Red Mage meriting

[s_white62]

Would love some suggestions for how to properly merit a Red Mage. Any help/builds would be appreciated.

[Hyrist]

Might not be a good thing to get too invested in it as they're going to be revising merits soon, but if you want to put points in now I'll make my reccomendations:

Must haves:

Group 1:
5/5 Convert
Then your choice of:
Ice Accuracy Merits (I went 5/5 of this as we get the most benefit. (En-)Blizzard, Bind, Paralyze, )
Earth Accuracy Merits (To help with Slow landing on hard NMs)
Wind Accuracy Merits (Gravity, Silences, Aero.)


Group II:
Bare Minimum 1/5 Slow II as it overwrites haste.
After that you can go 5/5 Slow or
Paralyze II (most potent and noticeably better when 5/5)
Dia III (Good for NM fights as it stacks with Saboteur for a high defense down.)
Bio III (Great for Soloing)

Phalanx II and Blind II are highly debatable, as Blind II really is only great for evasion tanks and mobs that you don't floor evasion on (Ninja Blind is also much better.) And Phalanx II usually isn't worth the Merits as it's the same potency as Phalanx I and you can Accession Phalanx I to cast it on others.

I went
3/5 Dia III
5/5 Paralyze II
1/5 Slow II
1/5 Blind II (I have a lot of evasion tank friends.)

That's all for RDM specific merits. I'm wondering really how they're going to change them up.

[cidbahamut]

Bio III (Great for Soloing /BLU with a Cocoon build)

Fixed for clarity.

[Hyrist]

Fixed for clarity.

Dot Kiting.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Nuke more.

[cidbahamut]

Suck Less.

[Hyrist]

I love how since abyssea came out everyone thinks they're Avesta.

You could just say the tactic is aged and not worthwhile due to level cap rise/atmas in abyssea, etc.

But nooo, we have to pretend to be witty.


*stares*

Hmmm, maybe it's not a smart thing to read these forms after watching Zero Punctuation.

[saevel]

Really depends on what you use your RDM for.

I Use

Tier 1
5/5 Convert, always helpful
5/5 Ice Accuracy (+15 mag.acc)

Tier II
5/5 Slow II (lands on everything I do, not difficult to cap potency on)
5/5 Dia III (I found this spell extremely helpful, especially on Saboteur Dia III.)

The rest I really couldn't use.

Para II, any NM in the last year and a half will be nearly immune to it. Of those that aren't they have a static 50~75% reduction in it's potency, an ES full potency para II will hardly ever proc on newer stuff. Blame SE. Now saying this, when it works, it REALLY works. So if your frequently fighting things that aren't immune / severely resistant to, then cast away.

Phalanx II, I used to have this 3/5 until PLD's got their phalanx to above my Phalanx II. Afterwords I just use accession if I need to put it on other pt members. Otherwise the PLD's just apply their own.

Blind II, Never found this particularly helpful. 10~20% from 135% hit rate still leaves the NM with 110% hit rate (capped at 80). Vs anything big and nasty this spell is utterly useless due to SE's own system.

Bio III, I loath this spell, especially when another RDM casts it and ruins my own saboteur Dia III. For some reason people always feel they need to cast the highest tiered Bio they have. Anyhow at 5/5 with lots of Dark Skill it's ok for very long duration solo fights. Contrary to what people think, this won't actually lower damage taken due to the way SE treats monsters attack.

[cidbahamut]

You could just say the tactic is aged and not worthwhile
Then why would you recommend it to begin with?

We've got someone here who seems to be new to the realm of RDM meriting, so let's try to not give him bad information, ok?

[Crimson_Slasher]

Bad information isnt as harmful as leaving out information all together, and giving reasons for why something is good (and bad) is helpful when it comes to something where there IS a choice to be made. As merits are limited by mechanics, not by player opinion. In short, its about preference, i personally like the total round picture so i balanced everything to some degree, to what degree, ill leave it up in the air for now, but i do love me some dia III, even at just 1 merit, if well organized, you can fire off the 30 second debuff before all DDs unleash sekkanoki>ws>ws for some decent results.

[Hyrist]

Then why would you recommend it to begin with?

We've got someone here who seems to be new to the realm of RDM meriting, so let's try to not give him bad information, ok?

Because the information isn't bad?

There may be better tactics in ABYSSEA than DoT kiting, but when you break it down to the actual facts, Bio III stands potentially as our strongest DoT Debuff we have. It is also, bar none, the strongest raw attack stat reducer we have.

