sigh.... I'm not huge fan of melding, to be precise... I loathe RNG being the base of it all. I for one, are one from many crafters who have blown so many, and it is pure RNG hell.

I can't think the horror of wasting hundreds of materia and possibly millions of gils, and leaving higher tier for last stretch might be way more painful. No matter how big are your materia saving, it might be mostly wasted for this. ^^;