While I don't necessarily disagree with you, gear damage doesn't do anything until you hit 0% and would need to pay the full price anyway. There are Repair NPCs at all the camps now so no matter what you are doing it only takes a minute or two to grab a repair.

My main gripe is not being able to chose which gear needs to repair and someone waste 500 gil and a DM on an item at 86% durability, when there is a 0% I really want repaired.
Thankfully this is coming at some point, it really is my only gripe too.