I'm happy with them raising the combo caps they are, but I do wish they would develop the individual Job merits (Group 1 & Group 2) a bit more. Being a THF, I was always curious why we couldn't merit the timers of Mug or Steal (yeah, I know it's not necessarily something any of us thieves would do, but since we are called THIEVES, shouldn't those 2 be something we can better specialize in?) or at the very least, increase the accuracy/potency.

There have been many lower level additions to the various jobs since the introduction of the merit point system. Dragoons now have Conserve TP, Samurais have Sekkanoki, Ninjas have Yonnin and Innin, Summoners have Elemental Siphon and Blood Boon, and I'm sure I'm missing many others, but many of these could have been possibilities in our merit paths.

For everyone who seems to think we should be able to make our characters as strong as we want (and maybe I'm just misreading several posts, but I don't think I am), the whole point of the merit system, at least to me, was to allow us to customize our characters for our own game play style - not just make a cookie cutter of what everyone else wants us to do.

Now as Rambus stated, I would like to see some changes to the job specific merits. The jobs that are forced to either choose between having a magic spell (or Avatar ability) or making 1 or 2 specific ones stronger, should probably have those merits shifted to potency/accuracy merits. RDM Group 2 could include a potency/accuracy increase for all Dia, Slow, Paralyze, Phalanx, Bio and Blind spells. I've always wondered why several BLM (and I think a DRK or two) type monsters have access to Bio III and WHMs to Dia III, but those spells can't be learned by us when we are those jobs.

Moving on away from just the mages though, I would like to see Aura Steal changed to a separate Job Ability or changed so that there's a possibility for us THFs to steal an item AND dispel/steal a buff at the same time - not the either/or scenario we have now. That's just 1 example off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others that some other people here can think of.

Finally, several jobs have many choices for Group 1 and Group 2 merits while others have few. I know, for example, that with Ninja it would make no sense to allow for the enhance of 1 or 2 spells on the elemental wheel while ignoring the rest of the elemental wheel, but it either hurts them because they are forced to divide up few merits into more choices than jobs like THF, or it hurts jobs like THF because we don't have as much of a selection. I look forward to seeing if we get either an increase in the combo points allowed per group and/or per individual item, and/or get an increase in the number of choices available to us on jobs with fewer choices. I would hope it would be all of the above, but that's just me.

The Merit System has always been something I've loved since I hit 75 for the first time on THF. It reminded me of my other Final Fantasy experiences such as Final Fantasy VI where I could use Espers to either focus on 1 or 2 stats per character or make a character average in all abilities if I like. I could "customize" each character the way I wanted to. It also reminded me of Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid, but not so overpowered that I could walk up to a creature like the Jailer of Love on Thief and solo it within a few minutes. I look forward to the developers continuing to expand this system, but I hope they keep an eye on maintaining the balance of the game in the process.