Sir IronWill's Wisdom: Anyone Wanna Merit?

Sir Iron Will's Wisdomis here to bring you everything you ever wanted to know about tanking, and probably some things you never wanted to know and now wish to blot out of your memory, whether you like it or not, Izman is here with the do's and don'ts of tanking, in general, solo or end game. This week Iz tells you what and what not to merit for PLD.

Hello my Paladin people! Today I wanted to talk about merits for Paladin. What these new abilities are and what they can do.

Okay lets with the group one merits for Paladin.

All right the first choice you have is Shield Bash recast merits. This knocks off 10 seconds of Shield Bash every time you put merits in it. Most people merit this if they are going for Aegis so they can do awesome Shield Bash damage every 5 minutes or 4 minutes and 10 seconds with merits. This is a great option if you're aiming for Aegis some day or even if you just like to be on the safe side of eating a magic spell.

Holy Circle... If you merited this or was thinking about it congratulations you're dumb.
Please for the love of Altana don't merit this.

Sentinel Recast is awesome. Most Paladins max this one out. Sentinel is a 5 minute job ability that decreases 90% physical damage you take and generates a ton of emnity as well as making everything else you do while Sentinel is up to generate more emnity than usual! This is one of the best job abilities Paladins get I highly recommend meriting this one.

Cover is next and this one is pretty good but I went a different path. Cover is a great choice. Cover is another great job ability that I will have to admit I don't use as much as I should. It's a 3 minute recast job ability that last 15 to 30 seconds and when you merit it you can add 4 seconds to each tier of merits you put in to it. With AF hat and Relic body Cover becomes a really cool and fun ability to use that can and will save players HP and lives.

Rampart, a 5 min recast ability that last 30 seconds that used to be total trash with sentinel a couple years ago is now also pretty cool and great to have. Each tier of merits also knocks off 10 seconds of the recast just like Sentinel. Rampart is a AoE magic Stoneskin that give defense to the party members in range. Very awesome for -GA spells. With Valor head you get another 15 seconds of this sweetness.

Okay that finishes up the group one merits that you can think about and decide what you think is best for you and your play style. So now on to group two merits that enhance the group one abilties and also give you new whole new abilites to use.

The first choice we have here is Fealty. Fealty is a 20 minute recast ability that give you 100% resist to enfeebling magic effects, status effects of tp moves from mobs, and even reduces dammage from some nasty moves like Meteor! This ability last a whole minute and can be merited down to a 10 minute recast. I wish I could go in to more detail about this ability but I'm slacking on Paladin merits still lol.

Ahhh Chivalry the Paladins convert. This is also a 20 minute ability that can be merited down to 10 minutes. It instantly converts current TP to MP using this formula that I totally did not steal from the Wiki. MP recovered = TP * (0.5 + 0.015 * MND)... Okay I stole it so sue me. Please put at least one merit in this and use it as a emergency only ability like you would any 2 hour.

All righty Iron Will the one no one merits lol. Iron Will is a job trait like undead killer. It is all ways active when you use Rampart. It adds a 19% spell interruption rate down when you use Rampart. I don't know why people see this as a bad thing. Now that you can put 5 tiers of merits in to the group two category that makes it pretty good I think. Lets so some math class 19 * 5 = what? No not 11 Ring you old man. 95% AoE spell interruption rate down.

Pretty awesome if you ask me seeing as I'm all ways nin subbed. I have this one maxed all the way giving me the name Iron Will Izman the ladies man... I added the ladies part lol. Don't merit it unless you plan on maxing it out.

The last thing you can put merits in to to custamize your job. Guardian is another job trait that is active when you use Sentinel. It reduces emnity loss by 19% for each tier of merits you put into this. That means when your getting smacked in the face you lose less emnity than you normally would. And since you can put 5 merits in it and it works the same as Iron Will, that means that 95% emnity lose with full merits for 30 seconds make it keep you at the hate cap long enough
to stack another Provoke or Flash on a mob to make sure you don't lose hate.

Well that's it for job specific merits for Paladin but lets talk about the other merits you can spend to customize your character.

HP/MP. This is something you can't have some one say you're wrong since it effects all your jobs. I personally went half and half cause I'm lazy and really could not decide which I wanted more of. Other jobs should be factored in when meriting this of course.

Attributes, well all I can say is spend the merits on STR INT or MND for whatever your main job class may be. If its Paladin still merit STR it will help with your lolDD build.

Combat skills shield shield shield skill max it! Sword is a choice too if you plan on making a DD build.

Skip magic skills for the last thing you ever merit.

The other category my favorite. Emnity increase max it and do the same to critical hit rate unless you never plan on leveling a melee job and are only serous about tanking. If that's the case don't let me decide for you.

Okay well this is my view and advice on how I have merited Paladin but its not perfect and it is not for everyone. But remember not everyone plays this job the same so the combinations can vary from person to person and its hard to go wrong unless you maxed out Holy Circle so remember this is my personal view on how I merited this job.