What's a White Mage to Merit! - Part 2

[Olorin401]

In the first part of my merit review, I went over the general merit ability categories that are available to a lv75 White Mage. In this thread I'll be going down the list of merits that are available exclusively to WHMs.

** Note : As with my previous thread, I'll be tossing in critical analysis, i.e. my opinion on where to put merits.

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Group A Merits - Maximum total upgrades 10, maximum per item 5

Divine Seal Recast Time - Each upgrade reduces the timer on Divine Seal by 20 seconds.
(Maximum merit = 8m20s timer)
While I think that DS and its alternate Divine Veil are extremely useful, it seems like there isn't enough benefit per merit to make this attractive. If it were more like 30-40 seconds less per merit that could make it worth another look.

Cure Cast Time - Each upgrade reduces casting time on Cures by 4%.
(Maximum merit = Cure cast time -20%)
Combined with equipment that speeds your casting (Cure Clogs, Rostrum Pumps) or just gives you Haste (Walahra Turban), this can be a powerhouse. In tight situations a fast Cure can save a tank (and therefore a possible wipe), and a quick Curaga 2 can keep an Limit Chain going. IMO the best Group A merit ability - this is one I'd recommend putting at least 3 merits into, if not to the cap.

Bar Spell Effect - Each upgrade gives +2 potency to Bar-spells and +2 Magic Defense Bonus
(Maximum merit = +10 bar-potency & +10 MDB)
Bar-spells are situational, but very useful in reducing the chance and the amount of damage taken from enemy spells, abilities, and TP-based skills. You'll probably use a Barspell at least once each time you have a party, and it does make a difference even if you might not see it (Mijin Gakure mobs in Dynamis or Besieged come to mind), so putting some extra effect into this can be useful.

Banish Effect - Each upgrade gives +2 damage and +2sec Defense Down vs. Undead
(Maximum merit = +10 damage & +10sec Def-Down)
This is a winner if you do a lot of fighting against undead mobs, or do a lot of Dynamis. Otherwise this might not mean too much. Then again, you're a White Mage and your two nukes (Banish and Holy) burst on a Light skillchain. It's a call each WHM can make on their own.

Regen Effect - Each upgrade gives +1HP/tick to Regen spells
(Maximum merit = +5HP/tick)
This one is my favorite. Regens have three purposes - hate control, MP conservation, and "preventative medicine". So the more effective your Regens are, the more effective YOU are as a White Mage. Of course nothing can beat a Cure in a pinch, but saving some MP by only needing to cast Cure 3 (instead of an inefficient Cure 4 or over-casting with a Cure 5) is always a good thing.


Group B Merits - Maximum total upgrades 6, maximum per item 3

Martyr - Sacrifice 25% of your HP to give target party member twice that much HP, 20 min. timer
(Add'l merits reduce timer by 2m30s, maximum merit 15 min.)
Effectively a Cure 5 that uses no MP.. It's a nice ability to have, but the other Group 2 merits are more attractive. I'd probably put a single merit into this one just to open it up for emergencies.

Devotion - Sacrifice 25% of your HP to give target party member equal MP, timer 20 min
(Add'l merits reduce timer by 2m30s, maximum merit 15 min.)
One of the most useful abilities I've ever used. It's even better when you load up on HP gear, cure yourself to full HP, and put on Stoneskin before you use it (SS will 'absorb' the HP hit you take).

Protectra V - Increases party defense to +60
(addl. merits add +2, maximum merit Defense +64)
I don't want to say this is a useless ability. It's not. An extra 5-9 defense (over Prot4) is something. I just think Shellra V is more useful, since there are less ways available to increase magic defense than regular defense.

Shellra V - Increases party magic defense to +62
(addl. merits add +2, maximum merit Magic Defense +66)
As I just mentioned, increasing magic defense is more important than regular defense because it is harder to find equipment or food that will grant a Magic Def. Bonus.

And there it is.. Now, just to give you all an idea what I've done with my merits so far here's what I've got (as related to White Mage):

MP +2
Cure Cast Time +3
Regen Effect +3
Bar Spells +2
Devotion Active +2
Martyr Active only
Shellra V Active +1

I think I'm gonna go merit my Bard stuff & Enfeebling Magic to 8/8 now.. Have fun guys!

