75 Merit BP: wich one ?Follow

Then you're looking at the wrong merit catagory.

Congratulations, you answered your own question.

Well, for my choice, I'm meriting Thunderstorm and Heavenly Strike to MB with Black Mages (they commonly have Freeze II and Burst II) if I'm fighting something that my Physical BPs can't hit hard. For Geocrush, why use that when you have Chaotic Strike?

Information on Chaotic Strike:

If all three hits land and stun processes on each one, the total effect can last up to 15 seconds. This is commonly considered the strongest stun in the game, but it will not overwrite an existing stun effect.

Obviously it won't always do 15 seconds, but it'll still stun longer than a regular stun.

Take care!

why the hell people gotta always be ******** when anwering questions? hey i wouldnt suggest getting any merit BP until u cap out others.. they are just too weak.

why use any of the merited BP's over the typical 70 BP's? 1. you are going to mb 2. the monster you are attacking is physically resistant. so i ask you, why use chaotic strike to try to mb (...) or attack a physically resistant monster when you have geocrush?

that said, i was really only pointing out to the OP that they are not "all the same power", geocrush is slightly stronger than the other ones due to it being the only pact with an added effect. whether or not that makes it worth meriting over the other merit pacts, i cannot say, i was just pointing out the difference.

It is roughly 33% cheaper. So unless you do 150% the damage I can't see anything else gained than possibly time.

For me (with only level 1 merit BPs and never TPing them first) it is about 550 vs 650 damage. If it was actually 800 damage more often I'd probably toss myself over merit BPs.

Also I MBed wind blade another day on a doll (sky farming party) at 300%, wind weather etc, and it did about 1100. Predator claws had before that done 1300.

To me these merit BPs seem to require:

1) Right weather and day to store TP
2) A mob strong to physical but weak to magic
3) A Skillchain

And the times I run across all these three are rare.

I'm actually one of the few who has learned to survive without vast amounts of refresh.

I have about 50 MP per tick while resting.

So you take your 20ish MP for summoning, your 30ish MP for running around after kirin, then 100 MP for nether blast and add them up to 150 MP.

Then you see that in 40 seconds of resting you get 150 MP back.

So you have zero downtime. (you are only resting during BP recast)

This means you are BPing as often as possible and still have no MP issues. Moving up in the BP cost will make you lose more MP and make you reach low MP levels faster and require you to rest even when BP timer is ready.


It is just two ways of playing. The good damage with no downtime vs better damage with more downtime. In the end it is just about the same damage/minute in a long fight and it is kind of my point. If it is the same damage in the long run, why bother with the expensive ones that make you BP less often?

Vast amounts of refresh can of course counter this.

Edited, Sep 26th 2007 11:13pm by Mellowy

Is it even proven the stun exist on the merit BP?

I've used it from time to time and never seen a noticable stun. Maybe you have to accidently hit a mob WS and see it stop to know.

Just as advice, I wouldn't recomend on getting them to use on Sky gods. Nether Blast is still king in Kirin as Mellowy said and the others one you're better off using physical attacks. The most use from merit BP comes from Sea NMs and Limbus.

Lol, why? Because I answered your question honestly?
You didn't want to hear the truth? Go cry to someone else.

You said you didn't want to waste 30k Exp, I reccomended you spend those merits on something more useful. Is that such a horrible reccomendation?

You also asked which one to chose, I told you to pick the one that you like the most. In your words, it "looks the best" So that's what you should choose.

I'm unsure as to why you disliked my answers so much.
You already know they can all be MB'd. You know the elemental weakness of the HNM's you fight, you should know the SC your LS uses every week, and you should also know which elements fit which SC.

So why do you need someone to hold your hand when making a descision?
I answered your question, what more do you want?

An update earlier this year changed the TP modifier for each additional merit to +40%, also they increased the effect from meriting the pact more than once. My problem with getting them all is that you won't use them if you get them all. I've tried it, and just from observing them during that period, they are only slightly stronger than TierIV bloodpacts. In my personal opinion, if you want to get decent use out of them you should do 2x 3/3 or 3 times 2/3. base your decisions on the ones you will be able to magic burst with most often, because that's really what these pacts are for.

Since the update getting all 6 isn't near as good as having 1 or 2 at full merits. If only one merit you have just a Nether Blast that uses a lot more of MP and get resisted more often, with full you actually get a decent damage, about 200 more. Elemental weakness is a joke anyway, if you get thunder and ice almost no mob has resistance.

The only reason to use a Merit BP is for a MP in the first place.

What I haven't read yet is that merit BP's are situational.
(Could just be me, I just woke up so might have missed it.)
I've merited them all, they all have the same base strength which is a bit higher then an avatar's tier IV spell but definately lower then an unresisted astral flow unless you TP your avatar to 250+% TP.
The more merits you place in one the stronger it's base damage becomes although tesing shows that at 300% TP they are as strong as one with one merit in them.
(A fully merited BP stops gaining strength at ~260%)

Merit BPs should not be whiffed away as useless because they definately have their uses.
Uses I found for them:

Dynamis: when placed in a BLM party, next to buffing them with Dream Shroud I found it very useful to throw Geocrush at statues for the extra stun effect, they do about 250~400 damage depending on resistance and day of the week bonus.
Nether Blast gets resisted to -100 damage on them.

Genbu: Thunderstorm seems to do a good amount of damage on him, it's the least resisted BP by him and does roughly 400~500 damage.
Nether Blast is also resisted by him towards ~200 damage and the Physical BP's are just too inconsistant on him due to his high Defense.

King Behemoth: I found heavenly strike does pretty good unresisted damage to him although I believe Nether Blast also goes pretty much unresisted.

Jailer of Fortitude: Usually kited and even though Nether Blast goes unresisted so do all the other Merit BP's doing about 100 Damage more then Nether Blast each.
Even if straight tanked you'll be lucky to hit any physical BP on him above 100 damage with his insane defense.
Another advantage is that he doesn't reflect Avatar magic when his Qn'Ghrah are up like he does with normal magic.

And of course the basic: Just having fun!
Warning: Having your avatar up to 300% and MB one can result in impressive numbers!

Edited, Oct 2nd 2007 8:22am by Shirai