You want to say that's ONLY viable for /blu soloing, you'd be flatly wrong. If you find additional use for it (Such as using it as a powerful DoT/Attack Debuff.) It becomes useful for soloing in all methods, unless you want to go ahead and call pinning anything short of 'Wall of Virtue -1."

It would be bad information to ignore Kite DoTing all together, instead of saying it is an older method of doing things for those who don't want to abuse pathing mechanics.

With a group with two RDMs. It's always good to have their merits compliment each other. One with Say, Paralyze and Dia, and the other with Slow and Bio.

During the tank/proc phase Bio III is kept up, when the kill order is given, Dia III as soon as Bio III wares.

And of course Para and Slow are kept up by their respective higher-merited RDMs.

Also, Slasher, I go 3 merits in Dia III for the increased duration paired off with Saboteur. Although, I considered swapping out my Blind II for one point in Bio III, just so I had a stronger attack debuff. (Sabo-Bio III to rape attack calculations.) But I'm waiting on the merit adjustments before I make that choice, as I'll likely take one out of Dia II and go 2 and 2.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Like i said, im not giving my exact values, i have a balanced set that many rdm are likely to say is useless, it works for me though and makes me flexible in what i do so rather than open myself to judgement on my merits, i just leave it to the imagination.

[Hyrist]

I flatly don't care about the opinions of people who'll never play with me anyways. My merits and my gameplay choices work around those I spend my time with and vice versa. It's why I never bothered giving the "Dnc + RDM DOSEN'T WERK!" Argument as I prove that wrong every time my DNC friends and I go out and kill stuff. People will refuse to accept anything they don't get to work, instead of asking how someone else manages it.

[Greatguardian]

Because the information isn't bad?

There may be better tactics in ABYSSEA than DoT kiting, but when you break it down to the actual facts, Bio III stands potentially as our strongest DoT Debuff we have. It is also, bar none, the strongest raw attack stat reducer we have.

You want to say that's ONLY viable for /blu soloing, you'd be flatly wrong. If you find additional use for it (Such as using it as a powerful DoT/Attack Debuff.) It becomes useful for soloing in all methods, unless you want to go ahead and call pinning anything short of 'Wall of Virtue -1."

It would be bad information to ignore Kite DoTing all together, instead of saying it is an older method of doing things for those who don't want to abuse pathing mechanics.

With a group with two RDMs. It's always good to have their merits compliment each other. One with Say, Paralyze and Dia, and the other with Slow and Bio.

During the tank/proc phase Bio III is kept up, when the kill order is given, Dia III as soon as Bio III wares.

And of course Para and Slow are kept up by their respective higher-merited RDMs.

Also, Slasher, I go 3 merits in Dia III for the increased duration paired off with Saboteur. Although, I considered swapping out my Blind II for one point in Bio III, just so I had a stronger attack debuff. (Sabo-Bio III to rape attack calculations.) But I'm waiting on the merit adjustments before I make that choice, as I'll likely take one out of Dia II and go 2 and 2.

DoT Kiting has been outdated since its inception. It's an overly cautious route that any decent Red Mage will never have to bother with, in or outside of Abyssea. DoT kiting is only "viable" when the Red Mage in question is incapable of putting together even a half decent nuking set.

Nukes are better, faster, stronger, and dwarf the overall damage/time of DoTs. Nuke more, suck less is the best advice anyone can give to someone who is actually utilizing DoT kiting.

Personal merit setup:
5/5 Convert
5/5 Ice Acc
2/5 Dia 3 (for 60 second duration, making it MP-efficient)
5/5 Slow II
3/5 Paralyze II

[Crimson_Slasher]

DOT kiting aside, it is still a valid spell to merit if one wants to work together with other mages on some mobs that are like a lot say "too dangerous to melee" where you can stack bio/dia III, burn/shock/choke, poison II, and a helix, on top of nukes to add some improved kill speed, again if you cant melee it, the physical defense reduction is irrelevent and the superior DOT would win. Situational yes, deal with it, thats ffxi.

[cidbahamut]

Because the information isn't bad?

There may be better tactics in ABYSSEA than DoT kiting, but when you break it down to the actual facts, Bio III stands potentially as our strongest DoT Debuff we have. It is also, bar none, the strongest raw attack stat reducer we have.

Those tactics work just fine outside of Abyssea.