[Callisto]

LoL, well you probably know what I would suggest for a WHM since I bug you for it. Max Devotion!! Devotion = sexy. I know I'm a RDM main, but I would also highly suggest Cure speed and Bar boosts for WHMs trying to choose their merits. You're right that barspells are situational, but the difference that the higher barspells makes is pretty big when the situation comes up. Especially with the AF2 pants(do you have those? I don't remember them dropping on our runs any time recently...) you can hit 120+. As RDM mine do +98, when we do our Dyna runs notice that I'm usually still at full health after a NIN uses MG, and I'm probably one of the few to survive Astral Flow if we get unlucky in that department. <3 Barspells!

[Olorin401]

LoL, well you probably know what I would suggest for a WHM since I bug you for it. Max Devotion!! Devotion = sexy. I know I'm a RDM main, but I would also highly suggest Cure speed and Bar boosts for WHMs trying to choose their merits. You're right that barspells are situational, but the difference that the higher barspells makes is pretty big when the situation comes up. Especially with the AF2 pants(do you have those? I don't remember them dropping on our runs any time recently...) you can hit 120+. As RDM mine do +98, when we do our Dyna runs notice that I'm usually still at full health after a NIN uses MG, and I'm probably one of the few to survive Astral Flow if we get unlucky in that department. <3 Barspells!

Heya Calli! Yeah I have those pants too.. they're in my Barspell macros. I used to have Blessed Briault in there as well but I've decided to sell that piece off..

As far as surviving a MG or AF Rage Pact goes though.. it should probably be mentioned that Bar Spells notoriously first lower the Damage Multiplier (i.e. it could be 1x, it could be 5x, who knows), THEN the amount of damage done. It's kinda like you're playing AD&D and you get into a fight with a dragon.. so you roll dice once to see if you get hit by the tail, then again with a modifier die to see how much damage you take from it. Enhancing Magic skill also modifies this too, since it's the base for the strength of your barspells.

[Callisto]

I think I'm gonna go merit my Bard stuff & Enfeebling Magic to 8/8 now.. Have fun guys!

My favorite part of the last update. I've been lazy on my BRD recently b/c of falling in love with COR, but one of my biggest reasons to not want to play endgame BRD was because I couldn't merit the magic skills for it at all, since I had 8 skills merited for RDM. Now I can cap out Enfeebling(I had 6 Enf, 1 Ele, and 1 Dark) and still have 6 slots for BRD skills. Awesome.

[Amele]

I'll throw my thoughts in as well: I decided early on that the 'best' way to merit the group I merits was to max two categories and ignore the other three.

divine seal recast (..lol. if this was 5 minutes - 12 seconds per merit, maybe)
banish effect (again, lol. you'll need banish down merits only in KRT exp - since there's no serious undead hnm family, like there is for dragons)

those two I'd discount out of hand. after that there's cure speed, regen, and barspells.

if you're an hnm whitemage, barspells is the one you'll get the most mileage out of. they're situational for exp, but there isn't an alliance+ fight in the game that doesn't benefit from strong barspells. - the key here is that you're also getting +magic defense: in addition to increasing the likelihood of resist, you're also decreasing damage by ~10% with full merits.

after that you've got to choose between cure speed and regen, both are excellent and mostly come to a playstyle choice (if you're not an hnm whitemage you can probably merit both instead of meriting barspell effect, although it's nice for exp too.)

group II is a little simpler: shell V is 3 merits if you're an hnm whitemage (for the same reasons as barspell) this is slightly better than 25~% magic damage down fully merited.

this leaves you three points to split between pro V, devotion and martyr. pro V should probably get 0 or 1 merits, and then devotion and martyr should get either 2 or 3 merits split between them (if I put a point into Pro V I'd do 1 each in devo and martyr, otherwise I'd probably do 2 devotion and 1 martyr or 3 devotion).

my merit choices:
5 Cure Speed
5 Barspell
3 Shell V
3 Devotion

I'm also dedicating 8 enhancing and 8 enfeebling magic merits to whm (whm is my only mage job) and doing 8 mp merits. I haven't decided if I'll devote any misc. merits to it.

[Icemage]

My current merit configuration on WHM is:

Group 1 (5/10)
Cure speed Lv5

I'll probably get around eventually to tacking on level 5 Barspell effect, but it's relatively low priority. Regen effect is cool, but I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted with the effectiveness of Regen spells at endgame, since newer enemies are hitting harder and faster, which leaves less time for casting Regen.

