Merits For A Endgame RDM

well, maybe I'm wrong but I'm doing 8/8 enfeeb 5/5 earth/ice magic acc and 5/5 paralyze/slow 2

I used to have dia 3 and phalanx 2
but now pld has phalanx and you can easyly do aoe/phalanx as /sch

and I found dia 3 pretty useless >.<

Ice 5/5
Earth 3/5 Since slow II is 5/5 anyway no need to cap it imo
Wind 2/5

Slow II 5/5
Bio III 4/5
or Dia III 4/5 depending what kind of "teamplayer" you are.
Para II 1/5

Why i don't have 5/5 Convert? I never "need" convert on "regular teamplayer" stuff. And when i do ... its allways up.

my 2 cent

Ninja Edit: I added para II since my toon has it merited. Dunno if its really worth (MPcost for it and only 1 merit in it) but i feel better having it :P

Still missing the point that has been reiterated repeatedly, you should be trying to vert when your timer is back up to maximise the amount of MP you can spend within a time frame. Fantastic for solo, handy for anything else, "I never run out of MP" is ridiculous.

I still maintain that not only do I not need convert.

And that I'm often in situations where saving my vert for when it's needed >>> than using it just to speed things up.

Weakness slows things down more than not nuking some. Not like I don't nuke a decent amount anyways.

More MP will always be more MP, regardless of race. More MP to spend on buffs/debuffs/nukes will make fights easier and result in faster kill times now matter how you try to slice it. I can't think of a single situation I would have been happier to have had wind magic accuracy over convert merits. Slow's Magic accuracy is ridic on anything that doesn't resist it, you can cast in absolutely no enfeebling/Macc gear at all and still land slow. I've never had to 'save convert for when it's needed', it just sounds like a stupid ideology to me. The more you convert, the more mp you have to dish out for whatever the heck you want, why would I bother conserving an ability that's netting me more mp over time as a mage?

Conserve it because there might be times when you absolutely need it and don't have it?

Am I the only rdm that has every had bad things happen that required ALOT of curing from pretty much just me? Enough that unless I'm rather high on mp I would have to convert?

Cause it happens to me fairly often

Yeah but in those situations too having vert up faster would also help.

Controlled fights > More MP to blow
Fights where ***can hit the fan > Faster vert if you need it

No real negative aspect to it really.

Seiryu is immune, if you have to grav Genbu then I dunno what to say. Never even tried to land it on Byakko, and Suzaku isn't that hard to hit it with.

This obviously raises the question though, of why you have both BLM and RDM and no Enfeebling merits.

Only one point in Phalanx II is a waste in my opinion. At best it's only -17 damage for twice the cost of Phalanx and only on one person. I can't really think of a zone where you'd be hard pressed to get an ability cell to your healer on the first floor, barring Arrapago if you get jewed.

Any magic accuracy merits barring Ice are wasted. There's no reason to merit them over Convert recast.

Only if you run into those situations more often than once every 10 min but less than once every 7 something...

In the end most the time I don't usually use convert so macc is alot more useful to me

You can land it on byakko just not too easy. I do have full enfeebling merits but I want to get blue merits.

By the time I get ability it usually doesn't matter. Partly because the by then between composure and light arts my mp tends to be much better and it also takes me awhile. Between the DDs, thf, cor and brd... yeah I don't get it anytime soon.

No reason for me to do so either. Especially if it will allow me to land the spells I want while demeritting enfeebling. In the end convert is a backup for me unless I am soloing or in a manaburn as rdm which is never

convert merits are good 98% of the time. 2% of the time wind/slow hell even THUNDER merits might be prefered.

You are going to say the 2% of situations where it would be better to go the other way over the 98%.

Be realistic please. If you are so unsure of the people you are around that having to "save mp" (a whopping 900+ mp not just 200) will make or break the fight... then you have a lot more problems then trying to figure out where merits should go...

If you maintain you don't need convert then I maintain that no rdm should need macc merits at 80. Obviously we'll both be proven wrong by some gem of a rdm out there.

It's not that I don't ever need convert. It's just when I need it I need it. Ie I can't risk it being down by just burning thru excess mp and riding the timer.

And yes it happens. It's not a matter of being unsure of said people. It's knowing stuff will happen. And yes a bit of it preventable. As is without converting I litterally cast 10X spells of the whm (we actually logged it once when someone died and I did like 3 cure III and cure IVs a stoneskinga refreshed the whm, haste, parad, poisoned and something else in the time she only casted 1 cure III) and still have more mp than her. And half the time I am refreshing her.

