Matria is needed?

[Corvanther]

Is it needed if you don't want to do the most bleeding edge content? I got my ninja to 80, got him the 510 crafted stuff, and that is as far as I plan to go gear wise, save for his relic daggers. Do I need to matria him up for basically roulettes and the rare as rocs teeth raid I do? If I do what do I use? I am told all crit and nothing but crit.

[ItMe]

If you have the materia you might as well use it.
But I wouldn't worry about it unless you're doing at least EX content.
If you do meld, yeah, go for as much crit as possible.

[wereotter]

No, it's not required. It's helpful, but the actual impact it makes on your damage is minimal. Base weapon damage, main stat (dexterity in this case) and personal skill are all more important than the materia you put into your gear. But as was said, if you have the materia, you should consider using it.

For ninja priority, yes, critical hit should be your main focus, and if a piece of gear is capped on that stat, then add more direct hit.

[Kalaam]

Critical is basically the priority for everyone I feel

[LeonKeyh]

Critical is basically the priority for everyone I feel

That's fairly accurate. A few classes want a certain amount of Skill/Spell speed before they start stacking crit, and Healers typically want a "comfortable" amount of piety also before stacking crit, but crit is overpowered as a stat since it effects both the rate in which you crit and the amount of damage when you crit. It is an exponential increase that you don't get from any other stat.

[Undeadfire]

No, it's not required. It's helpful, but the actual impact it makes on your damage is minimal.

It's quite bigger than that to be friendly.

For example:

I cleared 1st week Eden Promise fully crafted gear max melds.

When we trial some new healers without the crafted gear in a min ilvl settings which cuts off our melds, we couldn't even properly push the DPS check despite we were 5-7% behind our 1st week. Don't underestimate Crit/Direct rng, it's a right game changer.

[White_Wolf_X]

If it's just for roulettes then no, you don't need to but ofc it never hurts.

[Stepjam]

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

[wereotter]

It's quite bigger than that to be friendly.

For example:

I cleared 1st week Eden Promise fully crafted gear max melds.

When we trial some new healers without the crafted gear in a min ilvl settings which cuts off our melds, we couldn't even properly push the DPS check despite we were 5-7% behind our 1st week. Don't underestimate Crit/Direct rng, it's a right game changer.

That's still not very large on the individual level. If you're looking at over the course of an about 10-15 minute fight that between all 8 players you were 5-7% behind where you needed to be, that's still a minimal increase. And this person even stated that savage raiding is not something they're interested in doing. If you're doing the hardest content out there then every benefit you can get is something you want, which is also why you would use food for stat boosts when raiding but it's overkill when just doing expert roulette.

[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.