If you're not at end-game and doing big fights, Barspell effect is a waste, and you should definitely dump those points into Regen effect instead.

Group 2 (3/6)
Martyr Lv1: You could probably skip this and never miss it, actually.
Devotion Lv1: Need to get around to bumping this to level 3. It really is that good.
Shellra V Lv1: Worth putting at least 1 point in, as much as 3 if you do a lot of endgame.

Agree that Protectra V, Divine Seal Recast, and Banish effect are all pretty worthless at the moment.


Icemage

[Alshandra]

Currently I have:

Group 1 6/10
Cure speed 4
Regen 1
Barspell 1

Group 2 6/6
Devotion 3
Martyr 1
ProV 1
ShellV 1

Im taking Cure to 5 and going to put the rest into barspells. Im thinking of taking out my regen one and putting it into barspells too, i really just havent found the extra regen to be useful in my daily adventures. Barspell though, I can see being more useful.

Can devotion go higher than LV3? I would think it could be maxed to 5 and if so, I might take out Martyr or ProV and switch it over, as really they aren't as useful in my experience. I wouldn't miss martyr, I only use it occasionally when i remember that its there. And with ProV, the extra defense vs. shortening devotion? I think its a worthwhile sacrifice. People can just up their defence with gear, but its much harder to replenish MP the way devotion does. I use it all the time.

Those are my thoughts, from my experience.

But then again, everyone plays the game differently so each to their own!

[Olorin401]

At the moment Devotion can only get to Lv3 because of the limits on Group B. It'd be nice if they increase that cap in the future but I don't think they will.

[Feenicks]

Personally I would reword what you said about Banish merits because you make it sound useful, when even in the highly situational and rare cases where you would use Banish for a purpose, the merits aren't going to make things stand out that much.

I used to wonder about Barspell merits as well but once you see what a merited Barspell can do, especially with Blessed Briault and Cleric Pantaloons you'll never look back. And not just for direct damage spells as well, they can help you with resisting status effects as well. Someone did some research a while back on Barspells and status spells in Dynamis and found that they could resist Breakga with a pretty good rate if they could get enough +Earth Resistance.

I also agree with Icemage on the Regen merit usefulness - it's absolutely brilliant to have maxed Regen in XP, Meriting or solo but a lot of NMs these days just hit too fast and hard to warrant the use of Regen.

[Amele]

At the moment Devotion can only get to Lv3 because of the limits on Group B. It'd be nice if they increase that cap in the future but I don't think they will.

although the group 2 merits are (mostly) written to work at 5 point cap (the 20 minute abilities become 10 minute abilities, the 10 minute abilities become 5 minute abilities), heck, even protect V might be worth it at 5 merits, then it's +13 defense which might actually reduce more than one or two points of damage.


as for regen: a regen spec'd whitemage is a scary thing, Regen I is 11hp/tick, II is 19hp/tick, and III is 28hp/tick. this makes them the single most efficient spells in the game in terms of healing, and is enough of a buff that you can downrank them (in situations where you used to use regen II, you can now use regen I etc. )

casting time isn't an issue if you pay attention to tank shadows and learn to estimate TP move timings.

if you're the only mage in the alliance though, then it might be a different story (this is of course, an insane configuration since it also means you have no refresh).

Regen is a very useful and very powerful merit (I'd even go so far as to say that if you weren't planning to max out your cure speed with gear, that regen is the better merit in the abstract.) barspell, of course, is king if you do much of any endgame at all.


on the subject of breakga: without the pants (I don't have them yet) and with the briault and Shell V, I enjoy approximately ~50% personal resists in dynamis, and at least one other member (usually 2-3) of my party resists as well.

I'm close to that on spell resist rates to 1/4 as well, and with an element spec'd tank we've gotten it down to consistent 1/8 ths, with the pantaloons and completed enhancing magic, I think we'll start to see 1/16ths

[Irisjir Callard]

I capped out Devotion last night, down to 15 minute recast on it, and my pld's and rdm's love me for it.

As far as regen usefulness, I agree with Icemage insofar as that they're not the end-all-be-all-gods of endgame anymore. But I still plan to max merit regen potency before I max merit cure cast time, simply because I use regens far FAR more than cures. Perhaps it's simply the endgame activities I do (Dynamis, duoing merits, general adventuring) and don't do (HNM/gods/sky) are more regen-friendly than cure-friendly, instead of vice-versa