Does or did SE have plans to change Job Group II Merits cap?

[Legal Fish]

Right now the limit is set at 3/6.

The limit for Group I is 5/10.

Many Group II abilities look as if they were designed for the 5/10 limit. This will effect all of the merited abilities in a great way.

Primarily, many abilities have the starting timer of 15 or 20 minutes and drop by 2:30 minutes per additional merit. At 5 merits, that would be 5 or 10 minutes, which is the timer for most abilities in the game.

The greatest weakness of abilities granted from merits is that their recast timer is way too high. Abilities like Chivalry fall flat on its face with a cap of 3 merits(10 minute recast timer), but would literally twice better if it had a cap of 5 merits(5 minute recast timer).

There are a lot of abilities that need the 4 extra merits for a decent potency to be worth anything in the first place, I'm in Limbus atm, so I can't list them all, but one for example is Ambush.

[Raydeus]

Indeed.

All RDM merit spells fall under that category, the way they are right now they don't seem to be worth the hassle for the minimal effect improvement over Tier I spells.

Specially considering their MP cost vs duration vs effect.

[Necropolis]

While I would like to merit more into catagory 2 merits, I'm not sure how that would effect game balance.

Between Chivalory, Devotion, and Convert Timer, you would practically remove the need for refresh at all (in events where you have two whm devoting one another).

I was under the impression the merits were more designed with endgame in mind, where you typically have a minimum of 12 people and upwards to 64 people. If rdms could merit each of thier spells, blm merit more into each AM2, et cetera you would decrease the number of people needed to do many things.

The way I felt merits worked was that you had to make a decision. You can't have it all kinda thing. Do you want all the new spells, or merit a select few to make them more potent. Do you want all the abilities, or do you want to beable to use a particular one that best suits the activities that you partake in.

Of course I could be utterly wrong, and that they are just balancing out how each spell/ability would effect game balance and will implement it in the future. Either way, I'm happy with the way it is, and wouldn't mind if they gave us more.

[Legal Fish]

The way I felt merits worked was that you had to make a decision. You can't have it all kinda thing. Do you want all the new spells, or merit a select few to make them more potent. Do you want all the abilities, or do you want to beable to use a particular one that best suits the activities that you partake in.

Uh... hmm... how do I say this. The way it is right now, you are better off getting everything, so you are kind of disagreeing with yourself. If the limit is changed to 5/10 players are more likely to focus on one thing, because they can really make one thing pretty powerful.

I was under the impression the merits were more designed with endgame in mind, where you typically have a minimum of 12 people and upwards to 64 people. If rdms could merit each of thier spells, blm merit more into each AM2, et cetera you would decrease the number of people needed to do many things.

I'm not completely understanding your point here. This is exactly how it should be when you are working to increase your strength. For example, a veteran WAR with Ridil, full merits, and great gear(like an E-body) will likely be better than two fresh level 75 WARs. I would think this is always the case, merits or not, you get stronger, you need less people. Do you disagree with this idea?

Between Chivalry, Devotion, and Convert Timer, you would practically remove the need for refresh at all (in events where you have two whm devoting one another).

Again, not understanding your point entirely... all three of those belong to separate jobs(Convert timer being completely unaffected btw, because it is already in a 5/10 group). Unless you mean a PLD with full Chivalry merits being cured by a RDM with Convert Timer merits and the target of a WHM's devotion(fully merited). However, that still wouldn't be the case. If anything, it would allow a PLD to hold back less, making the PLD a better hate-holder.

Devotion every 10 minutes and Chivalry every 5 minutes is far from broken.

If SE wanted to, it would be acceptable to have Genkei-type quest to allow the unlocking of these merits.

[Necropolis]

Apperently I'm too tired to get my concept accross. Perhaps if I think of a more clear way to state it, I'll do so tomorrow.

[Caspian]

Agreed.
The same holds true for merits where putting in more points increases potency. Snapshot at 6% isn't all that fantastic, Snapshot at 10% sounds a whole lot better.
Same for being able to move flashy shot's timer down to 10m. Still not life altering, but would seriously help with HNM's.
I always thought they were going to increase the cap. Didn't group I merits start with a lower cap as well? That was before my lvl 75 time.

Ofcourse groups II's should also be implemented for the new jobs, but thats anothe topic for another thread.

