Merits For A Endgame RDM

Wow this is comeing from a 85 rdm too ;;
plz tell me u was on key duty and burnt your rdm from 37 to 85 >.>

wow and u are a 85 rdm?! Plz tell me u was on key duty and burnt your rdm from 37 to 85 >.<

Gives a better chance or longer duration but not garunteed.

Ty Dasva, doesnt realy matter to me what u guys think i have seen it, soloing zippy got a whole lot easier after i dumped merits on ice magic accuracy, bind lasted considerably longer

Umm, Possible that you were getting partially resisted on Bind before meriting Ice magic Accuracy. Key word in the name of the ability is Accuracy not potency so wouldn't be logical for your binds to last longer with the merits unless you were constantly being resisted without them.

Exactly, i prolly was getting partialy resisted before but when i added merits i wasnt getting partially resisted as much, so therefore my binds lasted longer

So true. More nukes in a given amount of time = less time wasted in Abyssea. Why people think that elemental accuracy would be more useful than reduced Convert recast is beyond me.

That's generally the reason why people say that after you put your merits into convert, you put the other 5 into ice accuracy for paralyze, blizzard, and bind.

I don't know why I read threads like this. It just irritates me.

He said END GAME RDM. Not 'solo' RDM. So the obvious choice would be fully merited Bio III and Slow II, and definitely earth macc. If your RDM can't stick slow II and make it stick for longer than 10 seconds you're doing it wrong.

For me, I'd rather have the Accuracy merits, not that I get resisted often, but knowing my luck, would be on something that would get me killed with the resist >< I guess pre 82 where Refresh II becomes available and for players without an idle refresh set (Personally I have Dalmatica, D.Chapeau and Serpentes Set for 9mp/tick with Refresh II) Convert merits may be useful, But I've never had a problem with mp. It's all down to the individual, Merits, Gear, Playstyle. Also if you solo Abyssea NM's having the Atma from ASA Expansion would give an extra 5mp/tick ontop of whatever refresh you already had, making it hard to run out of mp, or if you do, not having to wait long for convert to be up, Just my 2 cents =)

I don't know why I read your post. It just irritates me.

The obvious choice would include Dia III moreso than Bio III. What are you smoking to even think that Bio III would be a good choice for a group event?

Also, if someone said they were an "END GAME RDM" to me, I'd initially assume they meant that they solo'd ***. Yes, the OP said that they mainly did group events, which is what I gave my spiel at about page 3-5 on what merits are the most feasible.

EDIT: It was page 2.

^ Personally I have 2/5 Dia III which works pretty well for me. Keep it on just about anything I fight endgame wise unless I've been told not to DoT. The 15% Defense down makes a big difference.

What irratates me is ppl like this ^^ who try to put other ppl down and realy there the ones who dont know ***

And the point is bind and gravity don't have set durations. So every cast is more or less a partial resist.

Trust me go solo on some mob that builds resistance with and without a skill/macc set see which one has longer duration. Or lets say use the debuffs on blm vs rdm.

This is one of those times that acc is just about as good as potency. Another example might like drain.

Almost everything in Abyssea is immune to Bind/Gravity (and easily lowmanned with 1-2 melees in a fraction of the time it takes to nuke down).

Almost everything outside Abyssea can be Bound/Grav'd reliably almost entirely naked now.

Group-orientated would be a mix of Dia3, Slow2, Para2 and Phalanx2 with this spell becoming increasingly less useful. If a Slow2 EVER sticks for only 10 seconds then your mob has just hit rage or been erased <_<

Group 1 merits going 10/10 on accuracy are a huge waste unless you do literally no solo or lowman activity imo. Convert merits may not be as good as they once were with abyssea refresh/meds, but I don't see that justifying 10 accuracy you more than likely won't even need. Should be riding convert as much as you can and making use of all the extra mp on nuking.

My personal group 2 merits are:
Dia III 2/5
Slow II 4/5
Paralyze II 4/5

I usually do Dia 3 when the mobs need a -15% defense once in a while. Para and Slow II stick and proc quite often for me.

But you'r the one who's wrong ;)

Lol'd.

I'm sry but in bold isn't true. Maybe 30% of mobs in abyssea are immune to bind/grav. The rest are just resisting cause not enough m.acc or enfeeble. Those acc merits in cat.1 do help with this.

People are saying the convert merits are pointless cause you can get over 12/tic with atmas in abyssea and /sch mp conservation, with the m.acc on higher mobs youre spending less mps to stick enfeebles which makes convert even less needed. e.t.c

Others are saying m.acc is pointless cause as we get higher in level our skills are going up and it makes it easier to land spells along w/sabateur.

Truth is both are identically equal in terms of usefulness. Just like all the choices in cat.2 (beside blind2, that truly is worthless). There isn't 1 that is better than the other. Different play styles can make equal use of different spells and abilities equally. There truly is no wrong answer to how to merit in either category. It is entirely and completely preference based.

(saying this mainly because people attacking other people based on how they merited Rdm is pretty childish.)

yeah Convert merits are absolutely HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE. Maybe like a few years ago when ***was way tougher and you played with more dumbasses.

Not even talking about Abyssea, but these days, there's very little reason why you couldnt make your MP pool last ten minutes 'til your next Convert. Unless you play with total retards who're taking way too much damage, or you're a Galka.

Inside of Abyssea... Atmas and temporary items totally destroyed the point in having Convert at all lol. This coming from a guy who uses RDM/NIN to solo/duo/low-man a lot of NMs and the only time I end up using Convert is when a NM dies and I'm moving on to the next one.

