Weapon Merits

[Malacite]

So I've been agonizing over what to merit for some time now...


See, I like almost every job and thus it's really hard to chose any one skill; For a while I was leaning on GKT so I could push my skill over 300 with Bushi and Justice Torque, but I'm not sure if I like SAM enough (or a new job may come out I like more, or I may want to go for polearm for drg or what have you)


The other thing is, just how effective are weapon merits? I mean, right now I'm strongly leaning on H2H as per a friend's suggestion because unlike other weapons H2H skill has a direct impact on your damage.

The damage of a hand-to-hand weapon is added to a character's natural hand-to-hand damage. A character's natural hand-to-hand damage is calculated by multiplying hand-to-hand skill by 0.11 and then adding 3. When calculating the Weapon Rank, however, the number used as the weapon base damage is the number displayed on the weapon plus 3, with no contribution from hand-to-hand skill.

So should I just do H2H for now (I do like MNK) and then wait and see if I want to do anything else? It seems like meriting H2H will have a large impact on my MNK. (My friend mentions how he went from hitting for less than 100 to 150 per fist on Colibri with 292 skill)




My other problem is magic. I know there's another topic on the BLM forums with someone facing the exact same dilemma as myself; I inted to max out Blue Magic Skill, but I also enjoy BLM and SCH and thus elemental/enfeebling would help....


Should I max blue magic (I really love BLU and this skill has a huge impact) then split Enfeebling and Elemental 4/4 or max out Elemental? As an elf nuking is something of a bitch for me @_@ and /SCH can largely make up for enfeebling defficiencies in a PT setting...

[Clever Ninja]

Re: Weapon Merits

If you level BLU and plan to use it AT ALL, then yes, you need 8/8 Blue Magic merits like you're thinking. The other 8 points I suppose it would depend on what exactly you'd go as for events majority of the time. If you'd go BLM or SCH, elemental. RDM, go enfeebling. If you fill in as a BLM or SCH for a run here and there it's not that big a deal to dump all those merits on em.

For weapons, I'm planning on going 8/8 Sword since that effects BLU, PLD, RDM, COR, and WAR if you get a Ridill. Other 8 I'm actually in the same dilemma, and it kinda follows the same logic as BLU; if you get a 75MNK and plan to use it alot, then 8/8 Hand-to-Hand is kinda necessary for the reasons you listed.

It's reasons like this they need to up the cap abit, people play multiple jobs after so many years of the game being out <_<

[Armando]

Re: Weapon Merits

It's reasons like this they need to up the cap abit, people play multiple jobs after so many years of the game being out <_<

They already upped the cap to very reasonable standards. You can fully cap 2 weapons and still have 4 points left over for defensive skills. Or you can eschew defensive skills and do a 7/7/6 split which is still a pretty good compromise that still greatly increases your skill in 3 different weapons, which could potentially cover a whole lot of jobs. You don't really need more than that. The point of merits is in part to specialize your character, and you should never be allowed to specialize at everything.

So should I just do H2H for now (I do like MNK) and then wait and see if I want to do anything else? It seems like meriting H2H will have a large impact on my MNK. (My friend mentions how he went from hitting for less than 100 to 150 per fist on Colibri with 292 skill)

Your friend has Noparser's Syndrome.

The other thing is, just how effective are weapon merits? I mean, right now I'm strongly leaning on H2H as per a friend's suggestion because unlike other weapons H2H skill has a direct impact on your damage.

That's a pretty vague question. Going by numbers alone, maxing a weapon merit category means +16 Attack and +8% Hit Rate with that weapon. For MNKs there's also some extra DPS involved from getting +1, possibly +2 DMG.

There is no real answer to the core question "which weapon(s) should I merit" if you "like almost every job" though. It's like coming in here and saying "I like almost every job, which one should be my main?" The answer is of course "How should I know? Pick the one(s) you like best."

