No melds in savage?

[Lilyth]

Savage is "technically" clearable even if one member is playing without their job stone.

Should this be an excuse for someone to go in as a Conjurer just cause it's doable? Hell no.

Kick was 100% justifiable. If they couldn't bother themselves with simple melds, they most likely wouldn't have bothered with carrying their own weight as well.

[KageTokage]

Can confirm from experience that if people are too lazy/cheap to meld their gear that they're also not likely to have put in the effort of learning how to play their class properly.

[Lunavi]

It’s POSSIBLE, But it is definitely not preferable, especially considering How cheap they are. I get not using foodbefore sizing the party up, But to not use materia VIII on your gear is just cheap.

[Waliel]

Fully melded gear with g8 materia is 1440 extra secondary stats, 960 with g6. Roughly 5% when comparing unmelded 470 eden set to full g8 melds with BLM gear calculator excel sheet. Probably less than the average person thinks, but still a nice boost.

That said, there's no reason not to meld because of how abundant materia is. I probably have like 200 or more random materia just sitting in my inventory with bunch of clusters on top of that. Pretty sure I haven't bought a single one this expansion. You can even go with g6 as the retrieval rate is 100%, and the DPS loss is miniscule.