[Karinya]

I think the fact that the cap is equal to the number of abilities for RDM, BLM and SMN (maybe others too?) is not a coincidence. Too bad RDM is the only one of those jobs whose merit spells are so weak at level 1; level 1 AM2s and merit BPs seem to be quite strong and useful (unless I've just never met anyone who has them at any level other than 3), but level 1 enfeeble IIs have a much *higher* resist rate than the original spell (in addition to higher MP cost and recast), in exchange for only slightly more potency, making them nearly worthless in endgame settings.

I wouldn't be opposed to some cap increase, but I also wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't one and RDM remain unable to get all their merit spells at effective levels.

[Legal Fish]

Too bad RDM is the only one of those jobs whose merit spells are so weak at level 1; level 1 AM2s and merit BPs seem to be quite strong and useful (unless I've just never met anyone who has them at any level other than 3)

This isn't the case, AM tier IIs and the new BPs are not that great. Well the AM tier IIs are awesome for MBing(after merited), but in terms of MP/damage cost, Thunder IV completely demolishes it. Sure it is very nice for spike damage, it replaced Thundaga III, but nowadays, it's all about endurance. The new BPs are generally weak compared to their melee counterpart and cost more. I'm sure there are situations where it is useful, but just like nukes, it has bad mp/damage ratio.

Increasing the maximum amount of merits would hardly have an effect.

Now, if SMN BPs worked like Diabolos' Neither Blast, meaning a set damage number(like 750 damage at 0 TP). With TP giving a very potent damage bonus. Like For each tier of TP (100, 200, 300) multiply it by a higher number. 100 TP being 1.2, 200 TP being 1.3, and 300 TP 1.6.

For BLM's instead of some Magical Accuracy increase(not really needed), what would be really nice if the spell dropped in MP cost with each additional merit. Basically, -20 per merit would be nice(100 MP less with 5 merits) making the spells cost 207 instead of 287, which makes it much closer to Thunder IV in terms of MP cost. This wouldn't be broken as the spell's recast time is still pretty huge.

Btw, everything I said above is pretty off-topic, it's not what the thread's about. Don't go and move it because of it.

[eticket109]

I'm fully in support of moving the total cap to 10. After all, look at Ninja. NIN has 8 slots in tier II with 6 points to spread between them. That never made sense to me.

Personally, I think 3/8 would be the way to go. 5/10 would flat out break Tier II. The majority of jobs only have 4 slots in Tier II so that would work out 2-3 upgrades for each ability with the possibility of 5 for one.

Take DRG for instance. Angon with 5 ticks would = 20% DEF down for 1 min 45 sec. Fully capped Empathy would give a wyvern 5 buffs. As much as I'd love that, it seems a bit broken to me.

[Legal Fish]

Take DRG for instance. Angon with 5 ticks would = 20% DEF down for 1 min 45 sec. Fully capped Empathy would give a wyvern 5 buffs. As much as I'd love that, it seems a bit broken to me.

I've already considered the strength of these abilities when I decided to support this argument. Trust me, it sounds broken "on paper", but if you really consider how they would work in-game, it becomes less broken. The only that kind of concerns me is Thief's Feint(especially if there are two Thieves).

Most importantly, a DRG with full merits in two things is sacrificing two abilities/traits. These traits have to be strong with 5 merits in them to accomplish the goal that people will focus on two of them(which I believe is what SE wants, since merits are meant to make people different).

I'll go through the one's you said with DRG.

Empathy: 5 Buffs. Is this really broken? I wouldn't say so. For two reasons:

1) A DRG's Wyvern is practically a part of them, an extra DoT on the side... when you Spirit Surge the wyvern's damage is added to yours. All this does is allow that DRG apply these stats to all of himself.

2) Many buffs last just 3-5 minutes. Let's say a DRG has 3 merits in Empathy and 7 buffs on. Berserk, two songs, Haste, Warcry, Protect, and Shell. With an exception of Protect and Shell, all these buffs will wear before or at 3 minutes, making it impossible for a Wyvern to have them all at once. Letting 5 buffs transfer would be letting Empathy be used at it's maximum capability, which I think is very fair for eating up half the 10 cap.

Angon 20% def down for 1:45 seconds.

I can understand why one would be concerned by this, but in my mind, it's no different than Acid Bolts(which WAR/THF/DRK/RNG can use) being powered by merits. Keep in mind, it does not stack with Acid Bolts with any other type of defense down outside of Dia. I think that is a very fair limitation. 5 Merits in this just makes DRG the best Defense dropper in the game, which is kind of fair in my opinion. And Angon's timer is still 3 minutes, which balances it enough.