Summoner Merits

[Marcicus]

I guess if BRD merits can be put here, SMN merits can too.

Right now I'm thinking about doing the following:

Avatar Attack5/5
Avatar Magic Attack 5/5
Meteor Strike 5/5(huge range, Ballista purposes >.>)
Geocrush 3/5
Thunderstorm 2/5

Does this sound like a viable merit setup? I figure with SMN AF2 hands + AF1 legs I should be ok on accuracy, but with the new avatar coming out soon it may throw a monkey wrench in my merit plans.

[Reapz]

My SMN merits are currently:

Physical Acc 4/5
Physical Atk 5/5
Magic Atk 1/5

Wind Blade 5/5
Heavenly Strike 5/5

Waiting on the new Avatar to decide about changes, if its nothing superior then I will change all Acc merits into Magic Atk for some super duper merit BPs. So to answer your question, wait on the new Avatar to decide!

[Blackbrock]

this might get me flamed but I would suggest you skip the magic attack and go with 5/5 avatar accuracy.
My summoner cat1 merits are 5 phys.acc, 5 phys.atk.
This was an easy choice for me because I did them when the best magic attacks smn had were tier4 spells. But these merits have served me very well and imo smn still doesn't have much potential for magic damage dealing. When you consider the relative mp costs of 70 bps and merit bps I believe 70 bps will come out far ahead. Remember to get the most out of your merit bp you need to tp with your avatar costing you between 2 and 8 mp per tick that entire time, then you use a bp that costs 30 more mp than the 70s. To get the most out of your 70 bp you pick the appropriate avatar, let'r rip and release it.
Now for the part that will get me flamed. In a situation where magic damage is needed blm, sch and even rdm will most likely outclass a smn on anything but perhaps kirin.
On a job that is mostly relegated these days to solo and low man with friends, your best bet will be to pump up your 70 pacts as much as you can rather than spend more mp on less powerful nukes.

[Ryuushin]

I have 5 in phys. atk and 5 in phys. acc. I've decided the acc isn't that great and am going to remove those and put into magic atk.

As for category 2.. well it doesn't really matter what you put into but 5 into a specific BP helps immensely.

[jimbobsonofgod]

I guess if BRD merits can be put here, SMN merits can too.

Right now I'm thinking about doing the following:

Avatar Attack5/5
Avatar Magic Attack 5/5
Meteor Strike 5/5(huge range, Ballista purposes >.>)
Geocrush 3/5
Thunderstorm 2/5

I'd say

att / Macc is fine / if you are content with ballista then 5/5 Meteor is fine.
I would either wait for the update and then chose what other 5 to do Or I would dump 5 into Wind blade Tidal Wave Or Geocrush.

But that's just me

[nitsuj]

Physical Attack 5/5
Magic Attack 5/5

Get your acc from gear, if you can.

Category II, I'm doing Ramuh 5/5, and the rest level 1 just so I can have fun and enjoy whichever avatar I feel like using. But I could swap that around if I feel the need some day (when I'm over the "shiny new attacks")

[Malacite]

It really depends on what you use for your SMN as well doesn't it?

If you do sky a lot, you'll want 5/5 Wind Blade for Kirin for example.

As for Group 1, Magic Attack and Accuracy have become far more viable since the latest tweaks to the 75 pacts. Which ones you get/max out depends on your end game activities as a SMN however.

[SargentRemora]

5/5 Wind Blade rapes Kirin. I went 1 into every other for completion sake, 5/5 Phyical attack, 4/5 Magic Attack, 1/5 Magic Acc. Remember you can get your Acc from Summoning skill over cap (merits/gear), once you have Summoner's Bracers (even more so with +1s), missing is a thing of the past.

[Acturus]

Physical Attack 5/5
Magic Attack 5/5

Get your acc from gear, if you can.

Category II, I'm doing Ramuh 5/5, and the rest level 1 just so I can have fun and enjoy whichever avatar I feel like using. But I could swap that around if I feel the need some day (when I'm over the "shiny new attacks")

This is a pretty good answer.

Accuracy from gear works fine enough on most things, and from Smn. Skill when considering only BPs.

As far as the Tier IIs go, Titan's BP has a stun effect, but other than that, you might want to do as the BLMs do, and focus on Thunder and/or Ice, especially if you're in a LS that likes to SC/MB.

Just remember that you get linear increases by meriting the Tier IIs and by meriting Avatar magical attack, so if you go that route, it really benefits you to go balls to the wall.

[Orta]

Anyone who pick pet ATK over pet ACC is not a verteran melee.
ACC will NEVER be enough when fighting against EM+ mobs, parse it and you will know.

[frodnonnag]

depends on your gear, but i'm doing 5 attack 5 magic attack with attack and accuracy on my redingote. i'd suggest the same. if you aren't using redingote for smn, i'd do 5 acc 5 atk.

for group 2s, i'm doing 5 wind blade, 5 heavenly strike. best to pick one light, one dark pact, cap both. windblade is best because garuda is generally the most versatile, and heavenly strike because of distortion/darkness SCs.

"just" relic hands and af legs is not enough accuracy. you should be using summoning torque if you didn't merit summoning magic, evoker's ring and ACP11 acc ring, evokers horn or marduk tiara with karura for garuda. and relic for feet. also astute cape and summoning earring. there's also attack or accuracy earrings from ACP7.

my garuda pact landing setup is karura hachigane, redingote with acc/atk, smn hand+1, evk legs+1, smn feet+1, sac torque, smn earring, +5 atk ruby earring, evk ring, astute cape, bahamut staff. my predator claws land with 320 magic skill.

