ZOMG! You're Doing Your Job TOO Well!

[Taskmage]

Wow, that RDM was a real jackass. You've got a good PT going...why ruin it with unfounded, needless criticism for another player? If I were your PT leader, I'd have kicked him as soon as he started doing those things just to spite you (and hurting the PT in the process).

QFT

[WishMaster3K]

Here is the rest of my quote -.- ty for taking me out of context!!!

Often, I've been forgotten until their NEXT cycle. . .

My goodness, as if I were a politician or something. ;;

Anyway, in Bone PTs, I understand, because BRDs actually do work in those pts, and fights never last long enough for them to stick around.

But in other pts, it depends: like in Sky pts where I'm the healer and I'm usually crying for MP with 2 minutes left on Convert- those missed ticks of MP really start to hurt.

I'll apoligize to the hardworking BRDs out there, but there a HUGE majority of BRDs (mostly 75, since they jump to that lvl with relative quickness) that suck and make you wonder how they got that high. I'm glad COR is such a technically job that just so happens to be another support job

But we must ask. . . What exactly is doing the job TOO well?

[tdh]

The RDM was good up till a point- Where they drew their sword.

Any RDM who takes a moment of lull to draw their sword during an exp like that deserves to be shot.

Point Blank.

With a Rail Gun.

Full of rabid hampsters.

Praise the all mighty WishMaster3k!

I rarely get a chance to party with a WHM it seems. Now I have a semi-static guy I party with who's a SMN. Well he leveled WHM to Lv.67 before he took up SMN so he knows how to be a WHM for the party. Because of his huge MP pool (998MP with no food as an Elvaan at Lv.71) I rarely have to cast Cure at all. Unless I'm doing it after I Convert. Sometimes I wish he'd leave me a chance to Cure somebody. For the skill ups alone! lol
I try my hardest to make sure a MP user never goes more than 2~3 seconds with out Refresh. Sometimes I can find a party that hits that groove. I can time up my Refresh so I can be half way through my cast when it wears off. To not Refresh somebody to prove a point that only you seem to have, is wrong. Put your Sword away, and don't rock the boat. I'll party with you 7Point!

[aegina]

i agree; there's no reason to mess up a good party in action.

...but in the red mage's defence, a party functioning that well WOULD get boreing. i can understand if he wanted to start meleeing for a little variety, to wake himself up a little. i would do that once in awhile when i was rdm, and i've seen other rdm's do that from time to time.

but to not refresh, especially when the main healer is asking you to, is unforgivable. i don't care what kind of tank you have. why else are you THERE if not too refresh? to melee?! gimp n00b rdm >.> you shoulda kicked him when he stopped refreshing, and replaced him with something else.

[WishMaster3K]

"If you love your job, you're not doing it right."

I think Icemage said that, or something.

It might have been Patch.

Or someone of equal vertically challenged stature.

Regardless, such is the nature of exp grinding, I suppose. Repetitive macro tapping is very boring, but that's what happens. I was like, lvl 70, and I calculated that I could be 75 in like 6 days if I did a certain amount of gaming.

Likewise, I realized that 3-4 hous of exping a day could get me anywhere from 1 or more merit points, and that if I did that for a month. . .

The point is, this was very tiring. No need to be "entertained" by exping. When I'm bored, I give the pt a 30 minute warning. Then afterwards, I go do something else.

My Joyeuse is for soro pray onry.

Besides, we all need to farm eventually.

[DakAttack]

Besides, we all need to farm eventually.

[Jei]

I love my job : / I enjoy refreshing. I appreciate this spell so much lol.
on a side note I just bought myself a Misericorde+1. Evisceration is really really awesome with this dagger ^^ It's my weapon and WS of choice when I /thf now.

Besides, we all need to farm eventually.

And once you got pass that stage you don't even need to farm anymore
I fish and cook onry.

[Aeni]

I don't love my job ... I love my job class. Big difference there. Just because I don't like my job, doesn't mean I can't do it well. I do it well because I have a reputation to uphold and that to me is something that cannot be replaced with an Aristocrat Tunic or some other valuable item.

However, I get bored of the tedium. One hour of nothing but on the dot refresh and hasting and keeping track of worn enfeebles and other such things ... even BRDs will get tired of running back and forth between two or three sets of songs. Now, imagine long time parties. Those are the times you feel the burn. You feel good when you get 35K worth of exp for those long hours, but then you don't feel like doing it for another few days (Then you want short parties for a while)

Can't raise divine in a situation like that; not efficiently however. Banish, Holy, etc. all draw too much hate. If there was a proper tank, sure. But with hate bouncing around like a superball, and even low-level cures drawing hate, it'd be near impossible to effectively raise divine without dying.

I'm literally shocked that this is even an excuse anymore. Crow set is readily available on the AH and even just a couple of pieces make all the difference in the world. You can stand to lose out on a few +mp since your a taru anyway, what difference does this make? You're not enfeebling and you're saying that in the beginning of the fight you had a large -- unused translation: wasted -- pool of mana.

Again, you could use this time wisely and to your advantage. The least you can get out of it is a couple of hundred points more damage from a couple of castings of Banish II. How is this hurting the party, hmm?

