I'm actually kinda disappointed after hearing this. Triple melds should give you a huge chunk of increase in performance, and while I think it's a great idea that base stats should be slightly tweaked to yield better results, I think it's a bad idea for the long term of this game to not have a proper gear hierarchy set up. I don't want skill to be the only relevant thing in fights, or else we could just beat all the content in AF and level 48 weapons, it's just silly.