And she is often the only other support help I have... so yeah you see my problem?

It seems like the points trying to be made are:

Use Convert everytime its up and, with more merits, use it more often...

vs.

Use Convert only when its necessary and, with less or no merits, use it closer to its full recast.

Some people enjoy looking at their current MP and seeing it full. Some people look down, see their MP at its current status, do a quick math of "Ok, enough MP for three cures, two enfeebles, maybe a quick nuke, then Vert" Neither are wrong, and varying in perspective, both are right. Its not a question of "How to merit." More of "How you play your RDM."

^ This.

Imagine how many more nukes you can toss out during a solo/duo with 5/5 convert merits >_>
Speeds up a fight alot..

solo
5/5 convert
5/5 ice acc
5/5 bio
5/5 slow

party set up,
5/5convert
5/5ice
5/5slow

then either 5/5para,
5/5 phalanx or a combo of the 2

As an end game RDM my RDM Merit build is like this:

5/5 MND (Can never get enough mind)

Category 1.

3/5 Convert (Rarely have MP issues as it is but always useful in a bind).

3/5 Wind Accuracy

4/5 Earth Accuracy

Category 2.

5/5 Phalanx II (yes i know that PLD get it inately but always helps when you can put phalanx on a non PLD Tank and even then your 5/5 Phalanx II merits should over write and be more powerful than the PLD's alone).

4/5 Slow II (The slower a mob hits the less hits that are dealt which results in better mp usage all around).

1/5 Dia III.

My current RDM merits:
5/5 Convert,
5/5 Ice,
2/5 Dia 3,
2/5 Slow 2,
1/5 Paralyze 2,
5/5 Bio 3.

I have Bio 3 5/5 because I'm a lazy-*** and don't care to fix it. Really, there are few if any "better" choices, anyway. Here's why: two points into dia 3 (a 60 second duration) will usually be enough considering melee zerg fights should last a very short amount of time and during the ones that don't, even 5/5 dia 3 is less MP efficient than dia 2 (albeit less def down, but the extra def down isn't too significant in those longer fights (at least not as significant as keeping your party alive (parenthesis and run-on sentences))). Bio 3 5/5, properly geared plus /sch will out-damage dia 3 5/5 every time (for kited fights in which the def down isn't beneficial). Onto Slow 2, extra points beyond the initial aren't extremely useful, considering each point after the first is only 1% slow. 4% (more) slow, assuming your enemy's delay is 480, or 8 seconds, makes their delay just over a third of a second longer. It's up to you whether or not that is a significant increase in delay, though I have found any time I get interrupted casting utsusemi, a fraction of a second would not have saved me. Total speculation incoming: Paralyze II, I assume at a single point entered decreases the same amount of attacks over time as slow II does. I really do not know, I've never seen any testing on paralyze. That being said, it is undoubtedly less reliable than slow, as it IS widely known that the chance for paralyze to process is a dice roll based on your MND. Thusly, one merit point in it can be useful, but almost certainly not worth your time over the other choices. Phalanx 2 pretty much sucks, not a lot to explain there. Blind 2 is probably a bad choice, because A: a lot of things can't be blinded (actually, same goes for paralyze...but I suppose it could also be said about slow. I digress) and B: most paladins or DD tanks are capped on their er...not-evading rate. In other words, they're going to get hit 95% of the time by most mobs and blind can't change that. OH, GOD, THIS POST IS SO LONG.

Anyway, I'm still stuck on what the most beneficial accuracy merit might be. There's wind for silence/grav, but things build resistance to gravity quite often and silence isn't particularly hard to land on anything (that's not immune) anyway. There's earth accuracy, but you can just ride the timer to help get it up (something 15 macc probably won't save you from having to do nine out of ten times). Then there's ice. The first thing that comes to most people's minds is paralyze, but lolpara, so onto bind. Mobs won't build resistance to bind, as far as I know, which will allow the 15 macc to shine over a long manaburned fight (assuming the mob isn't immune, of course). There is also the added benefit of being able to land your brizzards more easily, which will also help in those manaburn situations, regardless of whether or not the mob is immune to bind. So I lean toward ice macc being most beneficial. I noticed a few people mentioning that they don't have to convert very often, and neither do I. However, that doesn't mean that convert recast isn't the most beneficial thing to have. That aside, a lot of the time, you should be riding your convert timers as much as possible unless there is a chance in whatever you are doing that something can go horribly wrong and you'll need lots of MP to fix it if it does happen. However, in many other situations, you should have the "luxury" of being able to toss out extra nukes or something helpful to your party if you find you have a good amount of extra MP to throw around, so you can ride your convert timer and be more helpful all around, rather than having an extra 15 macc in one element that you only have one or two spells that you use (which you should be able to land without anyway).

