Matria is needed?

[Stepjam]

If you aren't doing EX (savage really), you won't need materia. But if you got it, you might as well.

[Rufalus]

You should meld everything just because it's easy to do and there's no reason to reduce your dps by staying unmelded.
But it's a flawed system because the level sync invalidates all materia, so your melds do nothing in all older content that is below your item level.

[Dzian]

Tier 8 Materias are so cheap and easy to obtain I don't even understand why would you refuse to meld. Discord Hunts exist calling every Data Centre a train run, congrats you got all the materias you want in less than a day. It's common courtesy to do your best on your job you play than gimping the team further because "too lazy". Melded crit vs Non Melded crit DPS the damage difference is huge.

The issue with materia is the same its always been. Gear just doesn't last long enough to justify melding it for most people...

Melding gear your just going to throw away in the next week or so is basically seen as throwing money down the drain...

And while money itself is pretty easy to get. That shiny glamour you may want to buy is going to be expensive stuff. Hell a glamour hairstyle is still selling for 12 million...

And as everybody frequently says
Glamour is the true endgame.

If gear had a viable lifespan people would be more willing to invest in it.. or hell even if the melds carried over augments..

Melded your 520 cryptbunkers. But then augment it to 530. Bye materia...

Melded your 510 crafted. Then augment it to 520 bye materia...

Makes melding a waste of time and money for many people.

Also if your remotely upto date on gear you already overpower theblatest content anyway.. Whats the ireq for the newest alliance raid 495? When everyone is sporting 510-520 and already overpowering by 20-25 I levels even on day 1

[Brandedblade]

If gear had a viable lifespan people would be more willing to invest in it.. or he'll even if the melds carried over augments..

Melded your 520 cryptbunkers. But then augment it to 530. Bye materia...

Melded your 510 crafted. Then augment it to 520 bye materia...

Makes melding a waste of time and money for many people.

Also if your remotely upto date on gear you already overpower theblatest content anyway.. whats the ireq for the newest alliance raid 495? When everyone is sporting 510-520 and already overpowering by 20-25 I levels even on day 1

1. You can very easily get materia via drops and stellaclusters, and even from wearing your gear for 5 seconds and letting it spiritbond.

2. You can extract the materia from your gear when you're ready to chunk and/or upgrade it. Yes there's the chance that it will break of course, I will not refute that, but the fact is you still have a decent chance of salvaging the materia and holding on to it.

[Dzian]

1. You can very easily get materia via drops and stellaclusters, and even from wearing your gear for 5 seconds and letting it spiritbond.

2. You can extract the materia from your gear when you're ready to chunk and/or upgrade it. Yes there's the chance that it will break of course, I will not refute that, but the fact is you still have a decent chance of salvaging the materia and holding on to it.

think its 40% chance of success when retrieving top materia... so thats still a 60% chance of throwing money down the drain.... even if you get it free it still has a resale value on the market boards... so the question becomes meld it. or use the money for that shiny glamour..

i meld most of my stuff but at the same time im realistic and its easy to understand why so many people just don't bother...

there also the added reason of no discernable difference... if you melded 500 crit onto your gear. without using a third party tool you wouldnt notice it making the slightest difference.

[Nezerius]

The issue with materia is the same its always been. Gear just doesn't last long enough to justify melding it for most people...

Melding gear your just going to throw away in the next week or so is basically seen as throwing money down the drain...

At current prices, fully melding a set of gear in grade VIII materia (18 total materia) will only cost about 90-100k total. Doing a set of daily roulettes (all except MSQ) with the Adventure in Need will already give you 47755 gil + 2 stellaclusters. And that's excluding the gil reward from the daily first completion of those roulettes. It's unlikely for you to replace entire sets of i510/i520 gear every single week, so any week following the initial full melding will usually result in grabbing 1-4 materia (around 5-20k).

Fully melding your gear like that will give you an additional 1080 secondary stats. In comparison, an i520 weapon will give you 876 secondary stats.

Is it needed? Not really, but if you're capable of making enough gil to buy a hairstyle that's worth 12 mil, an extra 90-100k shouldn't be too big of a deal.

[Undeadfire]

You got Hunts, you got 80 Dungeons, you got Spiritbond for free Materia. Do your roulettes everyday and you easily got enough cash to fill everything in the armour. Roulettes pays roughly 80-100k gil a day and go Tank/Healer if you want it guaranteed.

There's 0 excuse to not have Tier 8 Materias these days, SE has made it so much easier to obtain the highest tier in this Xpac compared to 2.0/3.0 days. 80 hunts PS4 players can easily make it by being in the party, all you got to do is Strike once with an AOE regardless if you can see it or not you will still hit it.

[wereotter]

You got Hunts, you got 80 Dungeons, you got Spiritbond for free Materia. Do your roulettes everyday and you easily got enough cash to fill everything in the armour. Roulettes pays roughly 80-100k gil a day and go Tank/Healer if you want it guaranteed.

There's 0 excuse to not have Tier 8 Materias these days, SE has made it so much easier to obtain the highest tier in this Xpac compared to 2.0/3.0 days. 80 hunts PS4 players can easily make it by being in the party, all you got to do is Strike once with an AOE regardless if you can see it or not you will still hit it.

You missed the point again, possibly because you're so intent on being right that you want to make any statement to feel like you are...

When you're on a console, the mark currently is dead BEFORE you arrive. Doesn't matter if you're in a party, you won't have the mark load before dying, therefore no hitting it, meaning no materia (and I noticed you didn't even recognize that a good chunk of the continent can't even participate because of time zone issues)

Spirit bonding is great... when it works. But also it's a gamble. I get more grade 7 gear from my spirit bonding than grade 8, and even then the grade 8 materia I get often isn't anything I want to use because the type of materia you get is random.

Most of us, also, have bigger goals for our gil than buying materia, if that's your next recommendation. If you're doing roulettes just to get gil to buy gil, that's where my argument that you're not doing content hard enough for it to matter comes into play.

Again, my point is that for the content that the OP wants to play, materia isn't needed. Yes, they should use it if they have it, but they're not massively inconveniencing anyone by missing it, except maybe you.

[iVolke]

You missed the point again, possibly because you're so intent on being right that you want to make any statement to feel like you are...

When you're on a console, the mark currently is dead BEFORE you arrive. Doesn't matter if you're in a party, you won't have the mark load before dying, therefore no hitting it, meaning no materia (and I noticed you didn't even recognize that a good chunk of the continent can't even participate because of time zone issues)

Lol you're so full of it. Hunts not loading was an issue for PS3. They load just fine for PS4.

Why do ffxiv players always try to find some excuse to not do the bare minimum? This game has been shoving materia down our throats since Stormblood.

[wereotter]

Lol you're so full of it. Hunts not loading was an issue for PS3. They load just fine for PS4.

Why do ffxiv players always try to find some excuse to not do the bare minimum? This game has been shoving materia down our throats since Stormblood.

Hunts on PS3 were not cross world. The congestion levels have gotten worse now that we have hunters from every data center converging into the zones. This is especially true now that new upgrade items have been added. I always participated before cross world, now it's barely even possible for me to do gathering in a zone while a hunt is going on, and I'm using the PS4 Pro even. Again... I'm not arguing against using materia, though. My point literally this entire time is that the boost is minimal, and using it is by no means mandatory for the level of content that the OP was stating they wanted to participate in.

If they have it, yes. Use it. But if they don't, they don't need to go out of their way to get it before participating in content.