RDM Merits

Okay.. Just hit 75 RDM. I need to know what I should be meritting. I won't be doing any End-game with RDM. I'll just be duoing ( with nin ) /soloing NM's etc with it.

I was thinking..

5/5 Ice accuracy
5/5 Wind Accuracy

1 phalanx II
1 dia III
4 Slow II
4 Paralyze II

Is that good for what I'll be doing? Any/all input is appreciated. Thanks :)

Depends what type of soloing you'll be doing?
If its melee then your current idea its ok, but for sky NM's and others like Bune etc its prolly best to go with 5/5 Bio III and at least 3/5 SlowII

Well, try to cap your enfeebling 8/8 as well. And yeah, what Steo said Bio III is pretty important to 5/5 on.

Yeah. my enfeebling and elemental magic are both capped from BLM. So, I have that done already.

I'm also elvaan and I have 8/8 mp merits

oh man...when solo/duo'ing often you just have to merit convert 5/5...then do ice/wind as you like.

group2 do bio III 5/5...it is really great for those things you want to do~
then personally i don't like phalanx II since you've to put 3-5 merits in it to be decent. and then it won't outdo Phalanx I.
Dia III is just a waste of merits i think. it may be good for a burn party only RDM.
Slow II/Para II are great! escpecially when duo'ing with a Ninja Slow II will overpower Hojo: Ni and Paralyze II prog rate can be really impressive with a good setup.
Blind II don't overpower Kurayami: Ni, so it's kind of a waste.

I've 5/5 Convert/Ice
5/5 Bio III, 3/5 Slow II, 2/5 Paralyze II

Well, I was thinking phalanx II for using on the NIN for duoing.. I guess it's not worth it if the NIN is good and doesn't get hit anyway. >_>

BioIII is awesome.

lol no.. I see now. Thanks.

So I guess. convert recast 5/5 ice 3/5 wind 2/5

bio III 5/5
Slow II 3/5
Paralyze II 2/5

Is that better? >_>

5\5 Convert
3\5 Ice macc
2\5 Wind macc

5\5 Bio III
5\5 Slow II

This is what I got and it serves me very well ^^,

Edit: I prefer the good slow over para2 due to paralyze not beeing as easy to predict.
And para1 vs para2 mp cost = huge difference.

Stupendous! Thanks for the advice peeps! Now. to smn burn all of the limit points with my new allied/anni rings. :)

5 Ice 5 Convert, 2nd group highly varies.

Wind Accuracy is pretty shocking and generally awful;

1. Silence - either going to land, or not.
2. Gravity - useful but compared to ice spells notsomuch. Plus its innate accuracy is already high and its recast such that you barely benefit from the accuracy.
3. Aero < other nuke types.

If I had it to do all over I probably would not have capped out my para2, or even merited it. It is great for HNM, but for a melee solo rdm ice spikes just work better. The duration is not all that on para2 however the proc rate with a ton of mnd can be fun. If you are duoing with a nin I would go for less wind acc and get some convert timer merits if you are not kite DoTing or fighting a HNM. You will only use gravity in certain emergency situations.

For the play style(provided the nin is tanking for you) you have described I would advise cap convert and slow2 for sure. But this is just 1 RDM's oppinion.

Wind ACC is almost a holdover type thing. I still have 4 Convert 3 Ice 3 Wind from way back, simply because it works well enough.

5 Ice 5 Convert is a much more logical way to go now though.

Big part of it is that Gravity has deliberate built-up resistance from NMs, and immunity to Silence isn't that uncommon either. At that point, it doesn't matter what your setup is, you're not landing it.


Phalanx II can be useful, but it -is- situational, and really does benefit from 5/5. One consideration is that, even blink tanking, you can negate damage from spikes with it.

I chose the wind basicly for gravity, but 5\5 Ice is a better choice, I'll probably go change it sometime, but I still have them from way back.
Mobs get less resistant to bind than gravity aswell.

