A Few Merit Ideas!

[Scuro]

Ok well since pretty much most ofthe other merits (except Storm Surge) are kinda.... pointless. Why not allow SCHs to merit into Strategem capacity and Stragem Recharge rate (Much like Sneak Attack). I'm putting this up since I am assuming that new merits (tier 3) are not far from here. Let me know what you think.

[Merton9999]

I would naturally love to have both of these, but the problem I see is that no one would ever pick anything else. Not that there aren't obvious choices for other jobs, I just think for these two in particular for SCH they'd have to offer some pretty amazing alternatives for me to consider not selecting a buff to the most often used and job-defining JAs. In fact, I think I'd just prefer a flat recharge reduction and count increase at 99 without merits, and leave the merits for something else.

I'm actually hoping for something with a little more complexity in 99 merits, like here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/4642-Post-99-Job-Specialization-System?highlight=job+specialization

I like the idea of being able to merit abilities that are divided into different specializations, and being able to swap specializations @Moogle:

Specialization1: Geomancer
Contains spells and abilities related to weather effects, like tier 2 storms, tier 2 helix, weather related JAs.

Specialization2: Calculator
Contains JAs that magnify the effect of existing spells based on current parameters. "Parameter: Enmity" magnifies the next healing or enhancing magic spell based on the target's current enmity value. "Parameter: HP" magnifies the next healing magic spell based on the target's current HP.

You'd be able to merit all abilities, but you'd have to pick a specialization in MH that gives you all of that specialization's abilities and none of the others'.

[Rambus]

merits at 99 does not fix the problems with the current merit choises.

I can say I have MAB helix 5/5, stormsurge 5/5 and enlightenment 1/5 and call SCH fully merited, the rest of our merits is really bad. (there is little to no benefit to maxing enlightenment)

if MV was not gimped to hell it would be good to merit that but that is not the case anymore.

[Raksha]

merits at 99 does not fix the problems with the current merit choises.

I can say I have MAB helix 5/5, stormsurge 5/5 and enlightenment 1/5 and call SCH fully merited, the rest of our merits is really bad. (there is little to no benefit to maxing enlightenment)

if MV was not gimped to hell it would be good to merit that but that is not the case anymore.

Am I the only one who loves my sublimation merits?

[Rambus]

Am I the only one who loves my sublimation merits?

I did not list that becasue i have no mp issues, so they would not benfit me.

[Raksha]

I did not list that becasue i have no mp issues, so they would not benfit me.

Bullshit, also what else are you gonna merit? grimoire recast?

[Sotek]

Bullshit, also what else are you gonna merit? grimoire recast?

Really? It's bullshit that someone wouldn't have MP issues? Have you played FFXI recently? Sublimation and Convert have both become next to useless for me. Even before Abyssea I never had any real MP problems, with Convert now as well +50 MP on Sublimation is just worthless, screw that, the Sublimation update alone probably suffices.
As it is Helix merits are the only ones that even do anything, +50 MP is a joke and Grimoire recast is worthless. I'd change it to one of them even though they're worthless but I actually have hope that everyones constant bitching about Modus will actually make them fix the damned thing. If not, I'm still not gaining anything by switching since both are worthless and you're going to have to be a god of persuasion to convince me otherwise.

[Raksha]

Really? It's bullshit that someone wouldn't have MP issues? Have you played FFXI recently? Sublimation and Convert have both become next to useless for me. Even before Abyssea I never had any real MP problems, with Convert now as well +50 MP on Sublimation is just worthless, screw that, the Sublimation update alone probably suffices.
As it is Helix merits are the only ones that even do anything, +50 MP is a joke and Grimoire recast is worthless. I'd change it to one of them even though they're worthless but I actually have hope that everyones constant bitching about Modus will actually make them fix the damned thing. If not, I'm still not gaining anything by switching since both are worthless and you're going to have to be a god of persuasion to convince me otherwise.

Even inside abyssea I find uses for all of my MP, and more never hurts. Sure if i'm half-ass healing or something I have an infinite MP pool, but who gives a shit.

I frequently run out of mp popping t4/t5 spells (even with parsimony) and pumping convert and sublimation when available.

+50 mp is loads more useful than modus veritas and grimoire recast.

