Yes I think the Merits need to be higher than 9 now. I don't now how long it takes because I see so few run these days but with the change to the second mission it really needs to go up.
Maybe they are just waiting to see the average time now before they give it more Merits.
"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time"- Chesty Puller US Marine Corps
I just ran one last weekend and didn't really see a significant increase in the time. The only difference is you actually have to kill all on the way in and that only increases the time by about 5 minutes. Variation in the techniques used against Mary create much larger time differences than that.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
I figure they're just looking over the new average times.
Or rather, I really hope that's the case, as I didn't know about this change untill about 2-4 weeks ago.
And it's a TF I love to run pretty regularly, but hadn't since the change because, well, busy, but when I ran it and I saw this change I was all "OMG WTF!" can't even ATT her out! 
And it took over 40 mins!
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
I almost hate to post this here, because judging from the lack of post from red names here, it might not be noticed at all.
Since the change to Katie's TF (you have to lead her out in the second mission) could you please up the merit amount? Two different times with great teams it was taking around 40 mins or more to complete considering you can do a few other tfs for a lot more merits faster I think it should be increased somewhat from 9 merits.
Thanks.