Thinking of buffing up merits on DRK, any opinions?

[SonikU4ia]

So basically, I started playing DRK only because I needed the SJ on my RDM so my friends and I can go do Diabolos for the summon.

Started playing the job and strangely enough, I'm enjoying it. I don't really play melee jobs for a reason I won't say without offending the general populace XD (strictly play mage jobs in any mmorpg) but this job has kinda grew on me.

@37 now and was thinking of playing it further later on.

Basically, my questions are these:

If I work up Scythe and Great Sword merits (splitting them in half to max) will this help me during the job progression? And will I be viable for Gods/HNM battles?

If I max out Critical Hit% merits, would it be very noticable?

If I take str merits to 5, would it be worth it for just 5 str points? (Mind you, those stats merits are a royal pain in the @$$ to work on.)

I might actually have to level another job (like WAR) in order to get the Great Sword merits... which... I don't really want to do.. but I've thought about it and I enjoyed getting WAR to 37 anyway. Would it be worth it to just go all Scythe and no Great Sword?

Hell I don't know anything.. I just heal ppl and nuke stuff. lolzmage

[DakAttack]

I'm not yet sure exactly how merits work, but each weapon skill level increases your attack and accuracy by one, so if each merit were to increase the weapon skill level you'd have a nice addition to your Atk and Acc.

Base stats are usually a nice idea, Str being one of the best. You'll be using a Great Sword from 65+ in EXP parties for SATA Spinning Slash, so you'll want to make sure that it's capped along with Scythe. The Great Sword is not inherantly stronger than the Scythe, but does swing faster, but not fast enough to really make up the difference so there's where the Str merits come in handy.

Str, Dex, Crit%, G. Sword, and Scythe merits would all come in handy. I think I would go for the weapon specific merits first, then Str, Crit, Dex in whatever amounts you feel is necessary. As a Mithra you might leave Dex out and go with Str.

[wolfjorg]

Yeah I started putting merits into my DRK before it was 70 ^.^ gotta love 75 blm. lol.

But yes I did notice a diffrence in the STR and CRIT areas, but increasing CRIT% will get you hate and along with STR, cause now you will be swinging harder.

You will want more merits in scythe than GS. SE stated they are going to make it more appealing for DRK to use Scyhte again. So I havent touched my merits with weapons yet.

And BLM has about 20 merits in it so holding there. You are a Mithra so STR will be good for you, like Dak said work on DEX later. But it's all up to you.

[Neomage]

I would put mabye 1/3 in GS and 2/3 in Scythe. Then I would work on Crit. and STR.

[M_X]

Can RDM even put merits into Scythe and GS? I think whichever job you're meriting as has to have the ability to use the weapon.

If you can however, put some in scythe, critical%, STR, then GS.

[Icemage]

RDM have no natural skill in any 2 handed weapon (not even Staff), so no, you can't merit Great Sword or Scythe with only a level 75 RDM job. You can merit Scythe with a BLM 75 job, though.

I'm not really sure what meriting weaponskills will do for you; if you haven't anywhere else to dump merits temporarily, I guess putting 2 levels into Great Sword and Scythe might not be such a bad investment (only 60K total XP, so if you delevel them later it won't hurt much).

At end-game... DRK isn't used much at all. Useful for Stun and certain cases where you just need to pour on damage in an screaming hurry, but not usually something most end-game activities require. All of the DRK75s in my HNMLS have other jobs levelled, and almost never use DRK as a main job when we're doing hard stuff.


Icemage

[wolfjorg]

I use my DRK and BLM both pretty much the same in my HNMLS. We farm sky Fri,Sat, and Sunday we do the fights, but I show up either BLM or DRK and it doesnt effect the job at all. I can deal DMG as DRK or BLM, just i tend to die quicker when I out right go to town on DRK, but eh, it is just XP, can always get more later.

Well one thing he can put merits into as RDM75 is STR and INT since those are both the main modifiers in DRK weapon skills. That would help themm out,.

[Zaeeth]

I hear ya in this. I leveled BLM first then DRK and now RDM. I'm planning on using RDM for meriting DRK once I cap out Lvl75 on it.

But my path is to merit is Crits first, then Weapons, then STR. From my BLM I have 3 MP merits, 6 Elemental skill and 2 Dark, 2 Thunder potency merits also. I have 1 merit in scythe (I wanted Guillotine at 59 >.>) and one in Great Sword.

The nice thing about merits is they are adjustments to your character and not a job (unless its a JA)

So, just a fun theory/hypothesis for merits if anyone has more time to play than I will ever have.

Level THF, MNK, WAR and WHM
Merit out Triple Attack on THF, Counter on MNK, Double Attack on WAR, and Regen on WHM. If these do cross-over to other jobs like my other merits you'd be one amazing DRK with all that going on.