what is the best 3.2 melding guide? please

[EternityFate]

Hi everyone! well... i don't see any melding guide for 3.2. What is do you guys using for 3 stars?

[PirateCat]

There isn't really a one size fits all meld strat. A lot of it is going to depend on which type of gear you're going for, which is in turn a question of whether you want to put more playtime/gil into it or have it take a longer IRL amount of time before you're done (e.g. i170 vs i180.) If you have a specific stat goal in mind, I'd recommend playing around with the Ariyala site and see what works for you. Meld recommendations are going to depend on what the price of materia looks like.

Here is an example of the meld strat I've been going for. This is based on using primarily i170 gear since with melds they have better stats, but a build like this is extremely materia intensive. Generally I've been prioritizing CP > Control > Craftsmanship since the most popular rotation these days has a lot of fixed-progress steps and takes a lot of CP. The specific order of the melds is based on the fact that Control materia tends to be the most expensive (and thus comes earlier in the meld order so we use fewer of them) followed by CP with Craftsmanship trailing the pack, but this will depend on the relative prices/availability on your server.

A couple of quick notes on the i170 gear:
- The head, hands, legs, feet, and ring slots can be 100% capped without using any tier V materia. The belt and the other accessories require at least one craftsmanship V materia to cap fully, but you can use tier IV and only lose 3 points per piece. As seen in the totals, this is still plenty for the minimum stats.
- The mainhand, offhand, and body pieces can't be capped completely, even if you pentamelded tier V materia all the way down them. So these are somewhat up to personal preference. These slots are also where you'll get the most immediate stat benefit from just going with the i180 pieces, though you'll lose a little CP on the MH/OH since you can't meld them. My melds on the body piece actually give slightly lower craftsmanship than the i180 body does but it's got more control.