Repairs/Melding: Stop Increasing Its Level

[Niwashi]

leveling L80 x 8 crafters = 640 levels. To repair.

Your math's a little off. When talking specifically about repairs, there aren't 8 crafting classes. Culinarian doesn't make gear, so doesn't repair or meld it either. And players who find 7 crafting classes too many to level probably aren't the ones leveling all 16 combat jobs, so they may be able to limit it further by focusing on the ones that make most of their main job's gear. People who main any of the DoM jobs probably don't use Armorer very often, nor does a Warrior have much use for Carpenter, and so on. (Of course, to also be able to craft usefully at high levels, they'll want their other crafters up to 50 for cross-class skills, but that's neither relevant to repairs nor continuing to go up each expansion.)

And in any case, if someone was willing to keep their crafting classes within 10 levels of their main just to repair gear for the first 50 or 60 levels, why would that change while they're going the rest of the way to 70 or 80?

It is frustrating to have half a static that can repair themselves, but we have to stop prog to allow those who don't have the time to level all their crafters to leave and repair.

While I don't really see much need for the OP's suggestion, I would like it if we could repair each other's gear (kind of like how we can meld someone else's gear). Then so long as your static has at least one person with leveled crafters and everyone carries Dark Matter, you could take care of everyone's repairs in-dungeon.

They could get rid of the 7 (soon to be 8) levels of Dark Matter (and only have one Dark Matter to rule them all)

This would be nice, too.