MithraPride

Merit Point Adjustments (05/30/2007)In the soon-to-be released version update, we plan to introduce "Group 2" abilities for the blue mage, corsair, and puppetmaster jobs. We will also be increasing the maximum limit for point allocation in the "Combat Skills" and "Magic Skills" merit point categories for all jobs.

New Merit Point Category for Blue Mage, Corsair, and Puppetmaster
In the upcoming version update, we will be adding the "Group 2" merit point category for blue mages, corsairs, and puppetmasters.
Each of these jobs will gain access to four new job abilities and traits that should prove invaluable in a variety of situations. See the tables below for a description of each ability.




*Convergence will also increase the power of blue magic spells that are originally single target effects.



Maximum Point Allocation for Combat Skills and Magic Skills
The maximum limit for point allocation in the "Combat Skills" and "Magic Skills" merit point categories will be increased for all jobs.

"Combat Skills" maximum total ability increases:
12 > 20

"Magic Skills" maximum total ability increases:
8 > 16

*The maximum limit for each of the abilities within these categories will remain unchanged.

Further adjustments will be announced on the day of the version update.



Holy Hell~ That's one freaking huge adjustment to Magic and Combat
That's more than enough to give me capped Enfeebling and Elemental skill and I haven't even started thinking about Combat yet.

Like wow......

Corsair merits aren't great, they're okay but nothing special. Blue Mage and Puppet Master get some pretty damn good ones.

The increased combat merits is good, I'll be able to whack Marksmanship up to 8 and put 4 in Dagger, Sword or something for another job.

Wow, can I start meriting Pup now?

Role Reversal is good for tossing one point into, like an 'Oh sh*t!' button to restore HP.

Ventriloquy...meh...when the Master can /War for voke, and the Puppet can slap on a Strobe Light for voke...trading emnity isn't really a huge issue anyways I guess.

Fine-Tuning for the Acc, R.Acc and Optimization for the Atk, Def, and M.Atk. These will both be very good merit choices for Pup.

Assimilation seems to be the biggie for BLU.

Keavy wrote:Assimilation seems to be the biggie for BLU.

think about using convergence with 1000 needles



I'm not a blu, so I'm just noting what looks good

Heh. A long time ago, I predicted that they'd increase the totals for non-job categories any time they needed to give level 75s more to merit. The magic total increase will matter a great deal more than the weapon. There are magic-based jobs that can benefit a great deal from having multiple skills merited.

There really aren't many melee jobs that want two different weapons merited. That's a bonus more for people with multiple jobs than for single-job folks. I could see a dedicated PLD wanting to cap both evasion and shield, but most everyone else will only do 4 evasion and then 16 into weapons.

Personally, I'd like to see combat go unlimited for merits. Let folks cap 'em all if they want. At best they're only using two merited skills at one time: either two weapons, one weapon + shield, or weapon + evasion. Parry rate is so low that it doesn't really count as a skill and no one in their right mind would ever merit it before they cap it on ninja. Uh, and how many nins with capped parry are there? Maybe 10 across all servers?

So, unlimited combat will have very little overall effect on the play of the game. It will just give those insane multiple-job folks a lot more to spend their XP on.

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I'm surprised they didn't also increase the category limits for HP/MP and Attributes, too. Less surprised than combat&magic, since these would both have more effect on game play, but the overall gain at 75 still isn't a lot even if you could do 8/8 on hp/mp and 5/5/5/5/5/5 on attributes. Attributes are so expensive to raise that it would provide a serious timesink for 75s, too.

SE can keep people happily meriting for YEARS if they go unlimited on merits.