Aeonic WS Merit Point Recommendations?

Hey,
A while ago, I completed the Deeds of Heroism requirement to get +10 extra upgrades to the Weaponskill merit category. I wanted to ask the audience for their input:

Which Weaponskills do you think are most worth the 5/5 upgrade?

I'm asking from the perspective of: "It's worth it to 5/5 an Aeonic WS because you may actually use it without the Aeonic weapon." (If you didn't know, Aeonic weapons already give the full 5/5 benefit).

Off the top of my head, I think Shijin Spiral is a good choice to 5/5 because as Monk, you can find yourself wearing different H2Hs but you'll still use Shijin to complete some skillchains.

Thoughts on other Weapon skills that might fit this description?

Edit: I'm NOT looking for answers like "Well, that depends on what job you play". Yes, you can 5/5 the WS you need for the fight you're about to do...but the point is to discuss is which Aeonic Weaponskills deserve the 5/5 upgrade for the situation described above.

TLDR: Which Aeonic Weaopon skills deserve a 5/5 upgrade? (This means you are most likely to use the WS without the Aeonic Weapon equipped, usually for it's skillchain properties). If it's a good weaponskill in it's own right, that is a good call-out, but you could also make the Aeonic weapon for the full 5/5 effect.

Shoha for the same reason, it's used in SCs a lot outside using aeonic GKT.

Largely depends on your job useage as its either used for its sc prop, or its a respectable ws in its own right

Shijin, stardiver, last stand, upheaval, shun, resolution fall into the latter camp imo

What Nariont said, truly depends mainly on what you play most.

I put a point into everything for accessibility (except Shijin since i'll only ever be using H2H with godhands equipped... i find nowadays that other H2H arnt worth it),
then 5/5'd Requiescat (for my BLU), Entropy and Tachi: Shoha since they're good WS's....

Then later realized I never play DRK or SAM, and that Requiescat sucks regardless of how many points it has, so I 5/5'd Stardiver (since you use it even Without the Aeonic weapon), Last Stand (same logic, mostly w/ Armageddon), and Resolution (for RUN)

At the end of the day, I'd recommend 5/5ing atleast 3 of your 'most useful' or favorite ones, then putting a single point into ones worth having access to. If you're happy to skip on the trash ones, you can 5/5 a 4th

I agree with Dexprozius.

The one's I've found universally useful to 5/5 are basically the same:
Resolution (Used by WAR and DRK)
Stardiver (Used by SAM and WAR)

Last Stand is good, although I've started moving towards other WS like Detonation instead.
Shoha.

I've done the same and 1/5'd everything for availability.

I'm currently 5/5 in Reso and Stardiver and 1/5 in everything else.

Resolution for Great Sword is kind of a no brainer. Great Sword has less Weapon Skills available to it than other weapons, since it has no mythic WS equivalent. It's also strong. 5/5

Tachi: Shoha being as strong as possible is pretty nice. It completely rounds out Samurai too, giving it all 4 Tier 2 SC properties on Great Katana. 5/5 (Course you gotta have SAM as one of your top shelf job picks)

After those it's dealer's choice. Personally I like 5/5 in Upheaval, Stardiver, and Ruinator (I'm a fool OK)... Due to limited stock though, I stick to Upheaval and Stardiver.

Currently my spread is like 5/5 Resolution, 5/5 Upheaval, 3/5 Stardiver, 1/5 Requiescat, and 1/5 Shoha. I think about getting rid of Requiescat merits all the time, but idk sometimes making Fragmentation off of it with Req into Savage Blade is great.


Also I think if you're a Ninja main, Blade: Shun 5/5 is a great choice. Though I'm pretty sure NIN mainly rotates between Naegling, the Aeonic, and Kannagi so... maybe not that pivotal.

You forgot drg in the stardiver row unless you were speaking specifically about your own jobs.

Also, I'd throw Entropy on the list for those rare scythe drks not using Foenaria or Anguta and upheaval for Laphria wars and niche uses on drk or run.

