Leviathan.Duvessa said:
The simple fact that they ARE justifiable should be enough. What else would a person who ONLY plays PLD ever put there attribute merits into? STR is the only one you could really argue its worth of... And even then, they're an Elvaan... They have plenty of STR. STR also has 0 effect on atonement... In fact, the only reason a pld would stack str is if they're hitting 0's... in which case attack would be the faster route. STR is not that effective of a merit for PLD, the end.
Part of building and keeping hate is dealing damage. Hence why most PLDs TP in things like Haub+1 and the new Nocturnus mail. If you're hitting for 0, you're not building TP for Atonement. STR raises your cap for damage while Attack allows you to reach that cap.
As I said, most of the time PLD goes /NIN to events where they should be taking minimal damage, if any. The 1 or 5 VIT would have little to no effect here, same with the 1 to 5 AGI. If your shadow timers are down, switch to a turtle build--Koenig (lots of +HP and VIT, far more than 5 VIT merits would do, plus shield on head) and PDT-. As for casting Utsu, the AGI would do little to anything for you there. That's why you just throw on pure shield skill, and fill in the holes with Haste and Fast Cast. Capped shield skill merits would be far more useful than AGI.