Hope that was unbearable for everyone to read. I mean helpful. Yeah, that's what I said. Hopefully there aren't too many inconsistencies in my post.

Also, to be clear, there are no "correct" answers to this, which is why meriting rdm can be so tough and confusing. It really is subjective and based on the group you run with. I think most linkshells/people would rule my build as not total crap, though. Some shells will ask you to 5/5 phalanx 2 for a specific event because they already have a rdm with Bio 3 5/5 or something. That's pretty acceptable, too, but you need some nice gears to pull off phalanx 2 and it's only REALLY useful in salvage.

Im kinda thrown off how you could have Bio III merits to speed up solos but not have Convert merits which mostly likely speed up your solo more.

That being said, as far as acc merits go, Earth shouldn't really be needed. In my experience, slow either lands or it doesn't I hardly see a resist or a short duration on the spell.

Things that slow does resist on, you most likely aren't going to land it unless you have ES. And as pointed out, the Ice merits do help with Blizzard Nukes.

For Wind acc, really, on mobs that gravity builds up a resistance, wind merits don't really help. Seems the resistance builds up the same.

Dia III, if you ever do anything with DDs, its useful.

YOU'RE WRONG! etcetc jkjk

Umm, I have:

5/5 Vert - Obvious reasons, faster MP pool, easier to kill stuff.

5/5 Ice - Bind is main reason here, though admittedly it helps with nuking, but bind is the main reason... I solo a lot, so reliable binds are important.

2/5 Dia III - Same reasons Diss mentioned up there ^

3/5 Slow II - Mainly because with enough dMND you can cap slow 2 with only 3 merits, so any more is pointless, and I can't think of anywhere else to put those 2 merits.

5/5 Paralyze II - inb4flames... Guess what? I like seeing my Para proc, it works a lot of the time, and nothing like seeing something para like 6 times in a row.

As for the Bio III debate, I'll stick to my capped Bio II, it works just a bit slower, and allows me to put my merits elsewhere.

/cough cough rdm solo merits, NOT endgame rdm LS merits, people needs to read the thread subject, and MND merits should never be merited if you are a SOLO rdm build

int>mnd
need acc for those gravity/bind and nukes
mnd it's just for party/ls events build

if you are taru needs 8/8 hp merited for convert power
full 8/8 mp merits if you are hume/mithra/galka/elvaan

and anything less than 5/5 on slow2 merits it's just gimp, it's a powerful spell you will notice the difference quickly when it's fully at 5/5

My rdm play style changes heavily based on what situation I find myself in.

For my rdm, time is the critical issue not mp as I have my own personal pocket brd. If you could merit fastcast I'd drop everything else to get it.

As for Cat.2 merits, does anyone have links to testing on para 1/2 and slow 1/2 testing.

I was trying out my high potency build on lacovie and it worked quite well. I'd like to maximize those para procs.

You should probably read the subject, too. x:The increase from extra points into slow 2 is actually pretty minimal, as I mentioned in my post (and as Ashaa noted above), the extra four merits will end up being a delay increase equivalent to one third of a second unless your dMND is high enough (which is easy to do) in which case you aren't even benefiting from the last two merits.

Where are you getting the info on slow 2 from? I'm pretty sure extra merits in slow 2 actually raise the cap so they'll always do something, just not that much.

i personally did

3/5 ice (bind, para acc)
2/5 wind (grav acc)
5/5 slow (slow acc)

really convert shouldn't be a problem imo i see no reason to merit it. if your running out of mp before timer is up your likely wasting to much mp on unnecessary things. esp considering depending on what gear you have rdm gets 5mp a tic on its own (incl. af2 head and a refresh body).

i did

4/5 slow 2
1/5 para 2
and 5/5 phalanx 2

as stated by many others phalanx 2 is no longer of much use outside of dual-boxing skill ups and at some points in salvage.

if i redid my group 2

id prolly do

5/5 slow2
4/5 para2
and 1/5 bio3 or dia3

my 2 cents.

It raises the base effect, after capping potency all you get is additional macc.

If you have only one merit in slow 2, it caps out at 35% slow. Adding merits brings that up to 39%. You can't get that 39% with 1 merit no matter how much mnd you put in.