Opinion for Tank Gear

[dspguy]

There are cases where the pentamelded gear can be superior, but with changes made to accessories in the last expansion (2 slots for melds instead of just 1 for non-crafted gear), they effected closed that loophole.

Take a look at the Rinascita Ring of Fending vs the Lunar Envoy Ring of Fending. The tomestone gear has:
+10 iLvl (just a number technically)
+9 STR
+9 VIT
+3 crit
+2 det

Since they share the same substats, you can only get an extra 36 crit (or DH) with the melds. If accessories worked like they did in SB, you could get +72 in substats, like crit. And that might actually make a difference. But you would need a piece of crafted gear with crit/DH +72 from melds compared to Lunar Envoy gear with tenacity/skill speed. I feel like that happened more often in SB (poor sub-stats on tomestone gear that could be beaten with pentamelded crafted gear). That extra guaranteed materia slot makes the argument fairly moot.

In SB, my BRD's tomestone weapon had +1 damage but had skill speed and determination. Whereas the crafted bow had crit/dh and was pentamelded. I compared those two exhaustively and found the crafted bow was indeed superior.

However, I think instances like that are few and far between. It isn't like we can meld STR onto accessories anymore. Back then, crafted accessories were often superior to tomestone accessories. Generally speaking, iLvl is king.