Third Tier

[Buffy]

Ya'll aren't thinking big enough. Tier 3 merits need to be a major time sync. Remember how long it used to take to merit off colibri and cap your character merits and your first job? You could exp every day, if camps were open, and not get it done in a month (if starting from scratch).

They need to take the same philosophy with tier 3 merits. Black mage merits could be MAB+ .25 per level, 10 merits per level, with a total of 100 upgrades. That would be 100k exp per .25% MAB, but +25 MAB from merits for capping 100/100. It would also be 1m exp. Sounds about right.

Bard could increase March effect.

War double attack rate.

Thief could merit TH. (Every thief just died a little inside).

Also make there be a bunch of categories, like 10, and you can cap them all. The game needs a major time consumer with the loss of Dynamis, Ein(tab), Limbus, Kings Camps. Voidwatch is clearly going to be a piece of that, but it can't be all of it.

Think of the all the fun things you could merit. Pup could merit something like the size of their puppet....make it bigger or something...

Also could have sub-job merits, merits that are only active when set to a sub-job, like giving /sch more charges.

Or /sam an increased return on meditate.

Endless creative options here. Just keep adding merit categories. Or better yet, let us merit infinitely, but have every upgrade cost more. So the first blm MAB +1 is 1 merit, but the 2nd is 3, the third is 5, the 4th 9...the 10 50 merits...just make it more and more painful.

[Economizer]

Now, I don't know about time consuming in general (although, I constantly find myself with capped merits, and no way to spend them except for leveling another job), but this I can agree with:

Also make there be a bunch of categories, like 10, and you can cap them all.

The thing I always hated about the merit system was limiting choices - very few jobs have this actually result in different play styles since most players gravitate towards the same ones on most jobs. I'd much prefer if job/subjob combinations and gear combinations were the things that make us different.

Also could have sub-job merits, merits that are only active when set to a sub-job, like giving /sch more charges.

This would be wonderful. The upgrades don't even have to be very big, but getting slightly more out of your sub job would be a great way to add more power and options without adding more things to the main job.

Endless creative options here. Just keep adding merit categories. Or better yet, let us merit infinitely, but have every upgrade cost more. So the first blm MAB +1 is 1 merit, but the 2nd is 3, the third is 5, the 4th 9...the 10 50 merits...just make it more and more painful.

Bad idea. Game balance flies out the window when the devs can't make a mob level appropriate. How do you make something level appropriate against someone who can have anywhere from 0~1000000 bonus Magic Attack Bonus (or rather, something else that scales better)?