Unless it's changed since I last checked, Bio III's DoT is only marginally better than Bio II, and it won't even match the mp:damage ratio unless you put a full five merits into it, significantly limiting your options for meriting things that are more useful and used in a wider selection of situations. If that's changed recently, please enlighten me with this new information.

As for the attack down effect, if you're soloing that isn't really going to do much unless you gear for insane levels of Defense, via Cocoon. If you're not using a Cocoon build, then you're most likely not getting hit in the first place and the NM will have enough attack that it won't really make a difference if it doesn't manage to hit you.



You want to say that's ONLY viable for /blu soloing, you'd be flatly wrong. If you find additional use for it (Such as using it as a powerful DoT/Attack Debuff.) It becomes useful for soloing in all methods, unless you want to go ahead and call pinning anything short of 'Wall of Virtue -1."

No, that's not its only use. It is however the only use that really justifies burning 5 merits on it however.



It would be bad information to ignore Kite DoTing all together, instead of saying it is an older method of doing things for those who don't want to abuse pathing mechanics.

You're assuming straight up kiting doesn't involve applying DoTs. DoT onry is a terrible approach, which is why I give you grief. You kite things, which involves both DoTs and nuking, not one or the other. I'm not even going to touch on pinning stuff because I am terrible at it and therefor don't do it.



With a group with two RDMs. It's always good to have their merits compliment each other. One with Say, Paralyze and Dia, and the other with Slow and Bio.

I thought you didn't deal with ideal scenarios Hyrist.



During the tank/proc phase Bio III is kept up, when the kill order is given, Dia III as soon as Bio III wares.

No, you keep Dia III up so that when the kill order is given it takes all of 10 seconds to down the NM and you don't have to worry about Bio wearing off at the right time.

[Hyrist]

Nukes are better, faster, stronger...


You're forgetting more expensive, by a factor of 3.

There's a reason why people use DoTs while kiting and it's not sucking. It's because it's the most MP efficient means of downing the opponent, and also the most USE time efficient.

For less MP you'd spend for a single Blizzard IV, A 90 RDM with capped NATIVE Dark Skill will do 1350 slip damage with 3 Bios IIIs, while reducing the attack of the monster as well. So damage for MP wise, they're fairly equal (ignoring the initial damage on Bio III.) And you've still got time to nuke.

So sure, nuke more. But if you can afford to take the time to nuke, you can also slip in Bio III for the damage over time, unless your tactic relies on sleep/bind. (Which if you're pinning, it won't.)

Using the spell has absolutely nothing to do with sucking. DoTs save time and hassle for every tactic except sleep/nuke, and Bio III is the best.

[Hyrist]

Eh, you're arguing the same thing as I am Cid, but once again you jump into it with insults first.


Unless it's changed since I last checked, Bio III's DoT is only marginally better than Bio II, and it won't even match the mp:damage ratio unless you put a full five merits into it, significantly limiting your options for meriting things that are more useful and used in a wider selection of situations. If that's changed recently, please enlighten me with this new information.


Moot point if your primary passtime on RDM is soloing mobs now isn't it?

Merits are to be used for the situations in which you play your job. If you ply your Red Mage in a wide Varietiy of trades then your argument holds weight. But if someone enjoys the soloing passtime on RDM as their primary hobby, then those 5/5 Bio Merits will work for them.

And again, we've no clue how the Merit system will be adjusted. Personally I'm of the mind that we may have to reconsider the use of this spells in the future, especially if we DON'T get a debuff that regards TP moves.

As far as me dealing in ideals? Theorycrafting always has a wide birth of possibilities you have to consider when talking about options and choices. Sometimes, you can wind up with a partner or friend in game that you game with often, and you can play your game around. I have such friends, though now she prefers her dancer more often than RDM. But when we do go duo RDM, we've got that strength.

[cidbahamut]

You used the phrase "DoT kiting".

I regret nothing.

[Greatguardian]

You used the phrase "DoT kiting".

I regret nothing.

^

Supplementing Nukes with DoTs is obviously ideal. Sitting around kiting while only casting Bio III to deal damage is retarded. Hopefully we can agree on that. Personally, I don't think the spell is worth the 5 merit slots it takes to really outpace Bio II =/. Even if all you do is solo only, you may honestly benefit more from Slow/Para 2 at 5/5 assuming the game isn't completely immune to them forever.

When people talk about DoT kiting, the first image that pops into my head, and into many people's heads, is sitting around spamming Bio and running away. That's DoT kiting. Nuking will always be your primary, most time-efficient method of damage. If you want to tack on a DoT? That's fine. But they're nowhere close to being effective as a primary source of damage.

