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

[kaynide]

I rarely use Materia because I can clear the content in front of me without much of an issue.

If Materia were actually a significant impact on stats I could see it, or if content were hard enough that I was barely clearing it.

The only time I actually did a lot of Materia was for BLU vs Gogo. I was doing pretty good and thought fully kitting out my gear would get me the win/cut down on my fight time. Turned out, nope, I just needed a few more Primal spells.

[Mansion]

I still see RDM struggling between VerAero and VerAero II's usages, DoTless bards, Enochian-dropping BLM, single-target combo Tanks in a pack losing agro, non-dpsing healers everytime I get in any piece of casual content.
Materia isn't the issue. Materia wouldn't solve the issue either.

[LittleImp]

I will repeat myself then. Item level, melds do not increase it, gear upgrades do. Item level is required to enter content, melds are not. This is the reason. It's not about stats, its about being able to run the content to begin with.

The current minimum ilevel of the latest MSQ content is i490. Nothing else goes above 510 afaik.

If simply meeting the minimum ilevel to run content is the primary concern of these players, why do so many of these players continue to spend time to acquire 520/530 gear and relics? Unmelded full tome gear is not that uncommon of a sight. What content currently requires an ilevel of 520/530?

I must be missing out on all the cool content these people are gearing up to meet the minimum requirements for..

Edit: Amusingly enough, I actually know a Mentor on Crystal who actively encourages other endgame players not to meld materia, and rocks a full set of 530 aug (minus one ring ofc) with a maxed relic, all unmelded. In his particular case, he's an extreme contrarian who doesn't like melding because melding is "encouraged by elitists".

[Jin-]

I don't do savage or extreme anymore so not wasting my precious gil for that.

Otherwise I would and will in EW

[Iscah]

I outright forget about melding gear a lot of the time, even if it's a good idea when I stop to think about it.

I think it's a very different mindset to upgrading gear, because gear is a new thing to acquire and earn, plus it's an obvious upgrade with a higher level than what you've got right now. You buy it, or it falls into your inventory, and you equip it. Done.

But melding is the opposite of all that. It's not an obvious upgrade to your level. It's a somewhat fiddly menu and a slow process. It's a consumable item and a decision you need to make about how to spend it – and even if easily available, people fall into the same mindset that leads you (or certainly me) to reach the end of a single-player RPG with a full stash of potions and stat-boosting items because you're not sure which is the "correct" thing to do so you avoid doing anything about it for now.

[Eldevern]

...

You know, "show off", "glamour" and "accurate gearing" are three different things

Now if you want one reason why some people will try to get 520/530 is because it allows to have better gear to start the 6.0. In that case, ilvl matters when meld and secondary stats can keep you locked outside.

Considering Nier, many do it only for the glamour and it gives free upgrade for the crypt 520. And you get so many tomes with daily or Bozja that's a way to spend them.

[Rongway]

If everyone being fully melded shaved off only 10s from each instance, it would still be worth it. Ten seconds saved on just one duty per day would add up to an hour per year that you could spend doing something else.

[Illmaeran]

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?

Good questions. While I'm not anti-melding, it's not something I put much effort into and often totally forget about, to be honest. What I have to say will be coming from the point of view of someone who doesn't participate in public/DF/PF group content much outside of Roulettes and other item/level synch mechanisms. I 100% don't participate in progression-level activities, I know my limits. .

1. With the above in mind, since I'm not doing stuff that requires I push for extra fractions of a percent or shave one or two seconds off time, using materia doesn't mean anything to me. I get that it *is* important to people when they reach a certain level of play; I just don't happen to be there myself since 95% of the content I do is either solo or level/item synched.

2. I will, on the other hand, meld the snot out of crafting and gathering gear as that's a significant part of my non-leveling/non-story activity.

3. For example's sake, hitting #2 back to you, do you get HQ crafting/gathering gear and fully pentameld it? If you gather and/or craft and don't do that, why not? Not spending the extra 30 minutes to do so will cost you days worth of lost time having to do extra actions for the same HQ result over the course of an expansion. Do you not value your own time?

4. Do I stop attempting to increase my character's power at level 80? Sometimes, yes. It's not something I put much directed thought or effort into though. If I end up getting enough tomes/tokens do get better gear just by doing the stuff I feel like doing then yeah, I'll buy that new shiny. Smashing my head against raids and trials to get a piece of gear that's 5 ilvl higher than what I've got isn't my jam. I'd rather spend that time improving my DoL/DoH and be able to make my own higher ilvl gear when the story requires it.

Ironically, I'm more interested in doing dungeon content to get things to gear out my retainers with than focus-targeting incremental increases in my own gear.

[Anirab]

The expert roulettes give you free materias, extracting is easy, yet almost no players I see use materia. Am I taking crazy pills? Also your soulbind is faster when you have materia equipped do what's the deal? Someone please explain why so many choose to not have extra power?

When you find out let us know, we were wondering the same. I mean during levelling, ok, whatever, but Exarchic or Cryptlurker Gear without Materia? wtf?

[Anirab]

I rarely use Materia because I can clear the content in front of me without much of an issue.

If Materia were actually a significant impact on stats I could see it, or if content were hard enough that I was barely clearing it.

Base 2000 Crit vs melded 3500 Crit is a huge difference. You're basically throwing away 15-20% damage. At least...