I don't think you people get what I'm trying to say... So let me elaborate.

Say I'm fully geared with level 40 equipment, which costs about 5k to 10k each to repair to 99% at an NPC. This gear took me to level 50 so I'm capped and need to replace my gear. The items durability is at 50% for everything. Ok, 13 slots which is roughly 65,000 to 130,000 gil to repair all to 99%. I have about that much on me at the moment but instead of repairing I'm gonna go back and start farming level 20 guild leve until I replace all my armor which will give me about 4,000 to 8,000 gil a leve not including the bonuses. I have 99 opportunities to do battle leves, I’m level 50 doing level 20 guild leves which wont take me but a few minutes to do each quest. So that’s 396,000 to 792,000 gil.

A few hours go by and I'm done, now I'm fully decked out in whatever gear I could find in the AH for sale. Now I have this old level 40 gear that I can either dump at an NPC or find someone to repair so I can sell it in the auction house, However regardless of whether the armor is 50% or 100% durability I can sell it to an NPC for about the same that it would cost to repair it to 99%.

I have really no incentive to sell the gear in the auction house for a profit because this really isn't an optimal way to gain gil in this game. I'd make more doing leves when I need gil then going out of my way to repair these items or make my own. However because I simply don't care, if the NPC could repair to 100% I could sell these items for dirt cheap and be rid of them in seconds and continue on my way.

The system requires that an item be 100% to sell it in the AH. Selling it to an NPC requires nothing, De-Synthesizing the item has nothing to do with its durability. Finding a player character with the right profession to repair my old gear would be very much a hassle I don’t want to deal with and I haven’t bothered with the materia system yet so there would be no point to De-synthesize the item.

So, because of the stupid limitations, perfectly good gear that is 100% soul bound simply goes to waste. Why? Because there isn’t a logical incentive to go about the mundane process of repairing to items 100% unless I want to (a) Give them away (b) Re-use them or (c) try to make a profit in the ah. None of these options have true incentives and I’ll explain why.

Giving them away: I basically don’t care about the item when I want to do this, but I’d be willing to just pass them off for severely lower then market value to give new players a fighting chance with item prices.

Re-using them: By the time I get another battle class to level 40 I would have made enough money to just buy new gear so there would be no point in taking up retainer space.

Try to make a profit in the AH: As I said before, I make gil faster by doing guild leves so playing the auction house would slow my profit margin down.
So in concluding, I’m not saying take the ability away from the crafters I’m saying give people options because you people whining about it costing to much to repair to 99% probably can’t manage their gil per second anyway.

To also answer the question about end game repairs, When I need money I’ll do the guild leves when I need quick repairs 99% is just as good as 100%. So while your waiting around for that measly 1% I’ll be back in the fight.

The system is flawed