SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[polyhedral]

Only issue with that is that they would end falling into a cookie cutter build such as when the cap was still 75 pretty much if you ran a rdm you were expected to put your merits into stuff like Slow II, Paralyze II and other debuffs. I think people are wanting horizontal progression mainly to add variety of gears. I'm not sure how XI's merits hold up anymore with level cap increased to 99 but it felt like when first implemented it was to keep people from really wanting a level cap increase with the expansions.

I said I was done with this thread, but the subject changed somewhat, thank god for that.

As a Blm when the level cap was 75 and ToAU was the latest expansion, I never cookie cut my merits. I invested both in elemental, and dark magic merits. I did not just merit thunder and ice, but rather, thunder and water for flood II then burst II dmg. Man, my drains/aspirs in Dynamis with dark skill/fast cast/haste gear macros would almost heal me completely, and reduced my downtime to where I rarely had to rest at all. Every 42 seconds I could cast both, I do believe, when without that gear, it was 1 minute flat.

I never wanted to play the same as others anyway, even if my IV spells hit for 40 dmg less than others. I never had to rest, while the others had to sit for 2+ minutes with refresh. Nobody ever ran a parser and kicked me out because of it either. They knew what was up, when I was the only blm standing and waiting for the others to gain full mp.

DPS numbers aren't the only thing that mattered back then. It seems in this game though, it may be a different story, but I do hope for gear that increases skill, rather than just stats.