WHM Merits?

Considering the advent of Abyssea, what are the worthwhile merits to cap for WHM? I'm sure that cure cast time is one. I also have a feeling that capped Shell V could be very useful, but what about any others? I appreciate your feedback.

Barspell effect 5/5 - Cure Cast 5/5
Shellra 5 - 5/5
Protectra 5 - 5/5 (I de-merited Devotion, as its not needed anymore) LOL! :D and for gears, check my ffxi profile^^ :) enjoy whming! :D

unlocking devotion is nice, and if 20min recast is too long you can merit it down to 10...

as for group 1 the only choice for me was between barspells and regen, and i took regen because i rarely get to use the stupid bars. (and regen4 is cool)

Fair Enough :) nice, it all depends what you like doing most in-game i.e. Abyssea - HNM etc etc you know :)

Edit! :P

Like most jobs' merits, choosing which categories to spend merits on is a matter of preference.

Also, there still does exist a Vana'diel outside of Abyssea, so I personally think it's ridiculous to demerit something just because of Atma. There's still level 90 --> 99 updates/expansions to come, and at least a chance that the future new end-game content will NOT take place inside Abyssea.

But I digress,
for WHM merits,
I recommend Shellra V, Cure Cast time, Barspell effect, and Devotion.

This is my loadout for now. Protectra V extra merits are pretty much a waste as its only a few more defense. I'd rather give a mage MP faster to help cure or toss an extra cure via JA.

Barspells 5/5
Cure cast time 5/5

Shellra V 5/5
Protectra V 1/5
Devotion 3/5
Martr 1/5

That's pretty much what I have :<

Actually the most important merit in group 1 is the barspell one.

Cure casting time and regen are the 2 other good, but both are situational (99% of time you dont need any speed cast unless you are too lazy to focus on your job; and about regen, there is always a mofo to cure your pt member when you used a regen on them...)
So the best option is bar spell + regen/cure casting time, your choice, but you cant skip the bar spell option...


In group 2, the best one to have is shellra 5 (5/5), all other are a personal choice.

Protectra is a bit meh imo and you wont need to put more than 1 merit on it.

Martyr is nice to unlock for when you are silenced and need an emergency cure, or when you are under dark art.

Devotion can help too but it's a lot more situational with abyssea.

Thank you for your responses. They are basically lining up with what I was already considering. Barspells is one important one that I forgot, so I will keep that in mind from now on. I will most likely put at least 1 on each JA, just so I have them as an option. Thanks again. Your responses were helpful and very quick as well.

While on this topic, I'd like to know if my path is ok for my WHM Merits. I was going to start a new topic, but Jon already has one started, so I thought I'd ask here....

Right now I have 5/5 Regen Merits. And the rest of my Group 1 is going to Barspells.

And for Group 2 I have all unlocked. But, I am going to be putting more Merits into Protectra/Shellra 5. Such as: 1/5 Martyr and Devotion. And, 4/4 Protectra/Shellra Merits.

Is this wise for me to do? You may look at my WHM Merits, if you like. I won't be putting more into Devotion and Martyr. But increasing Protectra/Shellra evenly. But, I'm unsure of how to Merit WHM.

5/5 regen and barspells sounds good for group 1 merits. For group 2, go max on Shellra V, the rest isn't as important as long as there's 1 on Protectra V. Devotion can still be useful depending on what you still do. In Abyssea it doesn't help much, but it's still useful outside of Abyssea. Martyr I keep at 1, just as an emergency MP-less cure (in case I'm silenced or run out of MP and need to save someone fast).

this is how you should merit WHM:

Barspells 5/5
Cure cast time 5/5

Shellra V 5/5
Protectra V 1/5
Devotion 3/5
Martr 1/5


lower your Regen Merits and redo them. I once had Regen merits capped too but the fact is even with Regen IV there is too much HP in Abyssea to use Regen as effectively in the game as it used to be a long time ago, plus with all the refresh and limited hate from Cure V/VI there are little downsides to using Cure over Regen.

Protectra V is a waste.

I also wish people would stop being idiots and remember that every zone in this game isn't inside Abyssea.

My merits at the moment >
5/5 Cure casting time
5/5 Barspell

Regen for me never did enough as I was always with DDs who had to take a big hit and fought mobs that had nasty elemental type attacks. With barspell merits I think my barspells hit around 148 (/sch,light arts, relic legs, af3+2 feet, torque yadda yadda) and the faster cures helped so much.

5/5 Shellra V
5/5 Devotion

Shellra was a no-brainer due to the magic defense. Most people can easily get -pdt gear but 27% magic damage reduction is just too nice to give up. Devotion was for when I had this one paladin who burned through MP even with refresh and screamed for Devotion all the damn time ¬¬ Nowadays though, I use it mainly for when anyone with MP is low (DRK lulz) True I should think about redoing my WHM macros but I am mainly BRDONRY nowadays.


If you definately want Protectra, I would opt for 1 in it and go 5/5 with Shellra. Protectra past 1 merit doesn't give enough benefits defensively where as Shellra V does. 1 merit in Protectra = 60 defense but if you have 3 in thats 64 defense. Is two more merits worth the extra 4 def?

You trying to fool yourself or someone else?


And what exactly would non-Abyssea change for merits?
And when you are 5/5 on Shellra V where would that extra 1 point in group 2 make a real difference by saying "Protectra V is a waste"

tldr version: 5 barspell / 5 whatever makes you happy + 5 shell / 0-1 devo / 0-1 martyr / 3-5 protect

Barspells are a definite yes. As for the other category 1 I guess you should ask how often you cast regen and what combination of gear etc will get you to 50% cure casting and 50% cure potency.

