Spiritbonding with melds question

[Crouchingmoose]

I've heard conflicting opinions that melds affect spiritbonding in different ways. How true is this and what is the effect?

The 2 major opinions I've heard are that each meld gives +20% bond gained and that grade doesn't matter, and also that grade matters a lot (ie V's will spiritbonding faster than I'd). Which one is right?

[StouterTaru]

Grade does not matter

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Grade of materia does not matter.

But to add to things, TC, HQ binds 20% faster than the same piece would at NQ. If you have two i290 pieces one HQ with no melds and one NQ with one materia melded to it, both will bind at the same speed. So if you are looking to spiritbind for materia, spiritbind HQ gear for that little extra speed.

Oh, one final thing. It was determined back before HW that effects that add 1 or 2 to your Spiritbinding were worthless, they add straight up points rather than percentage points, and the pools were large enough back then. They can logically only be that much larger now (with larger additions to them, they were based on the item level and mob level or recipe level etc.) and adding a few points to each binding action will not amount to much at all.

[ChameleonMS]

IIRC, even melded, you should expect to craft 3 or 4 stacks of items at your level to finish a spirit bond.