I currently have
5/5 Blade: Shun
5/5 Resolution
5/5 Requiescat
5/5 Shijin Spiral
5/5 Last Stand

I recently removed Stardiver because on SAM if I'm using Polearm it's Shining One, so that means Impulse Drive.
Shijin Spiral is used mostly for the plague effect not damage, so 1/5 would be more than enough.

Actually I've been lazy but I think I could just keep:
5/5 Resolution
5/5 Requiescat
5/5 Last Stand
and go 1/5 on everything else just for the sake of it lol?

I can tell you back in the days I tested a lot Realmrazer 5/5 on GEO and WHM melee and was very disappointed, both with spreadsheet tests and in-game.

Stardriver is useful even with Shining One for the crit evasion down effect. Worth a 1/5 for sure.

Not saying it's not useful, but I was offering the perspective of a SAM, not a DRG.
When I use Polearm instead of GKT on SAM it's tipically for the mobs in Sheol C.
Can't think of any situation where I used polearm on SAM over the last few years that's not Sheol C.
If I just want to do damage I'm gonna use GKTs after all.
So yeah, after keeping Stardiver 5/5 and never using it for the longest time, I recently removed it for 5/5 Last Stand when I levelled COR recently.
Jm2c of course.

I think the only real mistake you can make is 5/5 at the expense of at least 1/5 of a WS that you need for SC properties.

Lets riot until SE unlocks all merits....

Yes... ALL merits. Why do we have to choose in 2024 WS or Job abilities? it wont break the game

In fact let us keep expanding the maximum pool infinitely, so people can make their cap 999 and do more than 2 shinryus

Just my 2 cents

I was speaking as a Sam. I use it on Xevioso when doing RP, so it gets a 1/5 for the unlock.

If you're going War on Xevioso for a clear you'd probably want 5/5 on it.

Why the logic behind 5/5 Requiescat (which has Gravitation/Scission properties, without Aeonic Sword)?

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/File:Aden%27s_Renkei_Chart.jpg

Also FYI: At 960 deeds, you get a total of 25 possible upgrades, which allows you to 1/5 all 14 Aeonic Weaponskills and have 11 upgrades remaining. So, you can still bring 3 remaining Aeonic weaponskills to 5/5, 5/5 and 4/5, respectively.

Exactly, but if you have an Aeonic for a pocket job (like MNK or SAM if you dont take them too seriously) you can spare yourself that 1 point and go 5/5 on 3 WS's, plus 1/5 unlocked on the rest of them for oddball skillchain/utility purposes

Like I mentioned earlier, I agree that Requiescat merits are kind of a waste... it's seldom useful and the boost in MND utilization won't break the bank. The weaponskill will do poor damage regardless

The logic behind my 5/5 Requiescat at the time, but it really doesn't make much more sense nowadays I guess, is that I was using it to break the shield of some monsters which can be broke only by non aspected damage and at the time I had no other means to do that other than Requiescat.
So even if the damage boost was very small, it was useful. Plus at the time I really had nothing else of use to me from the merit WSs.

But yeah I agree it doens't really make much sense today given my options.

requi is bad dmg but you read a lot requi -> expi is still BLUs best skillchain option, even beating savage -> expi according to some tests posted.
If you're a tizona BLU and this is your go to skillchain I'd say it's worth it.

I would also add in upheaval as an option, because it's still a good skillchain step when using ukon. That of course does require you to be using ukon.

but for arguments sake, I 'll go down the list

Shijin spiral- I would agree with your reasoning

Exenterator- Even less useful with the presence on the prime dagger, it's a fairly weak weapon skill in general and not the best option. Fun to play around with, and visually quite nice, but not the first choice

Requiescat- personally, I very infrequently use this, but I don't main blu to have that perspective. but it wouldn't be my top choice, that being said, I have it 5/5 because I love the look of it, and don't yet have Ukon to make upheaval a priority.

Resolution- this has potential as mentioned, but also a little less so with prime weapons and fimbutvert being so strong.

