Churning activitiy is way more tiring than merits!
Damn, bro you got the hard part already done. Judging by the ridiculously low number of members who've ranked up to Legendary from scratch, you should consider yourself fortunate.
Sorry, I am not English mother tongue,so I am maybe losing some nuisance in the term "fortune", but I disagree here: I don't consider my merits the result of fortune, but hard work and commitment to the forum. Only this, merits are earned. Maybe you can gets some out of luck (memes, funny comments at the right time, posting news first that start a good thread. But this is fortunate coincidence, you cannot get hundreds of them like this.
The merit system was designed to make it hard to rank up, and it looks like it's doing a damn good job. But Jesus, it might be making it too hard to rank up, especially for members who make good, but not excellent, posts. I'm still thinking more merit sources might be necessary, but I have no way to know how enthusiastic the current ones are about distributing merits.
This is why I started
my very own merit source application thread. I think some users are willing to commit more in the forum, and I am amongst them.