[Arthars]

i did magic acc 5, magic att 5

but i also liked acc 5, magic acc 5

it all depends what you like

for grp 2: i did 5/5 heavenly strike for general purpose, and 5/5 wind blade for kirin

5/5 wind blade + gears + 5 magic acc + 5 mag att really pwn kirin hard XD

after saying all, im not a smn fan and i just merit them cos im all caps and nothing else to burn

my smn goes to event 1/100 times, and that 1 time, i use my wife's smn

so yea, my own smn is junk

[Plexiglas]

i think 5 magic acc/physical acc are the way to go in tier 1.

tier 2, i think wind blade is the go-to bp for most.
i also did 5/5 grand fall only because the animation is awesome.

i think tier 2 bps are truly dependant on what you do in the game, but i do suggest going 5/5 in 2 of them and not trying to open more than 2 because you'll find yourself always leaning toward the one that has the most merits.

[Silenka]

You definitely want to go with 5 attk 5 m.attk if you're using redingote with pet MAB and the 75 BPs. You get more than enough acc from gear (if you're well geared) and skill merits (assuming you do those). Even if you don't do smn magic merits, gear acc should be enough. There's plenty of that, while gear attk is quite lacking.

[Plow]

Anyone who pick pet ATK over pet ACC is not a verteran melee.
ACC will NEVER be enough when fighting against EM+ mobs, parse it and you will know.

I wouldn't put it quite that way, but i pretty much agree with the idea here.

My philosophy is to make the decision on what you use the most, and either go macc+matt or acc+att.

Or acc+macc if you really want. Building even a +60 smn skill set is no joke, and I think very few people would consider anything but acc on a melee job with <60 acc in gear/merits for multi-hits.

It's not *as* dramatic for smn because of the difference of level correction, but shit my nin manages to miss a hit on Jin more often than not even on T shit and I ws in a ton of acc. Even without level correction, I'd never try a multi-hit ws on the real hnm's without a metric shitton of acc.

[DAKPluto]

Don't bother with a Tier 2 unless you are gonna cap. Less than 5 merits the difference is very noticable and useless.

[Silenka]

Don't bother with a Tier 2 unless you are gonna cap. Less than 5 merits the difference is very noticable and useless.

Disagree, there are a lot of high level NMs that have particular elemental weaknesses that the 75 BPs are good against. I enjoy having all 6 (though will be taking one up to 5, haven't decided which yet). Plus, geocrush even at level 1 is pretty useful, being hateless damage + stun. So I wouldn't say don't bother, I would say be mindful of them though. You do eventually wanna cap at least one if not 2 of them (1x5,5 or 5 and 5). I really wouldn't purport them to be useless at level 1 though, cause they aren't.

[Spira]

I did

3/5 phys acc
2/5 magic acc
5/5 elemental spirits

5/5 thunderstorm
1/5 the rest

I'd say physical accuracy isn't a real issue anymore if you're able to merit SMN skill and get some gear to back it up. I'm tempted to redo those to cap magic accuracy. Magic accuracy helps a lot with merit BPs, which when merited well do a lot better than Nether Blast, but also happen to have lower accuracy... hence it bridges the gap.

However, if you see yourself as only using P.Claws or Spinning Dive, then you'd want to maximize merits on whatever you use most, so likely 5/5 phys.acc and atk is wiser. It really depends on your playstyle. but if you use both equally, then stick to magic acc because the results from merits there are more substantial.

phys/magic attack merits are never really worth the effort because they really add very little per BP, which is when you're really looking at them being used, rather than thru melee hits. nonetheless, if you want to see results, focus on them 5/5, otherwise its almost the same as not putting points into them.

don't put points into elemental spirits unless you use spirits.

Group 2 really depends on how you play.
Extra merits past 1 only add TP bonus, but that means more damage straight up without having the avatar to melee..
I'd recommend focusing on 1 or 2, preferably of opposing light/dark elements so that you can use them to MB, for which they MB very well.
There's really no need to unlock all 6 because unless the mob is specifically resistant to that certain element, you're likely to get good accuracy/dmg using a 5/5 unrelated element merit BP than the element of the mobs weakness 1/5.
However, I unlocked all 6 for completion sake and stuck to 5/5 Thunderstorm. I find it works fine because for everything that usually resists Thunder elemental damage, magic damage is not much of a priority anyway, so I use physical BPs for those.

[ryanjh13]

My breakdown:

4/5 Phys. Acc.
3/5 Phys. Att.
3/5 M. Att.

Was building up smn slowly as I had other jobs that got more use. Then the 75 pacts were released and the pause there gave me time to think about it. I'm an Accuracy fiend, so I'd probably drop the Phys. Att. in favor of Magic. Attack and the 5th accuracy if I did swap around.

Your other jobs will also affect how you merit smn. It's tough to merit all of the magic categories when you have blm sitting at 75.

[Silenka]

I did

3/5 phys acc
2/5 magic acc
5/5 elemental spirits

Man, if spirits casted more often and didn't suck so much mp I might have done that. I can see getting macc merits for spirits, but I think their perp cost would still be pretty high, some of the slots you can get -perp in you end up having to fight between smn skill (which lowers their timer) and -perp. I love using light spirit for big alliance fights when the whms run out of mp and shit starts going bad, but outside of that rare occasion or just fucking around, I never see a use for them. I guess if they were popping off AM left and right I might be more inclined to use them, but as it stands there's no way to get them to use tierIV/AM over, say, casting choke over and over again lol. =(