Quote Originally Posted by Brandedblade View Post
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.