[Sotek]

Even inside abyssea I find uses for all of my MP, and more never hurts. Sure if i'm half-ass healing or something I have an infinite MP pool, but who gives a shit.

I frequently run out of mp popping t4/t5 spells (even with parsimony) and pumping convert and sublimation when available.

+50 mp is loads more useful than modus veritas and grimoire recast.

That's funny, I can main heal (with no support) spamming Cure IV with Rapture and have an infinite MP pool.
Likewise, I only spam nukes with Ebullience and have an infinite MP pool.

I think you're doing something wrong (the fact that you admit to still using Parsimony makes that much clear), feel free to brag about running out of MP though. 3/4s of our Group 1 merits are worthless, if they ever fix Modus Veritas it's easily the best thing to merit.

[Raksha]

That's funny, I can main heal (with no support) spamming Cure IV with Rapture and have an infinite MP pool.


By half-ass healing I mean the piss poor job we do of it because of only being able to spam cure4. Even so several accession > cure4s in succession is a big MP drain. Maybe you just low-man everything where you only have to heal 1 or 2 guys, but during LS events I support heal an entire alliance and it isnt easy.



Likewise, I only spam nukes with Ebullience and have an infinite MP pool.
I think you're doing something wrong (the fact that you admit to still using Parsimony makes that much clear),


I Only use parsimony once I drop down to about ~50% mp, Cool strawman bro.



feel free to brag about running out of MP though. 3/4s of our Group 1 merits are worthless, if they ever fix Modus Veritas it's easily the best thing to merit.

Looks who's bragging now.

If you always have infinite MP, even spamming ebullience, then you arent killing fast enough. Do you stop to rebuff after every kill or something?


And If 50 MP is useless, then so are hp/mp merits let's whine about them. If 7INt from stormsurge is uselss then so is 5INT from merits.

I agree we need better group1 merits (sublimation included) and i'm not saying that sublimation merits are the best thing ever, but they aren't 'useless'.

[Merton9999]

Comments about MP being infinite or running out are always relative to what you're doing on any job. Before the sublimation update and /RDM 40, and obtaining any atmas, sure I enjoyed sublimation merits in Abyssea a bit. After those things though, of course I considered MP to be infinite, but only if I played the job the way I always did before that. Now that MP is so plentiful, I spam T3 nukes even in LA, and AOE Cure outside parties wildly to the point that I can run out of MP with perfect use of atmas, temps, and JAs that recover it, if I try. Can I cover what I'm supposed to or always did, and never run out? Of course. Can I blow it all by spamming spells for fun or extra utility? Of course.

With that in mind, I still currently don't look at sublimation merits as useful anymore. Even with spell spamming, a max sublimation is so miniscule I don't even notice it. I liked them in campaign, and in Aby before obtaining atmas and level 80, but now not so much, even after changing to constant spell spam.

In the end I agree the only useful merits in the current game are Helix acc/att, at least one in enlightenment, and stormsurge (mostly outside Aby, but then not even that great). IMO stormsurge should max at 15 and/or scale with enhancing magic skill, and should buff other traits and spells of the same element (resist traits, bar spells), possibly with the use of another JA.

In addition to the ones I mentioned above, I'd like to see merits for:

Klimaform duration and recast
This is also pretty useless in Aby right now with MACC being what it is, but the added effect on AF3 boots is nice. It just sucks that it can be taken advantage of so infrequently.

Animus and Adloquium potency
For these, I think an overhaul in effectiveness is in order. Either an increased base effect, or a JA set that enhances them based on current numerical parameters (target enmity, HP, TP% for example)

[Sotek]

By half-ass healing I mean the piss poor job we do of it because of only being able to spam cure4. Even so several accession > cure4s in succession is a big MP drain. Maybe you just low-man everything where you only have to heal 1 or 2 guys, but during LS events I support heal an entire alliance and it isnt easy.

I cannot feasibly see the point in doing anything with more than 5 other people at this point in the games life. And that's pushing it. Sure if you're healing an Alliance MP might be an issue, but still playing in 2005 would be more of an issue to me in that case.


Looks who's bragging now.

If you always have infinite MP, even spamming ebullience, then you arent killing fast enough. Do you stop to rebuff after every kill or something?

