I'm sure most people who read this blog have a pile of things on their list to merit. Me? Not so much until recently.
When I got PLD to 75, the only thing I knew for certain that I was going to merit was the following:
Max Shield Bash recast.
Max Sentinel recast.
Level 1 Fealty.
Level 1 Chivalry.
I didn't want to merit any of the magic skills or the weapon skills because I knew the amount of time I spent on PLD would pale in comparison to DRG. On top of that, I just didn't see the benefit in maxing out Fealty or Chivalry as I classify them along the same I do Deep Breathing. I use Deep Breathing whenever I can, but it's overall impact isn't all that much unless I'm soloing. Chivalry is nice for long, drawn out battles, but we all know if there's a long drawn out battle, someone else is going to tank cause I have Gungnir. Those Job Abilities are niche at best with me.
Prior to PLD, I had DRG and WHM max merited even though I rarely used WHM. It drove me nuts to have a job at 75 and not have it maxed out. Might be that I'm getting a little lazy, but that sort of mental insanity just didn't exist when PLD hit 75. Now that I have DRK at 75 though, I'm starting to feel that way again.
So what to merit?
First, I knew since BLM was going to be the next job I took to 75, I needed to max Enfeebling Magic and Elemental Magic. I'm still undecided on whether I want to merit Scythe yet, but I'm leaning towards yes. Out of Group 1 merits, I'm going to max Souleater timer and Last Resort Effect. The thought process behind this is that I hate it when JAs are on different timers and with LR being 5 minutes and SE being 6, that's caused me to get the purple clock when I mashed the macro enough to make me feel like unplugging my modem.
Group 2 merits I'm still a little torn on. I know Desperate Blows will get maxed. I know there will be at least one merit put into Dark Seal. My main questions regarding the rest of Group 2 are:
1. Is Dark Seal really worth max meriting?
2. Is Diabolic Eye worth even putting one merit into even for WS purposes?
3. Is Muted Soul worth it?
I don't really have the answers to those questions yet, but that leaves me with more than enough of a list to get done before I do have them.
For those of you keeping tabs at home, that's:
Enfeebling Magic: 0-8 (21 merits)
Elemental Magic: 0-8 (21 merits)
Last Resort Effect: 0-5 (15 merits)
Souleater Recast: 0-5 (15 merits)
Desperate Blows: 0-5 (22 merits)
Dark Seal: 0-1 (3 merits...for now)
Grand total: 97 merits.
I obviously have a lot of work to do. With that in mind, I dragged Lect's COR out with the intention of him kicking and screaming his way to 75 with my DRG and through the various assemblage of 2 parties, I picked up approx. 8 merits. A couple more meripos after that and I found that 22 of the 97 merits just went away. These promptly found a home in Enfeebling Magic (capped) and the first in Elemental Magic.
With my Christmas trip coming up, I figured a good place to stop would be to cap Elemental Magic. I needed 200k XP in a week. That's not a ton when you manage to xp at a 20-25k/hour clip consistently like I do. I had Saturday off except for a blurb of business in the middle of the day after Einherjar, so I started asking around the night before to see if I could rally up enough people to spend 4-5 hours out on pink birds for a party I called:
"The 109,999 Limit Point Party"
The task was simple. Everyone start as close to 0 as they could and don't leave until they completely capped their merit points. I'm sure the concept of this was nothing new, but it was something I had never done and it's something most of my friends would probably slap me upside the head for thinking of, but to my surprise, a lot of people wanted to come.
The first variation of this party was Kreoss (WAR), Lectrikelion (COR/RNG), Millenas (COR/WHM), Tammyrose (BRD/NIN), Leanaci (RDM/WHM) and myself (DRG/SAM).
The short translation for this is:
That's a shitload of buffs.
2x March, Sam, Fighter, Corsair and Chaos rolls. Bird destruction commenced for about 2.5 hours (with 15 mins of it being spent recovering) and 60k XP picked up. Kreoss had to go due to salvage. Leanaci had to go due to it being very late where she lived. So...
Enter Darkdawn and Rifuburade.
Same set up except Millenas changed to RDM/WHM and Darkdawn came COR/WHM. More bird destruction commenced for another 3 hours (with 30 mins of it being spent swapping people around) and pretty much everyone there except the swaps ended up getting nearly 12 merits worth of XP. I capped merits and ended up putting the rest of the xp into my DRG buffer.
Now the running tally looks like this as of Saturday night:
Enfeebling Magic: Capped
Elemental Magic: Level 5 (5-8, 9 merits)
Last Resort Effect: 0-5 (15 merits)
Souleater Recast: 0-5 (15 merits)
Desperate Blows: 0-5 (22 merits)
Dark Seal: 0-1 (3 merits...for now)
Grand total: 64 merits.
Yes, I managed to knock out about 1/3 of my list in a matter of a few parties, so I'm very happy with that. Another few parties like that and I'll have DRK up to where I want in no time. :)
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DRK for me is a zerg job only. I have more effective jobs for long fights and don't particularly enjoy the job, so I only keep zerg gear for it, and I only merited the bare essential. You're probably going to have a similar situation since Gungnir is your primary DD job, but you're a little nuts and haven't tricked out 8 jobs already so I'll cut some slack. :)
ReplyDeletePut only one merit in Dark Seal. Any more than that would reduce the recast, but you don't need that. The only time Dark Seal is essential is in the final seconds before a zerg - Drain II only lasts a minute anyway. After the zerg rush, you'll have either killed the enemy or Blood Weapon will be down, and in either case Dark Seal won't be useful. If you're zerging again in less than two hours, you're getting Wild Card and that resets Dark Seal too.
It's tempting to cap merits in your new job's weapon but look at what you intend to level in the future first. Scythe is good for one job, and it's a very limited category, so take care choosing.
--cele
Dragoon is and always will be my favorite job and relic causes me to be pigeonholed into it quite a bit (not that I'm complaining...). However, I'm starting to get the itch to do another relic and my eyeball is on scythe. This is why I was considering the skill points.
ReplyDeleteI view most fights in the game now as being categorized into one of two categories:
Zerg and Endurance.
DRG is not good for an all out zerg. In 30 seconds, a RNG or a DRK will usually kick the shit out of DRG, especially when you factor in a multi-hit weapon like KC or MK equipped on a DRK. RNGs with Culverins are an entirely different beast.
Likewise, DRK is not as good as DRG (especially one with Gungnir...) for the Endurance fights.