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I’ve just checked it on the Merit Dashboard and @Quickseller (as of last Friday) had earned 552 non-airdropped Merits, while having sent 488 sMerits. The 552 earned merits would account for 276 sent sMerits out of the 488 sent sMerits. The remaining 212 sent sMerits could be part of the initial sMerit airdrop (or not):
Since Legendries could have received up to 400 sMerits depending on their activity (see
re:Initial sMerit for every rank?), those 212 sent sMerits may have come from the initial sMerit airdrop, from being a Merit Source, or a combination of both. Just by looking at the numbers I don’t think we can determine that he is a Merit Source yet.
You can assert that someone is a Merit Source of the total amount or sent sMerits > (Received floor(sMerits/2) + Max potential airdropped sMerit for the rank), but just before this value there is a grey area due to not knowing the exact amount of airdropped sMerits.
Many appointed Merit Sources tend to have small allowances to start-off with. They also are often people that earn merits (thus generating sMerits), so during the first months, the awarded sMerits from the Merit Source allocation may not exceed the generated/unspent sMerits, and thus remain undetected (as is the case of @Coolcryptovator I presume).
Edit: @JayJuanGee, apparently the max is 400 for Legendries:
While specific formula is not given, theymos wrote that the initial sMerit is not solely determined by rank, but determined by rank and activity points obtained in the last year.
The exact formula was:
yearActivity = activity in the last ~year, max 378
freeMerit = the merit (not sMerit) you started with
modifier =
0.1 if member
0.2 if full member
0.25 if sr member
0.35 if hero
0.4 if legendary
return (yearActivity/378) * modifier * freeMerit
So the most you could get is if you were a Legendary who maxed out your activity points in the last year, in which case you would get 1 * 0.4 * 1000 =
400 sMerit.
Edit 2:
Then again:
I got 200 sMerit airdropped, even though it should have been 400 based on theymos' formula.
Yep, 200 was the max for legendaries. AFAICT the formula is lacking a division by 2 since values for the other ranks are double of the actual amounts as well.
That would mean that the 212 before referenced sMerits > 200 sMerits, placing @Quickseller as a Merit Source.