Merits For A Endgame RDM

What should I merit for my endgame RDM? I like to be a team player so most of my worries is buffing my party and just keeping them alive.

Convert

hmm what else should I have in group1? Ice or Wind?

Convert recast is a no brainer, but you'll probably want to revolve your magic accuracy around wind, ice and/or earth for silence, gravity, paralyze, and slow.

For group 2, it's up to you but I would strongly recommend Slow 2 as it has a very impressive effect, especially when you have a bard to combine elegy with it, and perhaps even a COR to Earth Shot enhance it.
Just don't bother with Phalanx 2, the potency relies on ridiculous amounts of enhancing skill, gear and merits, not even remotely worth it.

Dia and Bio 3 are nice and powerful, but frankly don't last long enough to warrant using over #2 unless it's on a particularly difficult mob.

I can't speak for all endgame RDMs, but simply going by observations, and friends that are RDMs.
Hope this helps you out.

Just make sure if there are more rdm's and they have a higher merited slow/para/whatever let them cast it, otherwise you'll just piss em off.

hmm okay so What I plan on doing with group2 would be

Dia3: 1/5
Slow2: 4/5
Para2: 5/5

and judging from my experience I dont run out of mp much So thinking about going with

Wind: 5/5
Ice: 5/5

Am I making a good decision?

You merit water and fire accuracy, 5/5 both!
For group 2 you do 5/5 Blind 2 and then just put one in everything else!

My advice isn't any different than Tool's

Id merit bio, considering your going 5/5 on ice and wind, thats more for solo

?

in other words, not solo

and yet you give him advice on how to merit a solo rdm, all right. I see what you did there, I think.

my rdm isnt team friendly
vert 5/5
ice 3/5 (bind)
wind 2/5 (grav)
bioIII 5/5 (for dot solo)
slowII 5/5 (for melee solo + ice spikes)

with that set would swap wind 5/5 to earth 5/5 to farther enhance the slow2 merits

No, I said that since he already chose to merit 5/5 ice and wind it would be more prudent to merit bio3 instead of dia3 in case he ever does decide to solo. Lets not even begin to talk about what you told him to merit.

p2 is less useful now because both rdm and sch can aoe p1. p2 still has use in salvage, but even then it's not really necessary. i would do 5 slow 4 para, but it's not really a big difference.

for category 1, wind wouldn't even be that great for solo, because generally a mob either won't grav, will build resistance to grav, or you won't have trouble sticking grav at all. ice for bind or para is nice. i would probably do convert and ice, but if you are really always sitting on tons of mp, i suppose you could do earth for slow 2.

exclamation points imply sarcasm. bio 3 only speeds up slow kills, and it's a waste of merits that could be in slow or para. and for solo i would still probably do ice and convert.

Well as I said before i'm not a rdm, so i'll defer to rdm's who know what their talking about.

Vert merits are arguably the best choice for G1, it's not so much about not running out of MP as it is being able to use more MP within x time frame. Really handy for any solo too.

G2 you can really do whatever you like, Para/Slow2 aren't much stronger than their t1 counterparts, and you can cap potency on them without having 5/5. Phalanx2 (though only with 3+ merits) is still good for say Salvage, Dia3 would only ever need 1 merit for zergs, and Bio 3 is handy for solos.

No.

5/5 Slow -> para

And Vert merits are a must.

5/5 Slow
4/5 Para
1/5 Dia in that case

And I'd do 5/5 convert and 5/5 Ice.
Bind is a lifesafer way more than gravity, and it helps your para and blizzard spells aswell.

This is for endgame only? No solo?

Based on that:

Category 1: Wind/Ice(one of them)Accuracy 5/5, Convert 5/5 (Wind for gravity or graviga /sch, Ice for bind or bindga /sch. Convert if this isn't your full time job. Then most likely you don't have the gear and level of comfort with mp management. Tbh though /sch @80 you will almost never run out of mp even if you're casting a billion spells a minute. For example I've converted twice total in the last 6 dyna runs. Both times was /drk for CSS. And that's in tank pty buffing non stop for 3+ hours a run.)

Category 2: Slow2 5/5, Dia3 5/5 (phalanx2 is virtually obsolete now. As 80 Rdm/Sch you now have a better spell...Phalanxga. If you ever even need to use it. Pld's can cast it on themselves now. Bio3 is mostly for solo. Very rarely are you fighting something(even rarer now) that minimizing the mobs dmg output is better than increasing your alliances speed of kill. Blind2=worthless. Para2 is really nice, but overall slow2 will be more effective. Slow2 5/5 with HQ earth will make the enemy hit at a crawls pace. Which will help you preserve more mps and increase your alliances survivability.)

Hope that helps.

edit, I mention /sch so much because as of lvl80 /sch is now hands down the absolute best sj RDM can have for endgame events or pty settings, and no other sj will dethrone it even at 99.

