a sidenote, it saddens me that gear tends to be figured out by expert players early on in patches. As such, this always drives materia prices a certain way and influences a lack of experimentation with materia melds. This brings up the question of whether there is really a choice with how you meld your gear - are you just doing things a different way or a worse way?

you can experiment all you want, but people doing the math will always find what will contribute the most damage to each job based on the gear present. "experimenting" is nothing more than "seeing what does more damage overall" and 1-2 set ups will always come out on top and the rest of the experiments will be lower in comparison.