Merit Points and Me

I've had Paladin at 75 for well over a year now, and have only 50 Merit Points to show for it. I think Erock gets that many in two weeks. I don't really have time to go out with merit parties, so most of my points have come in small bits over time. Some of the Assaults have been really good for points, like Preemptive Strike and Troll Fugitives, but now that everyone's pretty much caught up in assault ranks, we're no longer spamming the old zones for AP, and instead are trying to do as many unique assaults as we can. Besieged is good for points as well, since you get so much ISP compared to normal exp parties on top of the exp/limit points, but it's too random to be at all reliable.

I've been on quite a few 60-90 minute parties after Dynamis, Limbus, or Salvage, usually when we've had much death and people need to recoup their buffers. Since I try to stay capped on experience points, it doesn't take long to get back to that and then get limit points on top of that. However, the need to replenish my exp buffer really cuts into my ability to build up the limit points. At least my weekly experience point scrolls help a lot with keeping me capped over level 75.

I have joined several pickup groups over the months, but those have been few and far between. It's nice having my anniversary ring for those occasions, to get double exp while using it. I see it as my "three free merit points" ring, and will be sad when I've exhausted its charges. My pickup parties don't seem like the ones other PLDs get. I'm always reading about other PLDs using nothing but PLD/NIN for merit parties, but I'm always told to sub WAR and actually tank. I've spent a lot of gil on gear to make me a decent PLD/NIN damage dealer, but since I'm tanking, I have to wear all of my +Enmity gear instead of my fancy damage gear. And even if I do get to go PLD/NIN with some friends, I end up spending half my time curing the others, so they laugh at my pathetic damage percentage. I'd like to see their numbers if they were casting Cure IIIs and IVs on other people all the time, instead of just madly swinging away at the mobs.

I really hate the style of most of the fighting in merit parties, but there aren't a lot of options. I'd love to go fight the greater birds and rams in Lufaise again some time, with an old school set up, but finding 5 other people happy to do that is another story. Hopefully I can get a couple parties in over the next few Saturdays. I'd love to finish off HP (5 merit points for my 7th upgrade) and work on one of the other categories.