Refresh etiquette....please read <_>Follow

ok this i mainly aimed at non-red mages but even reds might wanna red this and http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/jobs.html?fjob=2&mid=1083715073930369133&num=260 .

ok first off DO NOT BEG . you will have a hard time finding anything more annoying to a red mage then this. unless you have a bad red mage or one who has asked to be reminded we will know when your refresh wears off BEFORE you do. depending on you job type you may not even be in the refresh cycle.

second. know the refresh cycle and where you fall in to it. now a lot of higher/more experinced red mages no longer use a "Cycle" but they all have a priority list that amounts to the same thing. if not already stated by the red make a point of asking where you fall in the list.

third. refresh costs 40 mana and returns 120 mana. if you are not at least 100 mana points under your maxed you do not need it yet (palis , darks and other classes with less then 200 mana are a exception). it also takes 18 seconds to cast please remember that if you just saw the red cast then you know its gonna be a few till they can cast again.

forth. relise just because you have a mana bar does not mean you get refresh. the normal cycle/priority list goes Self > Palidin > Main Healers > other healers > Puller (if puller is using spells to pull). if your not in this list refresh is a plus but not a right. even then other then the first 3 you should not always expect to have refresh going.

fifth. remember unless there are more then one red mage in a PT (a rarity at higher lvls). a red mage has many things to do. several of which most likey are higher priority then your crack. even more so if you not near running out. in most cases the basic 3 debuffs (paralyze , slow , gravity) take priority over refresh unless the healer is really low on mana. and even then why is the puller pulling then?? Palidins are a much higher priority then anyone but the redmage themselves. White Mages(healers) are important and should be refreshed "IF" they are using thier mana properly. white mages that nuke or cast cure III when cure II is needed will finding themselves having a chat with the red or even the PT leader. same applies to all mana users.

sixth. Refresh is not a excuse to ignore normal mana conservation rules. just because you have refresh does not mean you can or should waste mana. again remember refresh only gives you a extra 120 mana at the cost of 40 mana from the red. in fact its better to continue your casting as if you do not have refresh on. if you waste mana do not be surpised when the red stops casting it on you.

seventh. refresh is NOT a right its a priviledge. you went 40+ lvls without it you can survive without it. the only people that can be said to "NEED" refresh are the red mage , palidin and who evers main healer. anyone else does not need it.

eighth. Refresh is not a red mages main job. if you think it is be prepared to have either bad red mages or NO red mages in your PT. true refresh is important and valuable but its the enfeebles that are a priority. without those that little extra mana you have will be wasted trying to compensate for the lack of enfeebles.

nineth. Black Mages do not need refresh. of all the jobs your the last in the list unless you doing a BCNM or other like battle that is a pure black mage nuke fest. you have the highest mana regen when sitting then anyone else. and your the one job that can not afford to blow all you mana in one shot since that means you will get aggro and die. if you get refresh then yippie. but you do not need it. more black mages die because they took refresh as a excuse to go all out on the nukes then for any other reason at upper lvls.

tenth. Darks do not need refresh unless they are casting the absorb spells. ask just about any red mage thats got refresh and you will find they have stories of Darks going nuke crazy everytime they get refresh. all this leads to is Darks not getting refresh as your nukes are some of the most mana inefficent nukes around. if as a red mage i wanted to turn my mana into nukes i would of nuked myself or refreshed the black. it would have been much more mana efficent.

eleventh. Mana Pullers. if you are a puller that uses mana to pull use your mana sparingly. you pretty low on the totem pole. only above black mages and darks. the less mana you use to pull the more likely you will have mana. with all the jobs a red mage has to do refreshing you is bottom so its in alls best interest for you to conserve.

follow these rules and you will have happy red mages. don't follow them and you will find red mages even harder to find. its at the refresh lvls that most red mages quit.

the deal with refresh is that because it has such a long recast time (18 seconds) we red mages usually have to stand around casting it and we never get to rest. you can't accurately predict when the next monster pulled is gonna die so chances are people's refreshes will start wearing off at the end of the fight and the red mage gets stuck standing there casting refresh instead of resting. to top it off we have pretty low MP to begin with.

yes, that's why rdm gets convert and nobody else, but if you can't accurately predict when the next pulled monster will die, you most certainly can't predict when you'll run low on mp and need to use convert again. red mage can be a pretty complicated job, so that's why you may have gotten a RDM that bugged out on you when you asked for refresh...

