The other thing is that Jinte did some testing to find that ranged merits increase the base damage of the sharpshot's ranged attacks... which makes them much more attractive now. The staple used to be 5 melee (affects all frames), 5 magic (used to give blizzard iv or other new spells). It now seems to be 5 melee and 5 ranged, as stated above magic merits are just a small amount of MACC now.