Even though everyone seems to be swearing by Convert merits I didn't go for any since I found I rarely had MP issues, if you need convert that's fine, maybe I don't use my MP as quickly as others, who knows really.

Convert 5/5 because it having vert up and available > anything else.

5/5 ice for para, bind and Blizzard.

wind imo is waste, gravity always sticks, unless mob has built resistance or is imune. Silence on anythign worthwhile is pointless most nm's are imune.

5/5 Convert
5/5 ice acc
slow2
bio3

Para2 is meh.

That's not the point of vert merits. Being able to vert faster = more verts in x time, giving you more MP to dump into whatever you're doing, whether it be debuffs or nukes. Most macc merits besides Ice have limited uses.

well my main job is blm its basically almost fully geared besides the +1 items and the new items I need and Rdm is just as good 3/5 morrigan all AF and AF2 and other items I wont mention but yeah. All I care about is Endgame Events, and I will have to look into /sch cause I am fairly new to this lvl80 thing, but as for merits I am now thinking about going

Convert: 5/5

Earth: 5/5 - I like this better for slow II cause Im more focused on keeping my members alive and I think bind or grav wont help me much.

hmm this might be what I want for group 2:

Dia III: 1/5 - Keeping it like this cause I dont mind Recasting it every now and then.

Slow II: 5/5

Para II: 4/5

Having Dia3 @ 5/5 isn't just about the increase in spell duration. It also increases how much dmg the spell does and most importantly each upgrade increases how weak the enemies defense becomes.

I'm not merited to be an event RDM but if I were I'd hands down go 5/5 on DIA3 In the end its entirely situational though and is up to you.

Looks fine to me, I'd just think Earth accuracy is less rewarding, if you have most RDM gear you should almost never have issues landing slow on something that doesn't require ES.

Got a source for that? All merits do is increase duration.

This isn't correct. You would want to put more into paralyze always because anything that can be slowed is easy to do with accuracy gear. The difference between potency on slow isn't as profound as it is with paralyze.

Thus you would want higher accuracy for paralyze since you will want to cast in full mind gear.

If you dont solo something like such would be "acceptable"
Dia III 1/5
Paralyze II 5/5
Slow II 4/5

If you DO solo you should get Bio III (unless the release Bio IV) meaning it will look more like:
Bio III 5/5
Dia III 1/5
Paralyze II 3/5
Slow II 1/5

(or go 2 and 2 for slow and paralyze)

Also for group 1 no matter what you do you should always always do this:
Convert5/5
Ice 5/5

If you are saying you hardly use convert, you aren't using your mp efficiently. In situations where it is unexpected what might happen and you need to reserve mp then you wont be riding your convert timer.

That is for 5% in the game though because at this point we know what all mobs do thanks to wiki. If you aren't close to riding your convert timer you should be throwing more nukes or cures.

Ice is one of those catch alls where if you are solo'er or party player it works great. Any solo'er will tell you how crucial bind is. You resort to gravity when an untimely bind wears too soon or resists. On most solos you use gravity a total of 0-3 times. If the mob can be gravitied all it requires is accuracy gear, when it wears off fast thats cause its building natural resistance. No amount of merits will change this.

Also Ice covers 2 other important spells. Blizzard and Paralyze. You want as much native accuracy as you can get on paralyze so you can pile on the mnd for potency. Also blizzard is one of our most accurate spells due to ice/aquilo's staff. Pushing it to be as close to 95% accuracy is important for not only resistant but nonresistant mobs. So you can pile on more int/mattk.

/end long post.

Edit Disclaimer: There are special circumstances where the above doesn't cover. For example AV kills you would want a Rdm with 5/5 Dia III. Also some salvage goers still prefer 4/5 or 5/5 phalanx II

what?

First of all you want to cast slow in full MND gear aswell.
You need 75 more MND than the mob you'r casting on to cap the slow effect.
You get 1% more slow from every new merit.
I'll rather have a very good slow than a unreliable paralyze that might occationally save your life, when slow makes it way easier for you to survive.
I dont even have para 2 unlocked, and I still cast para1 in full mnd gear without acc issues >_>

slow is ridiculously accurate unless the mob is specifically immune to it. then again, so is paralyze.

once you hit ~320 300-310 even on rdm most old content has np landing any spell unless the mob is specifically weak to a element or spell. ice accuracy for blizz3/4 occasional bind (which can be a life saver in cc in certain fights), putting them in earth is a waste.

dia3 is a waste at 1 merit because its a 30 second spell. you should have other stuff to do during a fight; instead of having it down most of the time and occasionally have a 5% better enfeeble you should just have dia2 up fulltime.

don't listen to suikan, there's no solid study on the rate of paralyze procs, but its not terribly significant. thats not to say paralyze two isn't a good spell, it is, its just not as well documented and most likely will produce on average less than one more proc per duration.