It really depends on how much crafting you plan on doing..
If you plan on going hardcore into crafting, you're on Jenova so I can say.. most of the people selling 4star items right now don't gather their own mats, in the time it takes to gather a stack of mats, you can just craft 10-20 pieces of gear and it's much more profitable to sell those than spend your time gathering.. Not to mention the ~40-50k saved by gathering your own stuff isn't really that much money to some of them.. Hell, I've seen'em buy out mats/clusters over a million gil in value without changing cities and paying the 50k city tax..


So if you plan on doing some hardcore crafting, gathering won't be used later on. It may be helpful while you're leveling up and it is convenient to have around, but leveling it is a pain