Inside of abyssea it is easy to reach cure casting cap without merits. With that being said you have 4 ways to contribute to that cap (atma, gear, subjob, merits). I chose to keep my cure time merits because I like to get a regain atma to help with blue procs (I fulltime apocalypse, ambition, and perfect attendance unless I'm soloing).

In category 2 maxed shell 5 does the most good. Even if every single merit isn't needed for your tank to reach cap it's likely that other party members aren't wearing the gear to reach cap and might get hit by a spell once in a while. I'm going to assume you do nothing but abyssea in my other answers. It makes no sense to put more than 1 merit in to devotion and martyr, you can snag a 2 hour restore chest from a tp mob if you need them back before 20 min is up. Personally I never used martyr so I got rid of it entirely. I kept 1 devotion merit and put 4 merits into protect. People will argue that protect merits don't do much and they're right but in my opinion they do more than martyr and devotion do in abyssea.

pick 2:
Regen
Cure cast
Bar spells

ppl will say bar spells > all, frankly it's personal opinion.
Regen has it's place if you use it, and cure cast is always nice.

5/5 Shellra V
1/5 Protectra V
1/5 Martyr
3/5 Devotion

Shellra is a given it's one of two things whm has over other healers (the other being cure V/VI).
Martyr is a sizable HP gift especially if your in Abyssea with curor buffs and it's INSTANT.
Believe it or not things exist outside Abyssea and Devotion still kicks *** for them (or for the stupid Blm, Blu, Pld who didn't get a refresh Atma or too small of one)

This is what I'm going for:

Group 1
5/5 regen (I'm a regen-***)
2/2 cure cast speed (combined with my gear, the 2 merits bumped me up to a tier I'm comfortable with)
3/5 barspells

Group 2
5/5 Shellra
4/5 Devotion (I don't live only in abyssea..)
1/5 Martyr

I'm debating the 1 martyr merit, so it may end up being 5/5 Devotion.

Also, can anyone explain the reasoning behind putting 1 merit in protectra? I am almost always /sch, and so one quick accession + prot 5, and the group is set.

I've been gone for about 6 months, so I could be missing something vital. Correct me if I'm being a tard with my thinking. :p

/SCH + Accession Pro5 means you didn't waste 3 merits getting Protectra V. The main reason for getting it would be having an underlevelled SCH subjob, or plain old laziness.

5/5 Cure Cast, because 20% cure cast is just sexy and makes a world of difference.

5/5 bar spell because Banish sucks, Divine Seal is not needed, and MP efficiency doesn't matter much with all the refresh available, ergo damage mitigation is best. Always was, tbh.

5/5 Shellra V, because that makes melees with a decent MDT-% gear set eat spells like Tarus.

4/5 Devotion, because it's safe to assume that you will often have a crappy mage next to you that needs MP fed to them. Or a Galka.

1/5 Martyr, because.

Just as a side bar; You can cap cure casting time without going 5/5, but also keeping in mind Group 1 WHM merits really suck so yeah~

Really?

I just started to relevel WHM, been away most of the term, didn't know that o.o;

It caps at 50% (Including Fast cast, Light arts, etc)

But I keep 5/5 just in case spellcast doesn't kick in properly (Or whatever) because, like you said, Divine Seal and Banish are useless, and Regen is really only useful in Salvage.

So there is a 50% cap to cast time as well as recast? I have only heard people talk about 50% recast cap.

even outside of Abyssea I wouldn't use Regen enough to warrant the merits, this is coming from someone who still finds a need to use the spell and was happy to get Regen IV.

How much time do people really spend doing stuff outside of Abyssea? So much time that you would setup your merits that way?

I have a second character that I use exclusively as a WHM to heal my main.

Dealing with the merits outside of White Mage specific, what are your thoughts? I searched and found some old threads on Alla basically saying that putting merits into Healing Magic was useless. A lot of people suggested Enfeebling. I found this interesting, since I figured Healing/Enhancing would be the way to go.

Obviously, MND will be the one to max out on the WHM character as well, though, when it comes to MND vs Healing (or other Magic Skills), as well as the WHM categories themselves and all the rest, I'm not sure what the recommended order would be.

WHM category -> MND - > Magic -> Enmity Down / Spell Interruption Down -> MP ? Some other route? Open to hearing suggestions!

Do Enhancing for sure, it's nice if you ever decide you want to level RDM on it too, and Enfeebling is always a good merit, so I'd do that tbh. I'd do MND for stat, Enmity/Spell interrupt-, and as the game is currently it doesn't specifically matter if you do HP or MP. If you're in Abyssea mostly, HP is probably more useful, but when the game shifts to outside, MP will become more useful again. Besides the fact I took out my Enfeeb/Elemental merits, I've kept my merits mostly the same for inside/outside Abyssea (IE, not getting rid of Devotion).

Also Protectra V sucks, kill yourselves. 1/5 is a waste, just toss Protect V on people interacting directly with the mob (assuming you're not /sch and can't accession) and call it a day. Devotion/Martyr are infinitely more useful. Doesn't matter how you do those, though I'm 5/5 Devotion.

this is what i thought, but pergatory said this was not the case, and i don't know how to test this and am too lazy to anyway >_>

pergatory suggested that they are compounded like (1-fastcast)*(1-healingcast)*(1-curecast) or something, which seems strange and unlikely to me. with his numbers he said it came out to .59 or so, which seems fairly close (considering eyeballing) to a theorized 50% cap.