[Mog]

Re: Weapon Merits

Just put merits on whatever melee job you like playing the best.

[Malacite]

Re: Weapon Merits

There is no real answer to the core question "which weapon(s) should I merit" if you "like almost every job" though. It's like coming in here and saying "I like almost every job, which one should be my main?" The answer is of course "How should I know? Pick the one(s) you like best."

And therein lay the problem @_@ thankfully I believe our Dev Team conceded to increasing the caps again in a future update (hopefully the next one but might be later) but that still doesn't help me out very much.

Generally the weapons I am considering are Sword, H2H, GKT, and Marksmanship. I thought about accuracy, especially if I decide to go for Yoichinoyumi (Which if I stick things out with Dynacore long enough is a very real prospect) but outside of that archery wouldn't do much. Marks would help for THF RNG and COR...

/pull hair out.

[Karinya]

Re: Weapon Merits

The point of merits is in part to specialize your character, and you should never be allowed to specialize at everything.

I think this is arguably true within the job-specific merit categories (although it's somewhat undermined by the serious imbalances between different merit abilities for the same job, leading to cookie-cutter builds; and paying multiple times for what's basically the same spell with a different element is kind of a raw deal for BLM, SMN, and NIN), but if you try to apply it to the categories that apply to the character as a whole, it cuts against the point of the job-change system, allowing you to level multiple jobs on one character.

This is especially problematic for enmity merits (they apply even to jobs where they're actually worse than no merit at all), but because of the overall caps on categories, it's a problem for any shared merit category. When players seriously contemplate leveling different jobs on different characters so that they can merit them differently, the merit system has undermined the underlying game design, and while redoing the second character's missions and quests might be fun, releveling all of their subjobs is unlikely to be, and repaying for all their spells (or relearning blu spells) even more so.


Ideally, I think, you shouldn't be tied to a specific merit setup; you should be able to set merit abilities in your mog house/at nomad moogles the way you set blue magic spells, up to the total number of merit points you have earned overall (or alternatively the total set of merit abilities you have bought overall, but abilities not set don't count against caps and therefore you can buy more than the cap but not set them all at once). (In either case, for convenience, your last used setup for each job should be saved and reapplied when you change to that main job.) But there's very little chance SE will implement either of these ideas now - they're probably just too radical a revision.

A more realistic plan would be combining enmity merits into one category whose effect is switchable at a moogle (+/-/off) and raising or eliminating group caps on the skill categories so people with several jobs (each of which may use several weapon/magic skills) can be fully effective in all of them. Skill merits aren't "specialization" in the way that choosing to level Dia III and Slow II rather than Bio III and Phalanx II is - they just make you better at whatever you were going to do anyway. How many jobs (individually, i.e. apart from the kind of inter-job interference I'm talking about) would be seriously affected by elimination of the group caps on skills? Scholar, maybe. Every other job just maxes out the skills that job actually uses, and you're no more special than anyone else with that job.

Right now someone who levels (say) PLD and RNG on the same character can never be as effective as someone who levels them on different characters - they'd not only need to merit at least 3 weapons plus defensive skills, but also have +enmity and -enmity at the same time. That incompatibility is inconsistent, and therefore bad, game design. The merit system shouldn't undermine the basic game design that allows, and encourages, leveling multiple jobs on one character. (Ideally the race system shouldn't either, but the effects of merits are much larger than the effects of race.)

[Clever Ninja]

Re: Weapon Merits

Except I don't believe 2 is enough. I mean, if you only level certain jobs like DD, then yea you're fine. But if you have a support job, zerg DD another DD and a tank job, those merits will fill up quick and someones gonna get left out. And while we all generally main something, in shells there is always people needing to fill in for others depending on the encounter/attendance.

At the very least 4 more merit points would help relieve this, then I could go 8/6/6 and my main job is still defined as my main, and my alternate ones aren't as gimp as they would be if I went 8/4/4 or 6/5/5 or something.