I definitely do NOT want to see Bardark/Barlight to be merit spells. I lean to having RUN Tier 2 merits be more of like the other physical classes, where there are two job abilities and two job traits.

The idea behind converting physical damage to magical damage is to allow the RUN to use his abilities to help reduce and mitigate some of the damage. Pretty much, it takes the damage in half, and gives the enemy an en-spell effect depending on the rune. This will allow the RUN to not only reduce the amount of physical damage he takes, but also allow resistances and job abilities to mitigate magical damage to come into play.

With that said, I'm curious as to what stats our artifact, relic, and empyrian armors will have.