Ruinator- being the only axe WS with a native distortion property should give this some priority for skill chaining. this being said, I don't typically play axe jobs to really mess around with numbers.

Entropy- it lacks a unique property, isn't particularly powerful and dark knights generally favor torcleaver. Scythe isn't an ideal weapon for warrior for slashing, and I don't play bst to know if it's useful there.

Stardiver- as mentioned, does have a lot of potential and can be used on other jobs outside of drg. I'd keep this in the running for a 5/5

Blade shun- I don't pretend to play ninja to know, but that being said, I really couldn't tell you what the best options for ninja even are. I have to assume the aeonic isn't the "best" katana out there. though this also probably falls in a similar place with the dagger, with the prime also having a fusion property and most of the primes are far superior.

Tachi shoha- this would be another one to be on the top of the list because the aeonic gkatana, while solid, is outclassed by other options and it still has powerful skillchain properties

Realmrazer - it's essentially a slightly stronger/weaker hexastrike. it also has a fusion property, don't see too many white mages busting this out in content, or geos, I feel like there are simply better options, black hale being the prime example.

Shattersoul- generally I wouldn't put additional points into this, especially since I have a laevateinn, but it's worth putting a point into for the magic defence down otherwise.

Apex arrow- it has the sole fragmentation property for archery, so that has value, though I generally don't see people chaining ranged weaponskills. I'm also not a ranger to truly know

Last stand- has a lot of potential for damage, and it's a nice powerful closer, but leaden is typically the go to ws for guns. I'm also not at all familiar with the prime ws to see how that compares, also has a fusion property.

so all of that to say my top picks would be
stardiver
shijin
shoha

and conditionals would be
upheavel (with ukon)
Resolution (if you're not of drk and don't have helheim)

Man, I wish wilddragonchase website wasn't gone... I absolutely loved that SC chart.

They really need to expand this category more. But here is my current list:

Shijin - used often for plague effect.
Shoha - used twice in 5 step light and has an attack bonus
Resolution - Even with Helheim it's useful if there is a WS wall
Stardiver - Arguably the best WS in the category in raw form

I also try to keep Upheaval, Ruinator, Entropy and Requiescat unlocked.

Really depends on your job priority and the degree of flexibility you want, my focus tends to revolve entirely around WAR.

Resolution, Upheaval(If I am not using chango I still want the bonus), Stardiver 5/5

Exenterator, Requiescat, Ruinator, Entropy, Shattersoul 1/1

Shijin 5/5 (I play pup and don't always use Godhands in some situations so the bonus is beneficial when using Su5).

Last Stand is the go-to physical ranged WS used by COR (not counting the Prime gun), and certainly worth having at 5/5 if you plan on using Armageddon in a ranged strategy. Leaden Salute is a magic WS and has very different use cases than Last Stand does.

If you don’t have Armageddon and rely on Fomalhaut, this is obviously a less important WS to put merits into.

Why is Stardriver the best in this category?

useful on shining one, great dmg.

It's STR mod, so easy to gear for.

Its damage increases with TP across all hits, meaning TP bonus influences it decently.

It applies Critical Hit Evasion down, so it influences White Damage and any critical hit WS.

Due to being multi-hit, it is accurate, so it's reliable to land.

Its secondary property is Transfixion, meaning even WAR and SAM can use it as an opener for a 3 step Darkness SC.

Stardiver -> Sonic Thrust -> Impulse Drive(or Stardiver again) Makes Distortion into Darkness. Pretty dang good at killing Locus Colibris.

While this is true for connecting at least one hit for skillchain, it's generally not useful for landing all hits. First hit of the WS gets 100 accuracy boost, so you can lower your accuracy in gear for something like Torcleaver, but for Stardiver you need to keep it higher to keep 95% hit rate on all hits.

If you're a war or sam. Drg wear any endgame gear and hit just fine :-p

Ya know, now that I think about it, none of the merited WS are single hit, are they? Even SHoha is at least 2.

Yeah they were built in an era where WSD didn't exist in its current form so high WSC and more hits = more consistent damage