Going to have to talk me through that. I'm not killing fast enough? MP becomes an issue the shorter the fight? ...What? I do hope that's a typo, because MP will only become an issue on long fights and as I've already asserted I lowman that's probably the case, yet MP still isn't an issue, odd.
If you mean NQ azure light farming and what not, I really don't care about that. Between restore chests and endless temps MP definitely shouldn't be an issue there, though.
If I was killing too slowly and buffing constantly then MP would probably be an issue. Really, I say I'm not running out of MP, if anything that means I'm killing faster than I should.


And If 50 MP is useless, then so are hp/mp merits let's whine about them. If 7INt from stormsurge is uselss then so is 5INT from merits.

Considering this topic is about Scholar merits and our discussion is about Sublimation merits, I'll refrain from complaining about HP/MP merits, but yes, they are fairly useless (though a flat out +MP is far more useful than extra Sublimation MP for what it's worth); as are the majority of weapon and magic skill merits. The whole merit system is pretty much trash to be honest. If I feel like it I'll make an entire bitchpost at how awful merits are in general.


I agree we need better group1 merits (sublimation included) and i'm not saying that sublimation merits are the best thing ever, but they aren't 'useless'.

I'm using 'useless' in a fairly harsh tone, I know, but compared to what Modus merits used to be, they are. And I've already stated numerous times that I hope SE addresses their idiocy in regards to that ability. MP isn't an issue for most people, even though I'm not going to be spending merits on anything else I'd rather not undo my Modus merits to merit something I'll gain no noticeable benefit from.

[Raksha]

I cannot feasibly see the point in doing anything with more than 5 other people at this point in the games life. And that's pushing it. Sure if you're healing an Alliance MP might be an issue, but still playing in 2005 would be more of an issue to me in that case.

Going to have to talk me through that. I'm not killing fast enough? MP becomes an issue the shorter the fight? ...What? I do hope that's a typo, because MP will only become an issue on long fights and as I've already asserted I lowman that's probably the case, yet MP still isn't an issue, odd.
If you mean NQ azure light farming and what not, I really don't care about that. Between restore chests and endless temps MP definitely shouldn't be an issue there, though.
If I was killing too slowly and buffing constantly then MP would probably be an issue. Really, I say I'm not running out of MP, if anything that means I'm killing faster than I should.

Considering this topic is about Scholar merits and our discussion is about Sublimation merits, I'll refrain from complaining about HP/MP merits, but yes, they are fairly useless (though a flat out +MP is far more useful than extra Sublimation MP for what it's worth); as are the majority of weapon and magic skill merits. The whole merit system is pretty much trash to be honest. If I feel like it I'll make an entire bitchpost at how awful merits are in general.

I'm using 'useless' in a fairly harsh tone, I know, but compared to what Modus merits used to be, they are. And I've already stated numerous times that I hope SE addresses their idiocy in regards to that ability. MP isn't an issue for most people, even though I'm not going to be spending merits on anything else I'd rather not undo my Modus merits to merit something I'll gain no noticeable benefit from.

Sounds pretty reasonable.

I dont play much anymore, but when I do it's LS events with 1+ full alliances, In those circumstances it's pretty easy to run out of mp.

Even doing stuff like magian staff trials I had to stop and /heal occasionally. That was WITH sublimation/convert/temps/ISL.




Going to have to talk me through that. I'm not killing fast enough? MP becomes an issue the shorter the fight? ...What? I do hope that's a typo, because MP will only become an issue on long fights and as I've already asserted I lowman that's probably the case, yet MP still isn't an issue, odd.
If you mean NQ azure light farming and what not, I really don't care about that. Between restore chests and endless temps MP definitely shouldn't be an issue there, though.
If I was killing too slowly and buffing constantly then MP would probably be an issue. Really, I say I'm not running out of MP, if anything that means I'm killing faster than I should.


Not saying you should kill your current enemy faster, but that you should kill more enemies in quick succession. Aero5 costs ~230MP in dark arts and has a recast of 37s max. It would take 23 tics of MM atma to refresh that MP back 23*3= 69s So if you're nuking whenever the timer is up you're gonna need more than just MM atma. Sublimation is safer than convert, so I use it more often.

Anyway, I dont want to spend all day arguing about mediocre merits, let's get this discussion back on track.

What if sublimation merits gave an extra +1 mp/tic instead?