as for me... i take it as a an insult to my skills when someone asks me for refresh. i feel as though i have missed keeping my responsibility and that i am at fault for doing so. I usually keep refresh going on myself, all other mages (including black mages who at my level have to cast spells that use more than 300mp, and refresh only gives them 120 so you can't put them as a low or non-priority), and the paladin. always, nobody ever goes without refresh for more than a second or so unless i was in the middle of casting something else when their's ran out. and if there is a dark knight using stun or absorb spells i'll refresh them every other or every 3 refresh cycles or so, just whenever they start getting low.

the red mages' job of refreshing is basically sacrificing about 40mp to get 120, for themselves and for all other mages. you're basically giving them 120mp every 120seconds that goes by, so the 40mp it takes to cast is a good sacrifice. worth refreshing black mages who don't just nuke... they also help cure, and they can also help with enfeeblements.

lmao. wish i had your luck then. may be a server difference but according to reds i know and personal experience it, 7 times out of 10 ,comes down to the "If you do not stop bugging me i am gonna find another PT" before they stop.

i was in a PT last week with a White Mage that bugged me everytime she noticed she was not refreshed. even when she was at full mana not casting. and every time i hit my "Do not bug me" macro, yes i have it macroed thats how big a issue it is on my server. she would then haste,buff heal everyone rapidly til she was out of mana just to spite me. even the PT leader got on her case at least once in PT chat and who knows how many time in tells but it was late at night and no other whites on.

for the record she was never without refresh more then a few seconds all nite unless she was at full or near mana when the refresh wore off. and there was no mana related downtime except when she purposely blew all her mana. and yes i know it was on purpose since i , one of the nonmelees, was one of the first she hasted and buffed. and she only did it after i got on her case about not needing it at the time.

and the main reason i get annoyed with people who ask is i purposely tell everyone at the begining what the cycle is and to not bug me unless they are the palidin. btw palidins bugging me i have no issues with since alot of the time there mana usage is hard to predict. so i do miss a refresh every now and then on them. and remember i said do not ask unless you got a bad red mage or someone who wants to be reminded.

as for black mages. i have only ever met one who did not go on a nuke spree the moment they got refresh. and the only one who did not joked about it because his main was a red. and those blacks casting 300+ mana spells are casting acient(sp) magic that should only be used for MBs. been alot of discussions about that in both the red and black forums and the overwelming opion is unless being used for MBs acient magic is a waste of mana. fun to cast, pretty effects and nice bragging rights since they are hard to get but almost useless in a PT

as for darks i like refreshing them "IF" they cast the absorb spells. for the mana those are some of the most effective spells in the game. oddly enuff i have a easier time convinceing darks to cast absorbs then i have getting the blacks to manage thier mana properly.

Just a note, and understanding your blm tend to go nuke happy, in my ppt we have a sam as a kind of lynchpin, he does a renkei with 2 people, both myself (a thief) and the pld. Both distortion, and the blm bursts on both. Not using ancient, as noted by lady, they are ineffecient, if in a proper area there are MUCH better damage/mana spells. but the blm is actually the player most often we have to wait for with mana, I tend to pull even when she is low if the groups tp is set correctly and I believe that with rest and refresh she will have the mana for the second burst, or worse case, skipping the pld in the renkei cycle, enough for a second renkei with me.

The way it works with my group is that the sam and I start the batle with a renkei on the pld to lock hate, then followed by the pld if he has tp, if not it I 99% of the time have well over 100 tp when my trick timer wears off to do another, and most often the die after the second renkei. During that time between debuffs and the heals/bursts from the blm they tend to need it. But I have also found that there is a great number of people that either can't or are incapable of playing, even at higher levels. Meaning they have poor attitudes, or have no clue about their job and are their because they were grouped when there was no other choice. good rdm are a godsend, I know soloing I have found how much debuffs really do help. bards are good for their buffs, rdm for their debuffs.

Good post, nice to see someone trying to help out the groups understand your jobs position.

I agree but i disagree.

BLM does need refresh..not right away but when it comes to chain 4 and we are getting low on MP your going to want us to have ample Mana for that Chain 5.

That is the only time i will ask a RDM for refresh if we just hit Chain 4 and i'm low on Mana. I'll first pop a juice and if i'm still lacking once the juice runs out then i'm going to ask for refresh cause it's going to take Lots o mana from me to get that chain 5.

