[Cavalier]

Originally posted by TheGrandMom
No less than chain 5's.

yup ^^ It was nice too, cause I just got my Coronet, and needed to ding to 56. :D

[kuu]

It's sad that people are lock into a mind set of what a pt member must do...

Refresh as well as everything else has it's up's and downs.

Why refresh someone who is on full mp? etc.

And bumrush theory is a tactic NAs seems to not know.

a non specialized PT, with heavy melee can weck havoc. It's not even hard, as many times you don't skillchain or anything. Just use your strongest WS at 100%.

Just gotta pick the right monster at right level range.

I like raptors, only takes a few good sidewinders, rampage(whatever skill) to beat it down to nothiness. It's best at low IT-VT range, when even your weakest warrior will ramapge for 700 and sidewinders for 1.2k

Merit points xp seems to work even better like that, as those who know, you're walking around 80% of the time rather then camping anyway, so it's all about damage.

[ZQM]

Pre-74, WAR/NIN with a White Mage (One with a full enfebling magic set along with +MND) doing Paralyze and Slow won't require much curing. Expecially on slow mobs like Manticores. Refresh not really needed then. :x

[Lynsy]

I voted yes, but like a lot of other people said, it really depends.
With a PLD, I wouldn't PT without some form of refresh after 50.
On my WHM in 75 PT with 4xDD nd another mage (BLM, SMN) would be fine by me, depending on how much I trusted the other members of the PT and the location (Arua Statues or Ulegrand Range, Sure. Tomb or Weapons chain PT, hell no)
Generally speaking though, if I want to XP my WHM and there is no refresher available, I go duo XP with a MNK and do only marginally less XP/hr than a normal Statues PT.

[ZQM]

Originally posted by Lynsy
On my WHM in 75 PT with 4xDD nd another mage (BLM, SMN) would be fine by me, depending on how much I trusted the other members of the PT and the location (Arua Statues or Ulegrand Range, Sure. Tomb or Weapons chain PT, hell no).

5 melee 1 WHM PT on weapons works real good. :x

[Tan'o]

Originally posted by kuu
Hahaha that's a good one trying to get a smn for dispel. Not only is bloodpact 1 min (depends on penence set), you have to have fenrir also. It's so not worth it when you can make up damage lost from another bp.

As for living without dispel, or refresh. It's possible depending on style, setup, and monster.

Monsters like Raptors have very little buffs, so they're not really needed to dispel.

Refresh doesn't really do that much depending on how mana dependent a pt is. Have a smn, whm, blm combo and maybe a heavy hitting, low maintence melee like nin, thf, rng. And you're most likely then not sitting on mp for the big one.

And there are situations where you take power, over all. Heavy front end, light support. If you have a melee set that can hit a monters harder then it can put up a defense, refresh or dispel is minor. Just have 4-5 melee beat down, curaga, sit, curaga.

End game merit point xp pt is sometimes like that too. Nothing fancy, just bumrush, curaga, continue.

Not to quible, but if you read the OP, she says

Honest question.

Lv41+, would you exp without refresh? If you were invited to an exp party that did not have a RDM or BRD, would you stay with it?

Also, for the sake of argument, let's say the tank is a PLD or WAR, not a NIN.

I said you could argue for SMN, but not worth it because of multiple buffs.

The OP also said that we're considering a PLD or WAR tank. I know like you said on the right mob, a NIN tank and melee's /NIN, you really won't need a Refresh, but using a PLD and WAR who need to be Cured, it's fairly unrealistic, and with some set-up's, almost impossible to chain.

[Jei]

Originally posted by kuu
It's sad that people are lock into a mind set of what a pt member must do...

Refresh as well as everything else has it's up's and downs.

Why refresh someone who is on full mp? etc.

Is refreshing what a Rdm must do? If you said that's a mind locking thoughts im sorry but it IS what a Rdm MUST do. We play Rdm expecting to do it, and we invite Rdm expecting them to do so. When creating a PT we choose the jobs we invite because of course we want them to do what they're supposed to do. You invite a ranger you want them to shoot arrows/bullets and do damage, invite a PLD you want him to hold hate and tank don't you? Now how is that mind set a "sad" thing? You must be really happy when your Paladin plays nuker with banish/holy and doesn't tank.

