Is there a conspiracy for lvl capped players to ignore materia?

[LittleImp]

Melds add roughly 8-12% extra damage that you can push without any playstyle changes or added effort. It's free real estate, and a fully melded party will clear dungeons a few minutes faster than an unmelded party. You'll recoup the time it took to meld in only a few dungeons.

I think that most players simply don't meld out of lack of knowledge; There are occasionally weird players who intentionally object to doing it, as have turned up in this thread, but 99% of the time it's because the game simply hasn't done a good enough job explaining melding to the casual user.

In my experience, most players like easy ways to get stronger, and are happy to learn about materia melding. I wouldn't recommend trying to explain it to someone mid-dungeon, but if you meet someone through your FC or a linkshell that is unmelded at endgame, take some time out of your day to walk them through basic melding and they'll usually be glad for it.

[Illmaeran]

Since I came back only a few months before EW and don't do group content harder than regular Roulettes, it's just not worth it to meld my stuff. If my FC gets back into raiding or doing content that requires squeezing out every tiny bit of extra damage/mitigation/healing/etc, then yes, I'll be melding a lot more, and a lot more frequently.

Part of the reason you may be seeing more people without melded gear is the stage of the cycle we're in. I'm going to take a wild stab and say that most of the player base who meld the most frequently (raiders) are taking a break or are leveling jobs. Either case is likely to decrease the frequency of encountering people with fully melded gear in content for public consumption.

[AusarViled]

reason i do not do it, is that it makes very little difference to most classes. A 300 increase to spell speed may save you like 0.1 second with slide casting, which is not enough to really matter. For tanks the difference in hp / defense is also negilable. Critical strike is only one worth socketing to critical more often, but critical damage is pointless.

Hence why i do not do it, to much work not worth it

[ItMe]

Nope. Pull first ask questions later.

Doesn't matter how good, or even adequate, someone's gear is if they still don't understand what their buttons do. For example, checking the tank's gear at the beginning doesn't let you know they aren't going to use any defensive cooldowns, or their invuln, or don't know that Reprisal and Arm's Length can be used as defensives on big pulls.

That is a valid approach, but I'm sorry to hear you don't regard any other approach as valid.

[Dreamsoap]

I saw a lvl 80 sprout Ultimate Legend yesterday in full raid gear with absolutely no melds.

I know when I was new, I was completely overwhelmed by stats and I didn't know what any of meant. People linking me to the balance helped even less, I don't like throwing stuff in blindly. But this, I don't genuinely believe you make it to savage raiding and clear ultimate without using melds.

[ItMe]

I saw a lvl 80 sprout Ultimate Legend yesterday in full raid gear with absolutely no melds.

I know when I was new, I was completely overwhelmed by stats and I didn't know what any of meant. People linking me to the balance helped even less, I don't like throwing stuff in blindly. But this, I don't genuinely believe you make it to savage raiding and clear ultimate without using melds.

I mean... For most players raiding UWU and UCoB right now... materia literally does not matter.

Ultimate Legend comes from Ultima Weapon Ultimate, which is a level 70 duty.
When you level synch down, your equipment's innate stats get reduced down to whatever stat cap is relevant to that iLVL, and your materia no longer provides any bonuses.
Unless you're doing something very specific with your stats, like wanting to reach a specific skill/spell speed tier, you get far better stats just wearing current gear and letting it get squished down than you would get from farming up the pieces for an at level set so you can use materia.

[Skivvy]

I'm curious how often people actually check party members in dungeons and roulette type content. I personally just about never check gear unless it's a tank that is taking massive hits and has HP that is yo-yo'ing in an annoying way. Otherwise, ehhhhh.

As far as melding goes, I didn't start until sometime after the Alex raids. It just wasn't something that was on my radar for being required, honestly, I think I forgot it was even a thing. And for the content I run (basic dungeons/roulettes/etc) I always felt I was well-geared. But as mentioned up above, Materia is handed out like candy now, so it doesn't hurt to fill up the slots you can and then sell off all the extra.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I'm curious how often people actually check party members in dungeons and roulette type content. I personally just about never check gear unless it's a tank that is taking massive hits and has HP that is yo-yo'ing in an annoying way. Otherwise, ehhhhh.

As far as melding goes, I didn't start until sometime after the Alex raids. It just wasn't something that was on my radar for being required, honestly, I think I forgot it was even a thing. And for the content I run (basic dungeons/roulettes/etc) I always felt I was well-geared. But as mentioned up above, Materia is handed out like candy now, so it doesn't hurt to fill up the slots you can and then sell off all the extra.

Generally 2 things make me examine party members to see gear. Either I want to figure out what pieces they used to make their glamour. Or said party member has noticeably less max HP than expected. The latter generally means they're undergeared and at that point it's figuring out if it's evenly spread or if they're running a few extremely outdated pieces.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Generally 2 things make me examine party members to see gear. Either I want to figure out what pieces they used to make their glamour. Or said party member has noticeably less max HP than expected. The latter generally means they're undergeared and at that point it's figuring out if it's evenly spread or if they're running a few extremely outdated pieces.

Or when I’m playing a tank into trials/raids. I examine other tanks gears to see if somebody’s more geared up I’ll be off tanking, unless they insist on sitting on sideline.

[LittleImp]

I'm confused by some of the logic of the anti-melders.

If you feel that a 10% throughput increase that takes under 5 minutes to setup is a 'waste of time', do you think that all other forms of gear progression are a waste of time as well?

Do you simply get to level 80 and completely stop attempting to increase your character power? Acquiring tome gear, 24man gear or relic weapons all take a significantly higher time investment than melding.

If you're willing to participate in any of the above systems to progress your character, why would you draw the line at melding?