Merits?

Kind of new to SMN, and I am curious what is the normal for Group 1. I am assuming Group 2 is more on preference of your Summons.

Personal preference on Group 1
Avatar Physical Attack 5/5
Avatar Magical Attack 5/5

Group2
Heavenly Strike 5/5
Wind Blade 5/5

Also, I don't do any end of game stuff.

group 1 is also variable depending on how you play smn. personally i have 5 mab and 5 mag acc. but in abyssea i primarily use magic bp's. pre abyssea i had 5 physical acc and attack.

To answer what most do, and not what you should do, I pulled this for you:

5/5 MA and PA

5/5 Grand Fall 1/5 other 5

Really depends what avatar you use most, I would say do 5/5 what you use most and 1/5 rest

5/5 Magic attack 5/5 summoning cast time for group 1, physical attack merits do very close to nothing at all and Acc is only worth considering if you're noticing bad accuracy on evasive new content.

For group 2 pick 2 BPs you like/Use their avatars most often and max them out. They all have the same base damage and only thing you should worry about is being against a mob that specifically resists that element, BPs at 1/5 lose out on nearly 800 damage right off the bat.

5/5 Physical Acc
5/5 Magical Atk
---
3/5 Geocrush
3/5 Wind Blade
1/5 in the rest.

My tier 2 merits are from VW days (or something) so in future I'll just cap the two Blood Pacts that I use the most.

5/5 Thunderstorm is pretty much a must nowadays Shock Squall and Thunderstorm combo is too good.

5/5 Magical Atk is really the biggest thing. You will see it in almost every setup. For the other Tier 1, most choose between Phys. Acc. and Phys. Atk. because Magical Pacts are already extremely accurate with capped SMN magic. While Phys. Atk. seems more attractive, there is a latent "placebo effect" from the days when Pred Claws and other pacts missed a fair bit, and there is a part of me that doesn't let go of 5/5 Phys. Acc. because I don't think it can HURT.

For Tier 2, these days Ramuh shines so much in all non-Abyssea activities that 5/5 Thunderstorm and Shock Squall is an undeniably killer combination. I pretty much only use him for offensive pacts now.

After spending some time doing legion I'm half tempted to do 5/5 Magic Attack and 5/5 Magical Accuracy.

Just a matter of weighing the usefulness of 15 Physical Accuracy for BP's against 15 Magical Accuracy for BP's & Wards (namely Diamond Storm and Shock Squall).

The 15 Accuracy is probably most useful in Voidwatch or Dynamis, the 15 Magical Accuracy is more useful for legion... and probably legion only at this point.

How's your accuracy with storm/squall on the T2/T3 legion mobs Mahoro?

How come noone appears to have noticed they added summoning cast time merits instead of spirit perp? <_< can get a "free" -25% cast time on summons which is beneficial for pretty much everything especially solo.

I imagine because most Summoner's are accustomed to soloing with the original cast time and so the slight gain of summoning an avatar faster wouldn't outweigh the more notable gain of physical acc/atk or magical acc/atk.

Well you've done legion and I haven't yet, is hitrate/magic hitrate that bad to consider putting acc/macc merits in? If all a player uses SMN for is lower end content it's not worth putting those merits in since you'll already be hitting the accuracy/magic hitrate cap.

5/5 magic attack is a given, but physical attack merits have been proven to be unnoticable, bordering on a total waste of points in group 1 compared to something else.

Wasn't sure if there is a cap on the TP bonus to meritable BPs.
like if i was 5/5 and for whatever reason avatar had 200tp already. does it cap or does it exceed the 300tp limit players have

Caps at 300%.

My personal testing
Answers your TP cap question near the bottom, also confirms 5/5 gives 160tp bonus, not 200.

Yes, definitely caps at 300%

So, for Delve and Wildskeeper, which merits are the best?

Group 1 - MAB and MAcc
Group 2 - ??? and ???

Sorry about the necro

I've not done Delve or Wildskeeper yet, but Group2's were typically personal preference.

I have Heavenly Strike 5/5 and the others 1/5 each, but that's basically leftovers from Abyssea time.

I want to say I heard people saying Grand Fall was good on some mobs. But not sure..