On the refresh note, do you know how much easier for us Rdm to keep our refresh cycle going on even if our target has full MP? For Drk and Brd, those are special case that Rdm can add and drop them out of the cycle upon situation. But for other mages/paladins it never hurts to keep the refresh cycle going on and it hardly adds t othe downtime. Keeping the cycle going when MPs are full mean more work for *us* but at the comfort of the entire PT so your point is?

[RuneGrey]

Hmmm. I think that one thing that a lot of people miss is that while Refresh is a big thing, it isn't THE only thing that Bard and Red Mage bring to a party with them. I personally think you could give refresh to another job (say, SMN with a single target Refresh bloodpact, or some other wierd combination) and you wouldn't really be making up for the lack of a Bard or Red Mage in your party.

Both jobs bring a rich and diverse array of abilities to a fight that you wouldn't have otherwise. Of course, their ability to use Refresh is potent, and its no doubt a big part of their draw, but if all your Red Mage or Bard does is refresh your party, then you're losing out on a large amount of available utility. Dispel and Finale are big parts of that as well, but things like Gravity, Haste, Carnage Elegy, (heck, the entire array of buffs a Bard has at their fingertips) are all hard to beat.

So yeah. Personally, I think its not just refresh that people are missing - its all the other abilities that helps to support refresh as well.

[Icemage]

Originally posted by Tifa
After level 50 - ask your WHM to sub bard if you're really going to try leveling without a RDM or BRD. Although, you'd be hard pressed to find a white mage with a leveled bard sub, and even more challenged to find someone who actually wanted to do it.

I've been only refresh as WHM/BRD a few times. It's workable, but *incredibly* painful, and I hate to to do it even though WHM/BRD is what I prefer to XP with. Even with lots of practice at playing the combination, it's immensely difficult to be main heal, main enfeebler, AND main refresh; there just isn't enough time and MP to do it all.

WHM/BRD + RDM/BLM is usually the combination I go after when I XP.


Icemage

[Jei]

I like to be rdm/brd myself. Save the Whm's some energy

[Lynsy]

Originally posted by ZQM
5 melee 1 WHM PT on weapons works real good. :x

...

[kuu]

I've been only refresh as WHM/BRD a few times. It's workable, but *incredibly* painful, and I hate to to do it even though WHM/BRD is what I prefer to XP with. Even with lots of practice at playing the combination, it's immensely difficult to be main heal, main enfeebler, AND main refresh; there just isn't enough time and MP to do it all.

Quite true, the trick is not to do everything, and live on the parts that make it efficient. It all goes under "skillz" section.

A simple, experienced puller will not only lessen reliance on mana reserves(refresh need), but alow you to do higher chains. Non stop pulling is all well and good, but it's experience that wins in the end.

The mages themselves should excerise flexiblity and general conservation ideas. Simply sitting the start of the fight out, is not going to kill the tank/slow killing rate and nets you more mp via the increasing tick meter.
[example: don't be stupid and stand up after every pull throwing a massive debuffs/regen regime if you have 10% mp]

Passing hate. A tank is a tank, but a tank shouldn't always tank. Let your DD take hate if you feel you need time off. Nin or pal.

Lastly offsense over defense. It's a good thing to learn in XP pts. Using it well allows you to net those high chains. A blm can simply sit half the fight, and over nuke the end of the fight and works out pretty well.

Edit: I get that for smn all the time. Who needs crappy aerial armor for 100mp when you can do a 200 damage bp, and still have mp to heal.

[2.0]

Nope. Not ever.

[Jabeo]

No. It's a waste of everyone's time to try and EXP w/o a refresher. The downtime caused by the lack of a refresher is rather significant and is the reason why I would not EXP w/o a RDM or BRD. Not to mention both of these jobs can Dispel buffs from mobs (SMN w/ Fenrir can too at a certain level) which makes fights easier as well (not to mention their respective enfeebling capabilities).

[kuu]

Dispel is over rated, not to mention sub-able.

Just to scroll down a quick list of xp monsters that need to be dispel critically.
Crawlers, crabs, mages, big birds, (possiblity beetles), (possiblity lizards)... that's about it.

All other mobs are offensive skills, and don't need to be dispelled. Actually i wouldn't even need to dispel crawlers that much. They usually die quicky even without dispel, if instead of a rdm, you have another DD like blm/smn/melee to make up for it.

Refresh, is minor, but then the orginally poster sets a big set of "Nos" by saying non nin tanks, nor this or that.