Edit: And a decent nuke set is going to be putting out more than 1350 damage on Blizzard IV anyways =/

[Hyrist]

No, seriously people need to stop jumping the gun on insulting people, it's a terrible habit and it adds absolutely nothing constructive to the community. This cannot be overstated or overemphasized.


Personally, I don't think the spell is worth the 5 merit slots it takes to really outpace Bio II =/. Even if all you do is solo only, you may honestly benefit more from Slow/Para 2 at 5/5 assuming the game isn't completely immune to them forever.


It takes ~45 seconds of consistent attacking for Slow II at 5/5 to start making a difference over Slow II 1/5. You break out of melee range/delay for any time during that and you're wasting merits if your primary method is soloing or quick fights.

Paralyze II is different as it triggers on spells and on any given attack that's not counted as a TP move. So Bio III 5/5, Slow II 1/5 Para 4/5 for kite tactics. 5/5 Bio III, 5/5 Slow II for coccon tanking and use Ice Spikes otherwise.

The increased Defense Reduction justifies it for outside solo play over Bio II, though you'd get more use out of Dia III IMO.

Still, I'd much rather prefer that these were scrolls and each merit went into potency modifications for each CATEGORY of spell.

Either way I'm more interested how the merits will change as the updates come than how they are now. Which is why I recommended waiting or not getting too attached to any one format.

[saevel]

One note though Hyrist, unless your using signet and the monster is weaker then you, that -attack down isn't doing anything.

Monsters have a floored cRatio of 1.0. Mean that even if you inflicted them with 1 attack while you had 400 defense, it would still treat it like they had 400 attack. Its why PLD's groan that defense doesn't mean anything and how MNK's even with CS up still don't take that much damage when they do get hit. SE cheats pure and simple.

You only need enough defense to overcome the monsters attack and ensure it doesn't get a bonus, any extra is worthless unless you get crited.

[cidbahamut]

I'd rather be the bad guy brow-beating you than let some new Red Mage run around thinking that casting Bio III is going to make them take significantly less damage and dramatically improve their soloing performance while kiting.

Heck, even saevel agrees with me. Excuse me while I go check to make sure it isn't raining fire from the sky.

One note though Hyrist, unless your using signet and the monster is weaker then you, that -attack down isn't doing anything.

[Hyrist]

You reach far fewer people when your corrections are laced with insults.

Savele on the other hand did it right.

Although, the counter would bet that TRUE min/maxers would be able to use that attack reduction to switch to more offensive gear, but even I probably woulden't go that far.

Again, it's a consideration. I've listed my merits and the reasons why I choose them, note that they don't involve Bio III in practice. It really depends on the circumstances, though honestly, if they're really going to fix Debuffs, we should take a note on the floored Attack calculations over to the Developers as part of what needs to be fixed.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Money on their answer being 'it would make higher level monsters too easy'.

[Hyrist]

My response: Then make them harder.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Not sure how much harder you're wanting them to be... The easiest method - immunity to being debuffed, or being unaffected by them

Failing that, rapid TP accumulation and/or high levels of store TP either on hit or during/inbetween TP moves, unnamed TP moves for regular hits and/or hits with added effects, inflicting weakness status, back to back high damage AoE TP moves/spells... I suppose changing modes/behaviour based on statuses affecting them?

[Hyrist]

Or values high enough that the absence of specific debuffs that they are vulnerable too make them neigh unbearable to fight.

I've always wondered why monsters haven't yet been designed that are invulnerable or highly resistant until something like say, a magic burst skillchain has been preformed. Then temporarily be vulnerable for a window of time, (that could possibly be extended depending on debuffs that were landed on it.)

There's a wide variety of possibilities for monsters they've not yet explored. Likely due to the coding involved.

[Swords]

No argument from me there Hyrist, this game has gone from challenging, to casual, to way to easy and fast paced. Even if SE did some minor tweaking such as vastly boosting mobs defense and hp (and I mean double, tripling it or even more) it could put a monkey wrench in zerg tactics long as the mob can outlast the players JA/2hr/Spell buffs. That's just speculation off the top of my head.

Although Voidwatch somewhat remedied that problem by giving a mob wicked TP moves, even if a mob did not have some killjoy TP move having immense defense would weaken players attacks and WS's and at the same time immense hp where a mob can outlive a players buffs would only further weaken a players ability to damage them leaving hate on the fritz and increasing the likelyhood of death if zerging. It does give RDM an added bonus however, it would give us a situation where we could utilize some/all of our enfeebles to help ensure success, pending SE does not keep up with this bloody immunity/flat resistance trend.

