Group 1 Merits

Now that I'm 8/8 sword and 8/8 magic, I need to finish job-specific merits.

As for group 1, I was originally considering 5/5 potency and 5/5 m.acc. But then, there are so many times I end up face down, thinking "if only CA was up, I would've made it." So, I'm also considering 5/5 CA recast, 3/5 potency, 2/5 m.acc.

How much of a difference does physical potency actually make? What distribution did you do and why? Mind that I'm an all-purpose BLU, not just DD, so nuking/tanking (i.e. hate keeping) are important to me as well.

Well I'm doing 5/5 potency and macc. I kinda want to do CA recast but not being able to do magic means I already am behind on trying to land magic spells especially while in DD gear. That being said CA recast is only 4 sec per merit... pretty sad IMO. If you were to do that though I'd almost say you'd have to do max or close to max enchainmnet

Enchainment appears to be a mixed blessing. When /NIN, I almost always do SB Disseverment, and Disseverment's TP effect is accuracy, not damage... so 50 more TP isn't really going to help any when I expect the spell to land anyway. I've also heard that you only get the TP Bonus if you had 100%+ to begin with. Overall, probably not worth it.

It will do more dmg... like I normally do savage blade disservement and try to time it so I do an attack round right after for skillchain... I notice a definite difference in dmg just from 11ish to 22ish tp. I also have a friend that swears by it. Says 10% doesn't sound like much but when most you the time your throwing spells out with next to no tp 10% makes a much bigger difference then when your saying doing it with full tp

It does more damage because the modifiers are doubled when casting a spell under Chain Affinity. That's why CA Frenetic Rip and Hysteric Barrage will do more damage even at 0%.

Note I said there is a definite difference in dmg from 11 tp to 22 tp... not with or without CA.

Most likely coincidence. It explicitly says that Disseverment is accuracy-modded by TP.

Or the fact I all out gear for dex and str so ever little extra acc helps. Really its a 5 hit spell chances are you aren't at capped acc on it unless you wear a bit of acc gear over modd gear

I would like to say, I'm pretty sure Enchainment helps below 100% tp just because of my experience cannonballing stuff with 0 TP. Unfortunately I don't have any good reliable data to back it up.

I personally did 5/5 potency and macc, as an all-round blu I think macc is probably the most important one you can do for landing those debuffs, and I really can't think of a time where I've ever thought that CA being up that little bit sooner would have saved my life. 5 merits for 20 seconds really isn't that great imo, but then, I've never changed my merits so I can't give you an opinion from the other perspective.

You're not asking about Group 2, but I did 5 convergence, 4 assimilation and 1 diffusion. <3 Convergence, mainly I use it for magic hammer to get some very tidy MP return in things like nyzul isle. I very very rarely use Diffusion, and often wonder if I'd use it more if I had more merits in it, but Convergence and Assimilation are just too good. And don't forget that if you have merits in Assimilation you can use those extra points to set STR stat spells, which can help to eliminate the need for enchainment.