A-Merits at Lvl 21

In my quest to hit the cap again, I have a toon level locked at 21 who is doing tips and getting A-Merits, like you do, and so far I am not rolling anything because I am not sure it is worth the risk to roll.

2 merits for sure will get me a low level stealth proc. I can always use one of those or if I don't need one, I can sell it for a nice chunk of change.

OR

I could get 10 random rolls and hope I get lucky. My question is: Are there enough valuable rares below 20 to make it worth the risk?

Currently my thinking is no, but I could be persuaded by a compelling argument. So what think you?

In my humble opinion, you should never roll an A-Merit. Spend them directly on the high-Inf uniques instead for best bang for the buck. LotG, Stealth proccs, Miracle, Regenerative Flesh, -KB, etc etc. I'm not sure which of these are expansive at what levels, but I'm sure you can find something with a bit of looking.

If you're just going to buy with a-merits, wouldn't you be better off getting your a-merits on a level 50?

I disagree with heffroncm, but I don't have any proof or statistics backing me up. I've made a LOT on my 14 AM rolls in the low 30's, including several obliterations, at least one 200-M LoTG sale, a couple of stealths that sold for 100M each,etc. I can't tell you how much of that is "freshly merged market", and I can't prove that I have done better than cherrypicking seven level 25 LoTGs.

70 recipes is a whole lot of recipes. I know, I'm deep.

Well, I actually have a 50 that is also gathering A-Merits and he as been rolling so far. He's gotten a few few good things and over the course of about 2 weeks he'd made about 500 million and that is without any LotG, Miracle or Stealth procs (except for 3 Time and Space which are essentially valueless). He's rolled about 5 times but I think maybe I have been rolling too low at 30 -35 and maybe I sholuld roll at 34-39 instead.

This really is just because i can do it. My lvl 50's are pretty much built the way I want 'em. About the only thing left is to build an exemping build.
I am working up another toon to lock at 32. I am definitely thinking rolling on her.

Going to 22 might be better. It's only one level and Stealth at 22 is just as good as at 21. I will take a look and see if it looks like a better deal.

While I throw suppport behind only reserving A-Merit Direct purchases for level 50 characters, I admit to *still* rolling A-Merits on my level 50s rather than buying outright. At the present, I have always made enough money through the A-Merit random rolls to recoup the 20 million + 1 hour of playtime spent earning story arc merits. In fact, my very first A-Merit roll: 1 Trap of the Hunter, 1 Teleport Stealth, and 3 (yes, 3) Luck of the Gambler: 7.5%.

My anecdotal bliss would suggest rolling like there is no tomorrow with level-locked characters at 20, 30, and 35 though.

Misaligned: If you're willing to do 10 rolls in the 35-39 range and document them, I'll buy your "losers" for 10 million each.

I've had pretty good luck with my rolls, I've gotten a LotG recharge, 2 miracles, a numina's and a kinetic combat triple, and lots of lesser stuff in like the 20mil range. I've also gotten a mako's proc in like all of them(which is pretty wierd, I think I missed one or two but I made up for it by getting multiple in some rolls).

Ok, did a roll on a A-Merit at 22

Ghost Widows Embrace - Acc/hold/Rech - 22
Touch of death - Dam/EndRech - 25
Sovereign Right - Acc/Dam/End - 25
Eradication Quad - 22
Pounding Slugfest - Chance to disorient -22

Not Bad, but nothing to get too excited about. I got one more to roll tomorrow and then I guess I will decide whether to buy outright or roll based on the 15 rolls I took.

Celerity: Stealth is currently going for about 150 million at almost any level below 25 so even if the price dropped to 100 million I would need to do pretty well on tomorrow's rolls to equal or top that.

why are you level locking yourself when there is a slider bar to set the levels?

... what Minotaur said. I've repeatedly had this argument, back when I was "buying merits", and a lot of people have to try it for themselves before they believe.

Spending A-merits on direct purchases on 50's and using a 33-locked char to roll here. Direct purchases are reliable at least, 20 recipes through rolls on the 33 (30-34 range) have yielded two recipes worthwhile for any of the exemplaring builds I'm looking for (yes, that's plural). For the randoms; 6 snipe recipes of those 20, stuff like Stupefy: Chance for Knockback or the sandman chance for self heal. Neat stuff, but not something I'll be using. Recipe weights are probably WAI but with my luck, that doesn't matter much.

If you're not specifically looking to fit out characters with rolls, I'd expect randoms to do better for you than what I'm seeing though. For the intent of playing the market mini-game they're good. If you want to finish builds, well... In my experience it's a total waste to roll randomly opposed to buying stuff. Then again, I prefer to get the guaranteed recipe I can use instead of things that get vendored since using the market would be a waste of my in-game time.

Ok. I am ready for my "D'ouh!" hat.

Until I read Fulmens response I thought BUYING a recipe worked just like rolls as far as level and slider. In other words I didn't realize that sliding down to 30 would actually generate a level 30 recipe!

So I can use my lvl 50 to generate the level specific stuff I need for my exemping builds and Level locked 32 to generate random rolls for markety goodness and let my level 22 guy do whatever.

(Even though he is pretty effective for a 22 level. 4 sets of Entropic chaos. a miracle proc and performance shifter proc and he is mowing down the opposition at his level.)

As always, I learn something new on the Marketing forum.