Other then that i agree totally. I dont expect Refresh at all as a blm it's very nice to have it but it's not a necessity. But it does help both me and the PT out alot if you throw me a refresh after chain 4 ^^

If you don't party with black mages that often I'll forgive you for not putting them on your refresh list, but you will notice that at levels 50+, a black mage does about 50% of the damage to enemies throughout a battle except for skillchains. Not refreshing them is just going to make them very angry and when they have to spend 15k per stack of Hobgoblin Chocolates on top of a Dark Staff you're going to have a black mage that may have nukes resisted due to not having int bonuses from a pies.

Personally if a Red Mage doesn't have me high on their priority list, they're gone. I know my role in the party, I do more damage than anyone else that I party with at level 68, and if you want to gimp exp in a party because you can't admit that the Black Mage needs refresh, then I'd rather not have you in my group.

I'm lucky in regards that my girlfriend parties with me and is a White Mage, so we build a party around the two of us. If you don't like how the party is set up or how exp is rolling in because you won't refresh people, then you can go sit LFG for a couple hours while we grab another person and keep up our chain 5.

I don't mean this to be offensive to anyone, but you seriously need to reconsider how you act all high and mighty about who you will and will not refresh. To me, this post sounds exactly like a lower level White Mage saying that they don't need up to date spells/gear because there aren't many of them around so people just have to deal with what is available. Please don't make this a trend for high level Red Mages as well.

Personally this whole attitude irritates the hell out of me. Red Mage is a tough job. Its a job that changes so much of the course of your lifespan. I really appreciate the challenge in that. What I don't appreciate is the attitude on so many RDMs re: refresh.

Let me state this very clearly: Your most important job post-41 is refresh, not enfeebles, not second rate nukes, and sure as hell not melee. All that other stuff helps absolutely, but its not why you're there. Before 41, nobody ever said, 'Get a RDM' unless you were desperate and there was no WHM or SMN available. Why is that? Did enfeebles suddenly become more valuable? No. Sure, the higher RDM enfeebling stats help, and absolutely the RDM should be the one casting Slow/Para/Gravity/etc (though not the Elemental/Dark debuffs, as I constantly have to argue about.) But know that keeping refresh on the Pally and WHM is a billion times more important than gravity.

Also, the priority order thing is like everything else, if you play the game by a book, you're not playing it right. RDM/PLD should always have refresh on. Everyone else, its a matter of situation. At my level, I very rarely need refresh. But if we're fighting something like beetles, where I have to do 50% of the damage cause the defense is so high, then if you want chains, I need refresh. In that same situation, the DRKs MP becomes more important, cause we need the ABS spells. If you have a good NIN tank, you may not need to refresh anyone. If you have a bad NIN tank, you may need to refresh the WHM a lot for all the raises.

I've pt'd with plenty of good RDMs, who never needed a refresh reminder, but I've also pt'd with plenty of bad ones who thought the PLDs mp was less important than the BLMs, not that either one was getting much of a refresh. Personally, I never ask for refresh, because the benefits aren't worth trying to convince some pigheaded RDM that their f'n enthunder isn't more important than refresh, and cause at my level, I can manage my own MP most times without the help. But the attitude on this post is precisely why I prefer a BRD, who you don't need to explain to that their job is as a support character, not a DD or whatever it is so many RDMs seem to think they are.

I agree with the fact that once I got Refresh I was constantly checking my class title, expecting it to change from Red Mage to Refresh Mage. I've had people yell at me for enfeebling, saying my MP could be better used to Refresh them. I tell them my cycle usually, but I do ask for a message if I miss someone, but if someone starts doing "REFRESH PLEASE!!!" I just tell them to cut it out, or I say "PROVOKE! PROVOKE!" to rude people who ask it, giving them an example on how it feels to be yelled at to do something.
I don't really mind it unless I'm tired or the person is really just being a ****. I'm a rather nice person until someone starts being rude for no given reason.

The reason so many people ask so often to have Refresh cast on them is that most Red Mages (at least up until the 50s) just don't seem to do it very well. They actually seem irritated by the fact that - GASP! - it's their f'ing job to do it. This is based on personal experience; I recently leveled my White Mage up to 51 (main is Bard at 59), and noticed that maybe 1 out of every 4 Red Mages actually managed to keep Refresh on the Paladin, the Black Mage, and myself; most of them were very conscientious about keeping it on themselves, but there were a rare few that stuck out in my mind as actually doing a good job. If you're one of the ones that does, that's fabulous. Just bear in mind that the reason people ask is because so many RDMs in their 40s are just really, really bad at it. A Paladin I know shared this conversation with me:

RDM: I think I'm just going to start charging for Refresh.
PLD: Ok. I think I'm just going to start charging for Provoke.

