meritsFollow

ok now that sch merits have been out for a while, what is the pattern most have put into it for best affectiveness.. just hit 75 and looking at them, its hard to chose how best to place them outside of stormsurge to max and maybe capping max sublimination, but even then.. i dont know how often i actually let or see sublimination go to full charge outside of first stepping outside of my mh as it is.

5/5 Helix and 5/5 Stormsurge are the "Must have" ones out there.

5/5 Enlightment is my choice for the secnod Cat2 group. It is a real stratagem-saver for timed stuff like Nyzul island, Einherjar, Limbus, etc. It comes in handy mostly when I'm at Dark Arts and need like, an Erase.
In the case that the enemy does say, paralyga, I can save 1 charge going Light arts -> Accession -> Enlightment -> Paralyna.
Also good when you only need to cast RR from Add:White; Pop lights, Enlightment, and RR2 (Or use the saved stratagem on Penury).

I don't see Either of the 2-Charge stratagems as really worth anything past 2-hour spam. The only one that is slightly interesting is Focalization. But the thing is that Spending 1 Stratagem on Alacrity + Klimaform for a huge boost 2/3 of the time on all spells under that period is just so much better than 2 stratagems for a single spell.
And really, I've yet to meet something that can't be nuked/enfeebled without Klimaform (Sans ToAU HNM's and respective inmunities).



As for Cat1 second choice merits is really up to personal preference.

Full MV merits is like making your Helixes do 1.5 the damage it should. This essentially gives us the equivalent of an AMII spell once every 10 minutes.
Full Sublimation on the other hand, is "Just nice" to have around on all situations.

Personally, I'm leaning towards full Sublimation now that MV merits have been proven to only reduece the penalty by 25% (50% out of 50% Penalty, not 50% -50% like we hoped).

I personally don't understand why so many people degrade the usefulness of helices. If you're soloing anything at all, a helix spell is going to be your most efficient means of damage. If you're fighting anything that lasts @ least 90 seconds and doesn't have extremely high INT, it's going to be your most efficient means of damage. If you need to ensure a DoT is on something such as the ZNM colibri, it lasts for up to 90 seconds, which can make or break that fight when everyone gets charmed. 5/5 helix merits only make the helices better. If you're fighting something that lasts @ least twice as long as a normal helix duration, 5/5 MV merits can turn that into a metric ton of damage.

My Choice of Sch Merit
Tier 1:
5/5 Helix acc and att bonus
5/5 Sublimation (Elvaan needs MP badly)

Tier 2:
4/5 Focalization (more Macc is always good tho it cost 2charges making it situational)
1/5 Enlightenment (quite handy especially you are a nuker-scholar)
5/5 Stormsurge (7 extra INT + Ice weather bonus, needless to explain...)

This is exactly what I'm doing. 5/5 Helix and Stormsurge are the obvious choices for most, and the rest are up to your personal playstyle. I don't personally have a need for a shorter recast on Light/Dark arts, and when I use Modus Veritas it's usually because I got a half-resisted helix and I want it to not suck so much, so I don't really care to merit it. Also, I tend to sit on Sublimation until its full (plus I'm taru and so my sub isn't that exciting without merits), so 5/5 Sublimation is what I picked.

For tier 2 merits; I originally thought 5/5 Enlightenment would be pretty cool, but then I realized it's not a JA I use too terribly often. Having access to it once every 10 minutes is useful enough for my usual situations, and considering I don't even use it half the time I don't think using all my merits decreasing the timer to 5 minutes is useful to me. So... I've decided to go 4/5 Focalization on the side, even though I'm not sure how potent or useful it'll be, but if it's strong enough to work as a mini-elemental seal (even though it costs 2 charges), it might be worth it. I haven't seen anyone really post on its effectiveness, so I figure I'll just merit it to see for myself since nothing else sounds too exciting.

I'm only 65 sofar (and rising) but I was thinking about:

5/5 grimoire recast
5/5 helix

5/5 stormsurge
and then for my last 5, probably..
1/5 Enlightenment
4/5 Focalization.

You guys have maybe peaked my interest in MV duration merits instead of grimoire. I'm only 65 though so I have 0 experience playing around with it, but it sounds powerful.