[Neisan_Quetz]

All more HP will do is make the fight take longer, look at the infamous PW fight.

[Swords]

All more HP will do is make the fight take longer, look at the infamous PW fight.

PW took so long for different reasons (stuns, multiple morphings, etc), and that was when it first came out before anyone really tried to devise a applicable way to beat him outside of the normal grindstone. SE only reduced the difficulty so quickly because they wanted to avoid any more bad publicity over those players stupid stunt, to not know when to call it quits.

Most of even the toughest mobs in the game go down in 3 minutes or less which is well within most peoples buff timers. When player's zerg buffs wear most are in a very vulnerable position, hate is flying around, mages may or may not have mp to cure the aftermath or die from cure bombing, and tank's virtually have little to no hate to take the bunt of the damage, overall the group goes from superhuman to that wimp that gets a daily swirle every day after school. The situation usually only gets worse from there because most players cannot think on their feet, and some mobs get stronger as their hp diminishes and will likely have a ton of TP to lay waste to anyone left standing.

In which case on extremely high hp/def mobs zerg tactics would be far less effective on something that could literally outlast the players going all out. Those that can control their hate and contribute steady constant damage would likely have little to no trouble killing a high def/hp mob within a reasonable time frame.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Perfect defense. Most zerg'd NMs right now is old content anyway.

[Swords]

Most new content is too, they may not zerg it right away because of something like triggers, but after those are found most players usually go all out and kill a mob within minutes.

[Neisan_Quetz]

And all more HP will do is make those fights take longer.

[Terrigenesis]

Back to the original question, I personally like to be well rounded.

Ice Affinity: 4
Wind Affinity: 3
Earth Affinity: 3

Slow 2: 3
Paralyze 2: 3
Blind 2: 3
Phalanx 2: 1

I see consistent procs on all three of the teir 2 Enfeebles and having Phalanx 2 helps out other characters in my LS. Definitely makes helping with Fell Cleaving for time while the rest of the LS gets pop items.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Why Wind affinity? It affects Silence and Gravity, neither of which land on most NMs (Gravity is actually fairly accurate if it isn't being resisted by a NM last I checked). I rarely experience heavy resists on Slow II and Break also doesn't work on most (if any) NM.

[Greatguardian]

Blind II kinda confuses me. At absolute cap, it's only -10 acc better than Blind 1 (-20 cap vs -30 cap). It's a fairly worthless spell, if I ever saw one. To each his own, though.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Blind was one of my most self rage inducing spells at 75 cap, landed on a fairly odd amount of monsters but all our tanks had floored evasion.

[saevel]

PW took so long for different reasons (stuns, multiple morphings, etc), and that was when it first came out before anyone really tried to devise a applicable way to beat him outside of the normal grindstone. SE only reduced the difficulty so quickly because they wanted to avoid any more bad publicity over those players stupid stunt, to not know when to call it quits.

Most of even the toughest mobs in the game go down in 3 minutes or less which is well within most peoples buff timers. When player's zerg buffs wear most are in a very vulnerable position, hate is flying around, mages may or may not have mp to cure the aftermath or die from cure bombing, and tank's virtually have little to no hate to take the bunt of the damage, overall the group goes from superhuman to that wimp that gets a daily swirle every day after school. The situation usually only gets worse from there because most players cannot think on their feet, and some mobs get stronger as their hp diminishes and will likely have a ton of TP to lay waste to anyone left standing.

In which case on extremely high hp/def mobs zerg tactics would be far less effective on something that could literally outlast the players going all out. Those that can control their hate and contribute steady constant damage would likely have little to no trouble killing a high def/hp mob within a reasonable time frame.

Not exactly, PW originally couldn't be killed, literally. The first groups who fought him for hours commented on how he just kept changing forms, after you killed the 9th form he would just go back to the 1st one and get a HP new bar. That 18 hour fight had him cycle through his entire form set several times. Same with AV, AV's original design had him so overpowered that no LS could legitimately kill him. The first ones did so using a zero space collision trick (move him into a spot the server can't let me him from). Once they killed him, he dropped ... nothing. SE had created AV without a drop pool because they were confident that he could never be defeated. Eventually SE made AV killable, but made the conditions for the fight so outlandish that it had a similar situation to the original. Now AV's still ridiculously hard, but killable by skilled groups of people. They did the same thing to PW after they got the bad press. They made him stop cycling after 9 forms but put a 2hr limit on the fight and made his 10th form ridiculously difficult with a cheesy special move that's guaranteed to wipe you, and if it doesn't then he'll just keep using it until it does. LS's had to resort to BLU zombie tactics and everyone /logging prior to the special move. Now it's killable by a group of skilled players, but he'll still rape your face with that special 2hr he's got.