And that about sums up my problem with most Red Mages. If there weren't so many of them who were so resentful and lazy about Refresh, there wouldn't be so many people harping about needing it.

What I've noticed is that it seems people now a days are too busy telling everyone how to do THEIR jobs and neglecting the attention of their own jobs.


I, as a PLD, don't bug the hell out of anyone unless the utterly fudge up...like the THF that took TOO long to SATA off of me and almost got the WHM killed trying to keep the pseudo-tank alive (wish it was a DRG, but it wasn't.)

If everyone would just play their jobs correctly and allow others to play their jobs correctly, such threads wouldn't exist.

Like stated above, we lasted 40+ levels without Refresh...get a grip and continue. Hell, there isn't MUCH I can say since I've yet to join an EXP party with a RDM casting refresh (with the exception of my LS buddy Akaryu doing quests/missions), I would never bug the hell out of the RDM unless we go through a whole BATTLE without it. Whine is just spam to me.

Just like how I get annoyed when I'm told to Provoke.


Quick Provoke Etiquette:

PROVOKE HAS A 30 SECOND REFRESH. Nuff said. I spam Provoke as a PLD. I literally watch it count down on my menu and cast it the second it's avaiable.

If I'm healing my self, shield bashing, using sentinel, spamming provoke, AND had a SATA off of me early in the fight...and the mob is on you, then it's not ME not doing my job right, is it?

Judge yourself before you judge others.

I'm really sorry. I will not ask for refresh again if the red mage is doing a good job. That is good advice on asking where i fall in the prority list. I had one redmage that asked for status updates. I figured it was helpful.




If you refresh your paladin, and then your blackmage, the paladin can do a couple extra cures so the blackmage could throw a couple more nukes in. If you have a good tank (and blm) I'd let the BLM go a little nuke crazy.

The only thing that absolutely scares me is that a paladin expecting a refresh that doesn't come could lead to other people dying. I still have my juice on me, just tell me when refresh isn't coming for a bit and i will use that instead.

Wouldn't the refresh of the juice and the RDM's refresh stack? I know that Ballade and Juice stacks, but I'm not sure if RDM refresh stacks with juice.



And really quick: No, the RDM's job ISN'T to only refresh. I don't know where you took your survey, or maybe it's diff. on your server, but RDMs are usefull from lv10-75 like any other job for parties. You say RDMs are selfish if they complain about Refresh...your comment alone makes your hypocriticle, no offence, being VERY selfish yourself.

You completly deminished the RDM's potency of enfeebling. I would like to see you dance around without Dispel, Gravity, and tons of other highly useful spells.

To say a RDM is only useful past lv4?(yeah, I don't know what level they get Refresh either lol) is not only arrogant, but highly ignorant. People like YOU are what makes RDMs quit their jobs.

And I'm sorry if I sound hostile. :-P lol

heh. I don't deny that they have other abilities--but that's just not what people want them for. Really a WHMs job *is* just Cure II--if I am low on mana that's all I cast, and low on mana or not, Cure II/I is 90% of what I cast anyway. If I stop casting Haste or Regen--people could live with that (though they wouldn't like it :p). Really Curing is the main deal. A WHM without curing is esentially useless and if for some reason I thought I had 'better things to do' or dropped the ball and forgot to cure, people would have every right to kick me from the party in disgust.

Similarly--a RDM has other spells. Sure thing. And if they have lots of excess mana that isn't needed for refresh, then cast them--go for it. But a RDM without refresh is as much of a let down as a WHM without cure. Seriously--I've played through 65 lvls of whm and before lvl 41 I *never* held up completing a group because I wanted a RDM. They are just not that great without Refresh. They are minor enfeeblers and a BLM or WHM can replace them--alternatively you'd do better with another class that could do some damage. RMD is a weak class UNTIL they get refresh--which is an *awesome* spell and makes a RDM awesome and worth waiting for.

Another good metaphor is a paladin who has 'more important' things to do than provoke, thinking it's a *privlage* to the party to have a palidin that provokes and everyone should just back off and recognize that--getting all stuffy when people suggest that maybe that's his job. Everyone has varied abilities, but there are a few that the party has every right to expect and people should recognize as the *most important* things they do--these abilities are the reason people want and love you, without which they would rather have someone else. My beef here is that the RDM who wrote this is taking the stance that she has 'lots of other important things to do'. Not really. No more than I have more important things to do than cure or a paladin has better things to do than provoke. It's just a matter of being deluded about what the best thing you do is.