Reducing the cost of NPC repair is better, but at the same time not very useful.
There isn't much benefit to repairing gear to 75% when nothing can be sold or traded unless at 100%.

Personally I'd like to be able to take all my non 100% gear(most of which is 85-99%) to the repair NPC and just click on all the items and pay to get them back to 100%. But I understand this would undermine the usefulness of crafters so I'm sure it would be greatly protested. But as for me, I don't like a system where I'm afraid to even equip gear cause it might get dinged or scratched and now I have to go through the whole process of finding someone to repair my 99% gear.