[Hyrist]

Blind II kinda confuses me. At absolute cap, it's only -10 acc better than Blind 1 (-20 cap vs -30 cap). It's a fairly worthless spell, if I ever saw one. To each his own, though.

On my end? It's a matter of defense totals.

It's a flat 10 Accuracy reduction above Blind 1 floored or capped, but speaking plainly, that's an additional 5% evasion rate, for 1 merit.

Slow II, an additional 4% Slow to your cap requires an additional 4 merits, and even then, you might not see the benefit of that in shorter fights. You ESPECIALLY won't see the benefit of an additional 1% Slow with just one merit for quite a while.

But the additional 5% evasion rate can proc on any attack round or even some TP moves. So long as you're not hard floored or capped on evasion, the extra accuracy loss is more beneficial for the merit, if not for the MP. Think of it as a defensive Brutal Earring in that sense.

And if you DO manage to cap the potency on the spell itself, it's as effective as the Ninja Ni Blind without having the ninja or crapshooting tools trying to land it /ninja.

For a merit I really didn't feel a strong purpose for, I found it a worthwhile purchase to add that additional defensive measure to my spell library. Though, again, I wish these were scrolls.

[Greatguardian]

On my end? It's a matter of defense totals.

It's a flat 10 Accuracy reduction above Blind 1 floored or capped, but speaking plainly, that's an additional 5% evasion rate, for 1 merit.

Slow II, an additional 4% Slow to your cap requires an additional 4 merits, and even then, you might not see the benefit of that in shorter fights. You ESPECIALLY won't see the benefit of an additional 1% Slow with just one merit for quite a while.

But the additional 5% evasion rate can proc on any attack round or even some TP moves. So long as you're not hard floored or capped on evasion, the extra accuracy loss is more beneficial for the merit, if not for the MP. Think of it as a defensive Brutal Earring in that sense.

And if you DO manage to cap the potency on the spell itself, it's as effective as the Ninja Ni Blind without having the ninja or crapshooting tools trying to land it /ninja.

For a merit I really didn't feel a strong purpose for, I found it a worthwhile purchase to add that additional defensive measure to my spell library. Though, again, I wish these were scrolls.

This assumes that you're bringing the monster's Accuracy from capped to uncapped. If you're actually talking about a Red Mage's defensive repertoire, that will never happen ever. If you're talking about increasing the evasion of a Thief, Dancer, or Nin/Dnc, then it's generally superfluous since these jobs can floor enemy hit rate fairly easily on most things.

Honestly, the only real situation where Blind or Blind II would have any effect at all would be where you're fighting difficult monsters (Neo Dynamis Arch NM/Tome NMs, VWNM) with an Evasion tank that isn't receiving Mambos. That seems ... improbable.

Pre-Nerf Blind 1 was actually a decent Enmity spell, but Blind II is the same enmity for more MP. Honestly it's pretty much a wash.

[Hyrist]

You're making false assumptions of two major points.

1. That every one of the monsters I am facing are difficult enough to automatically cap accuracy against me in every circumstance, and the use of Blind II is unable to break that rate.

2. That every Evasion tank I assist has the gear to force themselves into capped evasion against every monster.

In pratice, I find neither of these cases to be true, and therefore Blind II is of use.

Your argument is fine on paper and on paper I agree. The game itself, however rarely fits into paper math, and parses of evasion rates have proven to me how often evasion is not at the assumed absolutes.

If I may anticipate further arguments, you'd tell the Dancer to "Suck Less" and me to stop fighting weak mobs, right? Until such a time both my friends receive the gear needed to hit evasion cap dependably enough, and until I am finished with my weapon trials, Blind II will still have a use. And will continue to be useful whenever I encounter that "Grey Area." Where I am not certain that evasion is capped or floored.

Again, I currently have no other use for that one category point, all it would due is stack more duration on Dia III, and I'm already comfortable where it is.

Once those circumstances change, or the merit categories are revised, I'll re-evaluate my choices. It's not as if merits are precious things these days.