Current problem with battle materia

[Kaliesto]

You all probably noticed for years that Red Materia is more valued than anything else (especially CRIT materia)

Purple & Yellow Materia tend to fall to the wayside because its useless for raiding and other aspects of the game (least according to some people like the Tenacity materia) , I'm starting to wonder why those materia even exist at this point if anyone barely use that materia.

I would love to see someone change my mind if there is indeed some actual use for Purple & Yellow Materia in any particular setting.

[Eraden]

Mao uses some purples for BLMs. Mao tries get spell speed up a bits.

[NekoMataMata]

I just give them to the doman enclave every week. There's sadly nothing else to do with them. A lot of them literally sell just barely above the price you'd get for selling them to vendors.

[Rufalus]

There used to be some orange status resist ones and white elemental resist too. Once everyone agreed that damage output is the only thing that matters, they pretty much weeded out any real options. If they just removed materia slots at this point and increased the base gear stats to compensate it wouldn't really make any difference to the game. Healers are designed to have enough MP without needing piety melds.

[Zebraoracle]

It's just how substats work in 14, unfortunately. We have very little substat deviation with builds, unlike WoW where some builds scale with different substats.

Here it's, generally, as much crit as you can get, followed by direct hit, skill/spell speed to comfort, and det when you can't do anything else.
You have very few deviations from this, such as spell speed black mage, because unfortunately crit is king.

In WoW, some specs prefer haste over other stats, some specs prefer mastery over other stats, some specs prefer crit over other stats.

Welcome to 14's job/combat design.

[VeyaAkemi]

This isn't something I particularly care about, because, look at it this way... it still wouldn't be my decision.

To elaborate, if there were a thousand different substats, and a thousand different jobs, each of which used a different substat for very specific builds, there would already be a guide explaining the optimal pick, made by someone who is smarter than me or at least more invested in this sorta thing than me, and there would be zero actual input for me to give, it'd be the exact same process of going to the NPC, trading an Anthocluster for the right bead, and shoving it into my gear, rinse and repeat until all the slots are filled, the only difference is that the menu would be more of a hassle to navigate.

With that context what difference it makes if I am picking always the same, or always a different one?

[DixieBellOCE]

This isn't something I particularly care about, because, look at it this way... it still wouldn't be my decision.

To elaborate, if there were a thousand different substats, and a thousand different jobs, each of which used a different substat for very specific builds, there would already be a guide explaining the optimal pick, made by someone who is smarter than me or at least more invested in this sorta thing than me, and there would be zero actual input for me to give, it'd be the exact same process of going to the NPC, trading an Anthocluster for the right bead, and shoving it into my gear, rinse and repeat until all the slots are filled, the only difference is that the menu would be more of a hassle to navigate.

With that context what difference it makes if I am picking always the same, or always a different one?

Every game system ever created.

[AetherHale]

I just give them to the doman enclave every week. There's sadly nothing else to do with them. A lot of them literally sell just barely above the price you'd get for selling them to vendors.

Outside of endgame its really annoying to me how materia matters...little if at all. If youre above item level materia doesn't matter and when it does its only if youre trying to min/max. I'm not saying make the game harder or require materia but I really wish there was an advantage to utilizing them throughout the game, ya know?

[Amenara]

Should just rename this to "Current problem with secondary stats" as the materia is only a symptom of having secondary stats that are essentially dead stats or even better, detrimental for most jobs and crit being king over everything else.

[NekoMataMata]

Outside of endgame its really annoying to me how materia matters...little if at all. If youre above item level materia doesn't matter and when it does its only if youre trying to min/max. I'm not saying make the game harder or require materia but I really wish there was an advantage to utilizing them throughout the game, ya know?

I mean it does actually matter for Crafters/Gatherers, and in Savage+ it's usually helpful, especially if you're in a fresh tier with recently released crafted gear and have to penta.

Which... is something else I really dislike. IF they want to make materia matter that's fine, but if they made it so you had to pentameld everything then I would just outright quit cause pentamelding sucks. I don't care what other MMOs you compare it to either. If it sucks then it sucks.

I'd like something in between where they still matter but not overwhelmingly so, and without any sort of awful overmelding system.

Every game system ever created.

So what you're saying is that the bar is low, and therefore the fact that the issue doesn't need solving and is instead acceptable.