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.