I don't usually go looking to merit people who have merited me because they're mostly users who already have enough merits and have a high ranking in this forum.
A user with the highest rank deserves the same amount of merits you would give a member who is ranked lower. His rank shouldn't be a deciding factor whether you will merit him or not. I have done the same thing many times before as well in the past. If given a choice to merit a user with a lower rank and one with a higher, I picked the one who is ranked lower. But I have changed that approach, and now I merit many Legendary accounts if I like their posts. And many times I do. The only factor I consider now is if the member I am going to merit participates in the merit distribution system or not.
What I look for when I have merits to give is users who are low ranking members and I personally have read posts of these users that I would wish to merit.
Nothing wrong with that unless you intentionally neglect and overlook the posts of higher ranked members.
That way I believe that I can help promote members who write good posts.
This statement can only be correct if you don't make distinctions between the users you wish to merit based on their rank.