Personally, I would wait until AFTER The Merge. I don't believe you will receive any additional benefits from staking it immediately and you will be better able see how it all shakes out. Keep your ether in your wallet and Hodl
I have a feeling that prices will "explode" once ETH 2.0 takes over mainnet. It might be wise to grow our ETH holdings now before it's too late. Of course, "what goes around, comes around". ETH will increase in price for a short period of time, followed by a massive dump due to whales cashing out all of the profits. Staking is like the lottery where you can either make gains or lose it all in an instant. It's much easier to do (and cost-efficient) than mining, but the risk of loss is always there. Not to mention, PoS will reduce decentralization on the ETH blockchain.
Whenever staking ETH is more profitable than staking other coins, will greatly depend on current stake rates and market price. As long as you don't spend more money that you can't afford to lose, you'll have nothing to worry about. Just my thoughts