As for the rest of the merits...

Group 1 should probably be 5/5 Ice Accuracy (for Paralyze) and 5/5 Earth Accuracy (for Slow). Consider doing Wind Accuracy merits if you really use Silence and Gravity a lot and have trouble landing them (though for someone with capped skills and good gear, this is hardly ever the case on any mob you'd actually need silenced or gravitied). Fire, Lightning, and Water Accuracy merits are a complete joke and should never even be considered.

Group 2 is heavily dependent on your play style, and therefore has no real standards for every player.

Dia III sees it's best (and pretty much only) use in zerg fights. If you end up on RDM every time your linkshell zergs something, it might be a good idea to put a merit into this. Consecutive merits only increase it's duration (and does not increase defense reduction) so how many merits you put into it would be based entirely on how good your LS is at zerging.

Slow II is pretty obvious, and a near-necessity for both solo and group situations. Get as many merits into it as you can.

Paralyze II is obvious as well, and probably more useful than any other spell you can merit. A real potent Paralyze can literally lock a mob from attacking or casting on you, and is an overwhelming lifesaver in both solo and group oriented situations. Get as many merits into it as you can.

Phalanx II is best if you often find yourself as a tank party RDM. Absolutely epic in the first couple floors of Salvage, and just as good for anyone on the front lines taking damage. Go 5/5 if you often find yourself in a tank party or use RDM a lot in Salvage.

Bio III is great for soloers. Worth meriting if you do a lot of lengthy solos.

Blind II is most likely the least valuable of the group 2 merits, really only showing any use for evasion-based tanks. Low-man groups with THFs or NINs in the tanking role will enjoy it, though the results are negligible compared to a good Slow and/or Paralyze.

In the end, what you choose to merit simply depends on your play style and what role you find yourself in while on the job. There is no wrong answer, just gotta figure out what you need for your purposes.

You are a *** idiot about the convert stuff. I would definitely say depending on play style they are not a must have anymore, but to call them useless makes you a moron. PreAbyssea there was 0 reason to stretch out your mp pool as long as you could. The point of convert merits is to make use of the extra mp gained, IE: Nuking more. Dia 3 is a must have if you do any nonmanaburn party oriented stuff.

Actually there was plenty of point. I somewhat frequently found myself as the only healer with mp and if ***hit the fan sometimes I had to have convert up then. Which meant I couldn't afford to use it just so I could squeeze in more nukes along the way. It was a back up.

Other note the other day I was trioing and pops Oboron NM with 2 blms. If I wasn't refreshing them, gravitying/binding the mob, buffing myself I was nuking. It still took a good 15-20 min on average to run low enough for convert to even have a point. And I mean this was me not kiting on bit either just keeping hate or not having it either way I wasn't running from the mobs just went out and nuked. Also mind you I only had 1 5 refresh atma and no other outside sources of refresh so I was only at 13. A rdm in abyssea can hit like 20 solo lol

Play more aggressively. I can see a lot of times in abyssea where you won't be able to nuke spam, but on things like that orobon you should be nuking nearly nonstop.

It seems you only skimmed what I was saying. So I'll requote it.


The only thing I could've done to be more aggressive was to be stupid and not buff/debuff at all. Though to be fair my lack of regard to personal safety (ie not bothering to move unless it was out of range) did get me leech currented a couple of times lol.

I really don't think you understand just how much refresh we are getting and how long that last just based on how long it takes to cast/recast spells compared to their mp cost

How could it have taken 15-20mins to spend all your mp if you were nuking nonstop with only one refresh atma? Were you spamming meds or something?

Sorry for double posting. I understand how much of a loss convert merits have taken from all of this extra refresh, but I would still rate them far ahead of accuracy that 9 out of 10 times will end up being useless. When you are able to nuke all out without need for safety, you can easily blow through an mp pool fast enough to make use of the extra convert time.

Let's take 15 min. I have like 1200ish mp with buffs in there. With 13 refresh in 15 min that is 3900 mp. So 5100 total. Or I can spend 340 a min. With dark arts up my highest costing nuke is 135 mp. Blizz 3 cost 108 which is about the lowest lvl nuke I will use. So 121ish average. That means with parsimony I can nuke on average 2-3 big nukes a min. Which doesn't sound like a lot until you add in the fact that I was keeping the mob gravitied and buffing myself and 2 blms and throwing in a drain whenever I could. Or that we often tried to trigger !! so we were spamming all elements all tiers which just eats up time. Hell lower tier spells I can end up with more mp at the end then when i started lol

Anyways it's not like I have full macc merits. I just don't merit often and when I get some I have 4 other 75+ jobs that would get a whole lot more use out of them. Particularly the one that was 70 a few weeks ago lol

not more HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE than wasting earth magic acc merits than convert,mp is way more important, and meds/refresh tics are not enough, specially when you're a healing/refresh2/haste cycle whoring or soloing with /nin sub (most of the time) nuking with no conserve mp hurts, enfeebling skill gear is overrated, specially on cap 99 you don't need all that to land slow, you got saboteur as well

Whats the point of meriting phalanx2 and gimping full para2/slow2 merits to the max , specially with /sch that can phalanxga, more useful that phalanx2 that it's only good fully merited and that's a major waste of merits. phalanx2 should be only full merited if you are a rdm only LS locked job with a ls that use pld all the time to tank everything