Leveling Materia Melds

[Damedius]

So I'm leveling a Black Mage and a Paladin and I'm wondering what Materia I should be using.

Reading older posts suggest that Critical hit isn't good until you can stack enough of it but other posts say that Crit is the best for BLM.

[Awha]

Tbh I am not even certain meteria even has an impact at the lower levels. Prob wrong, I never noticed much of a difference when I stacked materia on my warrior while leveling. I used Det when I could.

[ckq53]

IMHO I wouldn't even really worry about melding your armor while youre leveling a job. You'll be changing armor pieces every other dungeon especially if you're dungeon grinding for leveling. Just wait till you get your 80 set set up and meld that.

What actually helps me is I already have a set of Augmented "whatever" armor for whatever class I'm leveling. When I get to 50, 60 and 70, I'll slap that armor on and I'll have a good buffer at lest halfway through the 10 levels before I have to start swapping out with dungeon pieces.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

Since removing Materia up to lv 6 is always a 100% rate theres no no problem melding stuff.

Rule of thumb, red Materia is good for most classes ... theres a lot more depth to that but i dont think you need to worry about which ones are best.

its still only going to effect like 0-3% of your dmg likely.

[MistakeNot]

So I'm leveling a Black Mage and a Paladin and I'm wondering what Materia I should be using.

Reading older posts suggest that Critical hit isn't good until you can stack enough of it but other posts say that Crit is the best for BLM.

Really doesn't matter while you are still leveling. Even at level cap the exact materia you use makes only a small difference.

Crit and Det works fine for all classes, jobs, and roles. Not always optimal, but always useful.

[Powercow]

Crit and Det works fine for all classes, jobs, and roles. Not always optimal, but always useful.

The only problem is that some gear already has capped crit or det.

If you're leveling paladin, you can always throw in some Direct Hit, since none of your gear (past the super-duper low levels) will have any.

For BLM, crit, det, direct hit, or spellspeed works fine, though some pieces may be capped on a stat already.

It doesn't really make a big difference while leveling, and people aren't going to rake you over the coals for not having melded gear. Still, if you want to put in the effort to make yourself as good as reasonably possible for your leveling groups, good on you.

[wereotter]

IMHO I wouldn't even really worry about melding your armor while youre leveling a job. You'll be changing armor pieces every other dungeon especially if you're dungeon grinding for leveling. Just wait till you get your 80 set set up and meld that.

What actually helps me is I already have a set of Augmented "whatever" armor for whatever class I'm leveling. When I get to 50, 60 and 70, I'll slap that armor on and I'll have a good buffer at lest halfway through the 10 levels before I have to start swapping out with dungeon pieces.

At this point, since you can pull materia from gear without destroying it, and because you can retrieve materia from gear after its melded, it's more worth it now to meld leveling gear than it was a few years ago. When I replayed the story with a friend recently, I found I was swimming in low level materia by just extracting it from every piece of gear once it hit max spirit bond.

To that end, it depends on your level, but really for the most part, the stat increases are so minimal that you won't see HUGE differences. Below level 50, I would say use determination for the best returns. I would say once you get to level 60+ critical hit and (unless things have changed since I played it last) spell speed melds are good for black mages. Direct hit is the stat to meld into paladin.

[Wyndam]

Literally anything that affects your current role. When you're level synced down I think you lose the stats from the materia. As you level up the breakpoints will change so there isn't too much use in worrying about them. Most people ignore materia altogether while leveling so slotting anything is going to put you ahead of the game.

Personally, because I play all jobs and switch between them a lot, I would go ahead and use the Tenacity materia on PLD so that you can push the DPS materia to BLM. Progression is the one place where Tenacity is mildly useful and you can think of leveling as a form
of progression without a static. If you're going to do them consecutively and can reuse the materia or you're confident with your tanking on PLD and confident you'll have a competent healer, probably direct hit.

[Hysterior]

I would not bother adding materias to leveling gear...you will switch gear too fast to make it very useful.

[Gemina]

I wouldnt go out of your way to make. Go ahead and use whatever you get from materia extraction, and make what the gear allows you to. Try to focus on det if you can as it is the most helpful stat while leveling since it is a direct increase and not based on RNG to trigger. After that, I go Crit.