Apocolypse Nigh Earring etc.Follow

My static is going to be doing AN very soonish (we just beat Bahamut V1 today). Any input on what earring is best from AN? I use WAR 95% of the time but also have BST at 75 and RNG at 73. My next job to 75 is undetermined but probably NIN. I'm not 100% sure I'm even gonna choose an earring at this point, I may wait. Just curious what you guys think.

Edit: Also, I was told by a guy whose endgame shell I might apply to that I should merit WAR in the following order:

DA > Gaxe > STR > Berserk

I was planning to do:

DA > Gaxe > Berserk > WC > Aggr > STR

I was planning on doing STR last since it's so expensive. Any input?

Edited, May 3rd 2009 1:35pm by DodiOnMidgard

STR merits are for the meriter who has nothing left to bother with. You're right, dont bother with them until everything else is out of the way.

First thing, best thing to merit first as it makes the most significant impact with least amount of merits is crit hits, in the others catergory. There are only 4 levels and it makes a big difference.

After that I'd go DA or Gaxe like you said, then berserk. Then do warrior's charge. If you do events you may want to put a merit in warriors charge immediately to have it for opening ws on bosses and things. Then tomahawk and stuff, and finally, after you are bored to death of merits and have nothing else to merit whatsoever, look to str.

5/5 DA/Berserk is the current going "supreme" build as far as Warrior merits are concerned, if I remember correctly.

As far as AN is concerned, your best bet would be to pick an earring for another job. Since you have Beastmaster, and have eluded to your plans for Ninja, I'd suggest going with the one that returns a percentage of MP per damage, as both jobs situationally do use MP, anyway (BST/WHM and NIN/DRK). Its kind of irritating, but a lot of end game rewards don't really benefit Warrior that greatly.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with 4/3/3, I have it myself right now.

Personally I think I am actually going to remove one aggressor merit before I go all out and do 5/5, just to see how accurate I am with handling off-kilter timers. Because basically; if you aren't spamming your berserk/agg macro then you lose the entire benefit of the extra time in the first place... Though that can be said for bergressor merits anyway.

I do love Berserk though, and I do love DA, so I have no problem doing it for the cause of being uber; and probably will when I get my merits more finalized. Still a ways off though.

I think the best advice I can give for this as war is: save your earring for other job, Ethereal isn't as good as our already available Assault earring, hollow should keep up more or less but the question is if you are ready to waste your choice for something that you can get already for 350k.

You should aim to 5DA/5Berserk since is mathematically the best option, however as Mojo said that set give you another timer to care about, it's more work but should be better once you get use to it, you know this... it's one of those things that require practice to get mastered(pro-tip put your ability timers in your Utsusemi/Third Eye macro).

Str as other have said should be the last thing to merit since is the most expensive with the smallest returns. In order of impact you can go GAxe=Berserk>DA>WC>Tomahawk>Str.

Sincerely.

Ken.

To be fair, I just stole that for Cor forums >.>; ability timers on ranged attack macro.

Before I started my WAR merits I ran though some % gain per merit point dependant on merit mobs, assuming GA.

Rough % increase in damage per merit type (individual gearing might change slightly):

GA: 1.55%

DA: 0.85%

ZERK: 0.52%

STR: 0.52% (0.41 during melee, 0.62 during KJ and assuming 50/50 parse)

AGG: 0.37% (assuming aggresor caps acc)

Warrior's Charge fully merited should add around 2% to your total damage, but this was figured assuming several things, here are some of them: my gear, 50% haste, swinging 85% of 5 minutes, double attack fully merited, only using WC during WS.

EDIT - messed up one calculation on WS

Edited, May 12th 2009 6:20pm by doctorugh

Bah... I was 5/5 Berserk/Aggressor, 8/8 Axe, and 8/8 Sword before the 2-handed update. There is no way that I am wiping out 21 merits just so I can follow the latest trend. I keep holding out hope that SE will give me more combat skill merits before I have to start deleting the ones I have, but my faith is starting to falter.

I've only gone 6/6 Gaxe merits. I have 8/8 h2h already and those are staying put because of how h2h works. Saving my last 6 for Katana. :3

I'll disagree with this slightly and just say it's "unknown", since the last thread about group 1 merits didn't account at all for the TP>damage factor or the advantage of having both abilities up at the same time. Some day (maybe after finals) I'll do a more thorough comparison including these two factors. Though it's true aggressor had a bit of ground to recover before it could compete.