Merits?

Not sure exactly what to merit, since a lot has changed now. I was looking at beast affinity, but with the cap being 90, I figured it probably wasn't worth putting more than 1 merit into (so that I could just hit the cap 100% of the time based on reading that your call-beast pet is usually 0-2 levels under you).

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/guide/development/census/10/3.html

Here's what the average merit distribution was.

My BST is only 60 but the way I plan to do it is:

5/5 Reward Recast
5/5 Call Beast

5/5 Beast Affinity
5/5 Beast Healer

Feral Howl sounds good but I hear the hit rate on it is so lame it's not worth it. Maybe put 1/5 into that if you want an O-crap button. The AoE thing would be neat I guess, but I wouldn't go past 1/5 on that either. Sure Call Beast is capped but I see nothing better to put it into. 5/5 Call Beast is probably a must nowadays. When fighting, Sic timer is never the problem with Kaoz (taru who does solo bst vids) but getting TP is. You used to be able to us Sic before they had 100% TP (Sic, not Ready) and they would use a TP move as soon as they had TP. Ready requires you have the TP to use the move. Of course even if you used Sic like this you would reuse it before your pet has TP...just a loop. Killer effects would be nice but that's just more O'crap. Hope that helps. I have not tested any of this but as I see it, this is how it looks best to me.

If jug pets were not the main source for BSTs, I might suggest doing Killer Effect or Tame recast because BST might have a reason to charm things, but it's mainly just rolling with NN or DY

I for one like Killer Instinct for certain scenarios. It is extremely situational, but you do have to remember, in addition to giving you and your party a killer effect, it also enhances your damage towards the affected mob by 15%. In addition to that, you gain further damage increase from the effect on the af3 body, as well as some -DT.

I'm not saying you'll use it often, but it does have it's uses. After the update, it may be a good idea to put merits into Affinity, but for the time being, capping it just feels like a waste.

Don't follow that. I didn't look at the average for BST, but judging by what it is like with the jobs I do play, that is probably all kinds of wrong.