Why No Melds?

[Voltyblast]

I personally don't meld that much unless I want to be "totally effective", and even then I don't do raids or extreme so why would I even bother? I can only meld secondary stats and how many of them are actually useful? Exactly.

Melding itself is quite unpolished anyway: unless it's crafted gear you really can't put any main stats into your slots, cannot overmeld either, and when you upgrade you lose your hard-earned V grade materia. Talk about waste!

If you could meld more main stats into it - and also give stats bonus, like WoW JC (worst game ever, yadda yadda) used to do - on top of also being more lenient (overmelding feels like I'm playing a cheap p2w game without the % boost) and overall being "better", I can see more materia melding being done.

As it is, it's just pointless to even bother and whenever I can, I just sell V materias until I can upgrade my gear, which will be in months anyway. I can only see an utility for gathering, crafting and if you want to min-maxing your potential but beside these, what's the point?

[Neophyte]

I personally don't meld that much unless I want to be "totally effective", and even then I don't do raids or extreme so why would I even bother? I can only meld secondary stats and how many of them are actually useful? Exactly.

Crit for all, Strenth for tanks, accuracy for the healers and SS for BLM. Those are "effective" enough to feel the impact usually.

What things, which you can buy with gil (besides crafted gear), are more useful than this?

After all the fluff (like you have all your glamours you want and earn a house/appartment) the main focus of this game is battle content. And that's why I focus my spendings on that type of contents. After having all my fluff the only options are either 1. get more and more money or 2. get more AP. I don't see the point in "1.", especially if you do it only for the sake of it.

I rather clear contents (even the slightest) faster, than just to have a number growing up in my upper right corner of the screen.

[Voltyblast]

Snip

Crit is useful yes, but you can do it without it just fine. Plus it's the only really useful stat to meld on so...it's pretty much guaranteed you want it all the time. Same for Determination.

Strength can be only melded on accessories (if it's tome gear), and even then you're just fine as it is for 90% of the content. Oh, I'm a tank: I can safely say this without issues.

Accuracy for healers is good only if you like to maximize your damage while healing, which again isn't a big deal if you don't bother. Unless you are really wanting to maximize your efforts, you don't really care. I certainly don't and I heal just fine!

SS is the only stat I can think that benefits one class only...which is a shame because it's quite weak and BARELY increases your attack speed. I played BLM a lot lately and while it was an increase in dps, it was a very small margin for each stack of SS put.
Most other classes don't really need it because they get more benefits from Crit and Det anyway.

So what's more useful than these? I think the best question would be "What are these materias needed for?"

I'm not really casual because I do like challenges (i would gladly try extreme but SHEESH the toxicity is unbearable) and I occasionally do some harder stuff to keep my attention up, but I sincerely never found a use for melding materias that wasn't Raiding or Extreme primals. You can easily finish a dungeon without a single meld, you can pvp without melding too (although I'm sure hardcore pvpers would recommend certain materias), you can pretty much do ANYTHING without melding materias into your gear. So I ask again: why even bother?

So unless you are a raider, you like to min-max, you're heavy into BiS and all that stuff, the answer is "Yes, those are useful". If not, then I don't see the point of wasting money on armors and weapons that WILL be weak in the next patch.

PS: and ironically, spending money on glamour is not a bad investment. At least they don't get oudated with each major patch! x)

[alimdia]

SS is the only stat I can think that benefits one class only...which is a shame because it's quite weak and BARELY increases your attack speed. I played BLM a lot lately and while it was an increase in dps, it was a very small margin for each stack of SS put.
Most other classes don't really need it because they get more benefits from Crit and Det anyway.

I wouldn't say barely, high SS vs low SS can be the difference between being able to do certain openers or not, or being able to get a cast off before dodging or not. The speed is also very noticeable on MNK, where high SS can get your TP dry but low SS doesn't.

Crit and Det just increase damage, but speed can affect your gameplay either positively or negatively, some classes feel very smooth with high SS.

[Vele]

I meld my healing (have to, for raiding), casting, and aiming gear (I play blm and brd often). Maybe eventually I will meld my tank gear, since I play pld every now and then (when doing easy content solo and I want an insta queue). But eh, it's not really a priority. I don't play drg or mnk so even though those are at 60, I don't care to meld slaying/striking gear. Same for nin, if it was at 60 already. I'm just lazy about doing beast tribes for tier 4s.

I don't meld my alt character's gear because frankly I don't need them, my alt's just there to get me an extra mhachi matter per week. Besides, why bother when 95% of df pugs are so bad I don't need melds to be top dps?

[Khemorex]

i meld my pld first since its the main class i play (i use the machi things for V materia , ive never bought any V materia tho :P ), then my sch ,the rest of the classes i dont care that much coz the ilvls on them are low , and i usually dont play my not so good equipped classes in raids/trials ^^ maybe a dungeon here and there for fun , and then it depends on how much the materia costs if i can get some IV materia for a reasonable price i buy it else not.

i raid only occasionaly per PF , so im not really in a hurry to have everything right away :P (maybe someday ill join a static again , but not for now :P )

[KitingGenbu]

No point in Melding since a majority of the population doesn't even Savage which its only noticeable on.

[Laerune]

I stepped down from farming tomes and doing raids. Since melds are mostly needed for doing endgame raiding/crafting and I do neither those two, I see no reason to meld my gear.

[Moomba33]

I started melding my upgraded Lore gear but I soon realized I cared more about getting the gil from selling them than about having melds.
I don't run current high end content and don't worry about min/maxing my battle classes.
I love having extra gil around for rare minions and my occasional forays into crafting and gathering.

[RukiaFae]

Most people are already over geared for everything except the latest raid. So if you don't raid there is really no point. Plus they are practically throwing gear at us now. You only get a few weeks out of melded gear before you're changing it out for something else. Once I get I'll 270 I may add some melds while waiting on the expansion.