BLM and Tarutaru General MeritsFollow

I personally would focus on mp over hp if you don't need the hp for another job (I have more hp merits because of ninja and samurai, but if blm is your main I'd stick with mp). The mp is going to be vastly more useful for you.

The stats thing may be a bit harder if you are worried about multiple jobs, but I'd say the main things to consider there are 1) which job will you be using more often, and 2) how easy is it to get that stat in other places (gear, food, atma, etc). It seems to me to be pretty easy to hit stat caps in Abyssea with atma, so I would focus on other merits for now, but again, that depends on which atmas you have and how much you'll be doing outside Abyssea. If you can't decide, then you can always half and half it, but I have no other suggestions on which one to pick, so maybe somebody else can give you better advice.

According to SE's roadmap for this year, the cap increase to 95 will be happening in August. You will want to stack as much ice potency as you can even afterwards, because Atma of the Beyond makes ice our best spell in Abyssea, not to mention the fact that ice is just an all-around good element due to fewer resistances and numerous weaknesses. As for fire vs thunder, all I can say is that we have a higher tier fire spell than we do for thunder currently, but other than that I don't know there are really benefits of one over the other. If you don't mind redistributing merits later, then feel free to go for fire. I personally just keep thunder potency for use outside of Abyssea, since I very rarely cast anything other than ice while inside.

As always, I don't claim my opinions to be in the majority, but I only give what I feel to be good advice. If somebody more knowledgeable than I wants to correct me, feel free.

I had mp merits and I actually re-did them and went to hp. A few reasons. We have enough mp in abyssea and I always want to make sure I can survive a big attack or two. Another reason is it helps on thief since we have low hp anyways. Like you I main blm and use thief as my second so I think HP would be your best.


You need to get the Ultima, Beyond and Minkin M. Atmas. You get huge int, mab, and blizzard att+ stats for these.

As far as your concern about potency merits. I would just stick with thunder and ice until you get all your merits done. (Does not take long anymore). Then once you get 20 "extra", go ahead and convert to fire if you wish. Then build merits again so you are ready for the thunder boost from atmas we may get and then convert back again.

Keep In mind I never cast a spell other than Blizzard. I am pushing about 5.5k on normal mobs and almost 3 on tough nms.

Its hard to justify the mp casting Aero V when I can just cast a tier 3 blizzard and do almost the same dmg for far less mp.


Tough call on INT vs Str merits. I would just say go int since your main is blm..

Good call on the Crit and Spell Interuption I think those are the best in that catagory.

The more I been working on my magian staffs for mage the more I want to start playing mainly thief/dnc/ninja...hell even RDM.

It is pretty painful going back to the normal world after Abyssea, MP wise. I am scared that in the future of level cap increases we may have to leave all these atmas behind.

Anyone else have this feeling?

Or maybe someone can convince me otherwise :))

Please for the love of Altana get some HP merits as a BLM taru. As a linkshell leader who has some great taru players I really really urge you to get some. And make sure you get your HP boosting abyssites too.

Sure ENM douse helps, as does Manawall. But do you really want to lose your MP that way all the time? And our taru thf just got all 6 abyssites to boost his stats and he finally hit 2k ish. Before that he was sitting at 1600 which is below almost anyone else... My hume whm can hit 2100-2300 depending on zone boosts and I don't have all the abyssites.

Taru are monster BLMs but they're fragile, especially when getting to grips with a job.

My INT at 90 BLM/RDM with capped INT merits is 101.