Edit:

If you'r a teamplayer and wanna merit towards that 3\5+ Phalanx II can be handy.
Same duration as haste, good amount of dmg-migration, it basicly makes you invincible for awhile in Salvage.
But it very much depends on what you do, and scholars can basicly give a phalanx just as strong with accession.

^ this. danm, I was about to post the same thing too =/

No one has mentioned anything of Earth Accuracy merits to help Slow2 land while stacking MND a bit harder. Is this purely an endgame Slow build or would it not be useful for shadow tank soloing?

I was debating on going Earth 5/5, Ice 5/5. Or Earth 5/5, Convert 5/5.

With so many new NMs out there that are flat out immune to Bind (And Paralyze, think VNMs) those Ice merits seem suited to old NMs, and with gear improvements are those merits really worth it on those things? (Sky for example.)

For solo (dot kiting) purposes start with:


Enfeebles 8/8
Elemental 4-8
Ice acc 5/5
Wind acc 5/5
and cap BIO III
then para II or slow II whichever you prefare.


For solo (RDM/NIN or RDM/BLU melee):

Enfeebles 8/8
Sword 8/8
Ice acc 5/5
Convert, wind or earth (your preference and gear)

Also if you have enhancing skill capped with gear doesn't hurt to throw some enhancing skill merits if your RDM hard coring or elemental skill for that matter. It all depends on your gear and your soloing strategy.

Edit: I'm a tarutaru so forgot this, but MP merits help as well, or 4HP/4MP for convert.

What I did was 4/5 Bio III, 4/5 Slow II, 1/5 Dia III, 1/5 Paralyze II.

If you're solo, Phalanx II is useless, even at cap (A tiny bit better than normal Phalanx and a waste of 5 merit slots), and if you're duo wth a NIN, Phalanx II is still useless (Since NIN isn't supposed to get hit, and Slow II being capped ensures it.)

4/5 Bio III is actually worse then Bio II, need to do all or nothing with it for it to be good really.

I think it's still technically "worse" at 5/5 also, as far as MP/damage ratio goes. But I like it for the initial spike damage which is far higher than Bio II anyway.

Bio II 72 MP 480 DMG 6.6 DMG per MP .15 MP per 1 DMG
Bio III 5/5 54 MP 400 DMG 7.4 DMG per MP .135 MP per 1 DMG
Bio III 4/5 54 MP 320 DMG 5.9 DMG per MP .168 MP per 1 DMG

Is best I could up with with how to figure it out.

If its for burst dmg, should do the same at 1/5 as 4/5 no?

What's the burst damage on bio3?!

noone really merits earth accuracy any more because, well... 5/5 slow 2 already nets you +10 accuracy for the spell and there's no other time you'll really need the earth accuracy merits.

edit: 5/5 convert or wind are normally preferred over earth, but I can see earth being a better choice over wind because grav. normally lands well and when it starts getting resisted there's nothing you can do any way.

Think he means initial, but top I've seen is 128.

If you do go for 5/5 Bio III, make sure you break the 211+ on Dark Magic Skill to get into the next tier of damage.

Sorry about the necro bump, been browsing these threads for a little while now trying to sort out my rdm builds.

Basically, I'm the point now where I really need to work out what I'm going to do for rdm specific merits. I've merited absolutely everything I possibly can aside from spell interruption rate and rdm specific. After reading around, I think I've decided on 5/5 convert/ice for group 1, and 5/5 slow II/bio III for group 2.

My question now though, is more of a gear question pertaining to slow II. According to wiki:

The slow effect from Slow II is calculated with the formula ([230] + [y * 10] + [floor(MND * 1.6)])/1024, and caps @ (350+[y*10])/1024, where y = number of merits in Slow II.
To reach the base cap of 350 a MND of 75 is required, regardless of merit level.

Is that correct? That slow II potency is capped out with only 75 total MND, and doesn't even depend on target MND at all? Just seems a little too good to be true is all.

75 dMND, you need 75 more mind than the mob you'r casting on.
And that's an excellent choice of merits.

Pretty sure it's dMND like Slow's formula, guess someone goofed on wiki.