It seems like I will ATN (All Time Newbie)

And It doesn't matter, except the time between posts, that 360 seconds makes me angry)
You already have enough merit to become Jr. member. Now you just need the activity

So what about others who were super close to moving to the next rank like I was? Now i must wait for 250 more merit. I feel like it should have been distributed based on activity. Most all of my posts have been quality as my account is closely related to another service.
if that's the case, then your move up after hero will be much quicker.. as you are posting quality shit...
well that is yet to be seen as people will only give merit to quality posts now... so you may have to think about what you post even more... then you see we will have a quality forum as everyone will be thinking about posts and adding value.