I forgot to mention I'm also using Sipahi Gloves as well, hence I chose Yew Longbow as my main weapon to meld on.

Actual critical rates against primals are generally 5% higher than the rest of the party, but even with the 100+ critical attack power I was not able to a single Ifrit's Bow..

The critical rate seems to be affected by the mob's level as well.. but it doesn't really matter to the topic of this thread..

What I'm trying to tell is, all efforts done on the materia are simply out weighted by a weapon with more base attack power.

I really wish the damage output is more influenced by the additional bonus like mages' weapon, where melding INT on a lightning brand does give you noticeable damage difference.
( I dealt 70-100 more damage per hit, while using thundara, with the cost of broken combos when compared to using a mag acc build )