In this case it's 3 weapons, not 3 jobs. You could merit Dagger, Sword and H2H and be set for MNK, PUP, THF, DNC, BLU, PLD and RDM. That's 7 jobs you more or less maxed out right there. A far cry of having to merit each job individually like with job merits. If exp was as slow as it was before Abyssea we probably even relish the fact we could get several jobs finished on the same merits. But with how easy exp flows in, we no longer mind the time it takes to get these things.

I am on the side of obtaining these Weapon Skill naturally, I'm a collector and I love to collect shiny things. I was planning on leveling NIN and whichever other jobs to get the new abilities, but now I'm not encouraged to do so. I made a post a few pages back about leveling into the Weapon Skills like we normally do and have merits to augment them with different additional effects such as Criticals hits, or MP recovery, or some specific buff or debuff, or even a specific Aftermath effect. The potency/activation rate/duration of the augments would be increased with merits.

There's no real reason to argue about the gimp vs not these days. The argument has always been against the guy showing up at merit camps wearing leather armor and level 14 STR rings expecting to kill things with his bronze sword, and we are all aware he is contributing less than the 6 naked players standing next to the Dominion Ops guy. WHMs that haven't exceeded 60 couldn't possibly contribute to a party. The best they can administer is a Cure IV drip.