[Jei]

To me there's no reason whatsoever to raise divine skill. except for personal pleasure which is up to the person to decide. As long as the Whm is able to keep everyone alive, I don't even care if their MP is full all the time.

[WishMaster3K]

How many WHMs have Healing at max?

How many WHMs capped healing during exp.

My healing only raises when I'm powerleveling -.- I think SE is trying to tell me something.

[Caspian]

My healing only raises when I'm powerleveling -.- I think SE is trying to tell me something.

To help friends be lazy in their lower levels? Or to be more giving to others?

[sevenpointflaw]

I don't love my job ... I love my job class. Big difference there. Just because I don't like my job, doesn't mean I can't do it well. I do it well because I have a reputation to uphold and that to me is something that cannot be replaced with an Aristocrat Tunic or some other valuable item.

However, I get bored of the tedium. One hour of nothing but on the dot refresh and hasting and keeping track of worn enfeebles and other such things ... even BRDs will get tired of running back and forth between two or three sets of songs. Now, imagine long time parties. Those are the times you feel the burn. You feel good when you get 35K worth of exp for those long hours, but then you don't feel like doing it for another few days (Then you want short parties for a while)



I'm literally shocked that this is even an excuse anymore. Crow set is readily available on the AH and even just a couple of pieces make all the difference in the world. You can stand to lose out on a few +mp since your a taru anyway, what difference does this make? You're not enfeebling and you're saying that in the beginning of the fight you had a large -- unused translation: wasted -- pool of mana.

Again, you could use this time wisely and to your advantage. The least you can get out of it is a couple of hundred points more damage from a couple of castings of Banish II. How is this hurting the party, hmm?

Banish 2 down't do near "a couple hundred points more damage" like you suggest. Even if it did, White Mages in general casting thier damaging spells is generally viewd like RDM meleeing. Holy, Banishga 2, and Banish III are all high-hate spells, and the only ones that even begin to touch the mobs I XP off. The others are risisted. Even if I could reasonably cast one or maybe even two spells, it would not have increased the kill rate enough to get another skillchain.
To top it off, if I start casting divine spells, I start having times when I can't cast. Yes I finished each battle with a lot of MP, but I was -constantly casting- spells. Haste and Regen III don't take much MP, but they take a -lot- of time to cast.

Even holy is usually a joke for damage at my level (anywhere from 20-70 damage on most XP mobs), and that leaves Banish III or Banishga II. If I am taking the time to cast these spells, that means I don't have the time to cast other long spells like Regen III. If I am not casting Regen III I have to cast cures. That generates more hate, and wastes more MP (poor MP:HP ratio), and then I no longer have MP left after the fourth or fith chain; insert downtime while mage rests between chains.

Also, where a White Mage is concerned, having half of your MP available to use isn't a waste of MP. Having 500MP to use in an emergency is the difference between a dead party on a link, and being able to scrabe through.

Can I stand to loose out on more MP? No, actually I can't. To give an example of how awesome this party was working together compared to most (At least at the beigning) I was in a nearly identical party today, started by the same party leader. We made almost the same amount of XP but not quite. Instead of a RDM we had a BRD (and he did his job absolutly wonderfully - as good as the RDM in the OP originally did his), and instead of a RNG we had a MNK).

In this party, I woulf float anywhere between 150MP and 900MP, five and six chaining with no downtime except when someone got a phon ecall. This is typical far me. Loosing a few MP is more than just the difference between being ready to deal with emergency situations, its all the difference between being the person who causes the party to break chain, or being the person who helps to get chain #6. Part of why I keep getting invites is because with a refresher, I don't cause downtime. Without a refresher, I cause less downtime than others.

Yes, Crows armor is nice. When you first can get it, enmity is an issue in most cases, especially with NIN. I wish we had the crows armor when I was that level. But then you get AF and your method for enmity control changes. Then you get Cure V and Regen III, and it changes some more. At my level, Crow is not, IMHO, the best way to handle enmity; in fact, it is one of the worst ways as it takes focus away from some of your other tools.

The cases where I can keep over 900mp at the end of a battle are few and far between. It has only happened like I described in the OP two or three times. Outside of those, it has only happened if there was downtime that let me rest to full.

[Tirrock]

My healing magic skill hit finally 276 after being 75WHM active in HNM forever. And guess what? It was while I was curing a BST in sea serpent grotto.

Next up: Summoning magic skill. Only a few points left to cap@75, and I haven't stood there chain-summoning for skill since I was level 50.

I go crazy when a RDM is meleeing but not refreshing. I've booted RDM out of parties for that. I give them a few warnings. First one or two (depending on my patience) is nice. After that I pretty much tell them to refresh or they're gone. If that fails...I either boot them or warp them out.

[Icemage]

That RDM is an idiot.

When I'm playing RDM, I'm deliriously happy when the WHM in my party is near full MP - means I'm doing my job right, because I can refill my tank once every 10 minutes, while the WHM has to earn it back the hard way (with some help from me, naturally).

As for Divine Magic, the best way to raise it is to use Flash. Not only is it a valuable MP-saving tool when used properly (monster HP low and you know it is about to get the TP to use a special? Flash it), but the enmity cost can be negated by swapping in some Crow gear. It has the side benefit of raising Divine Magic without excessive casting times or MP wastage.


Icemage

[Tirrock]

Flash is and has been a great way to skill divine ever since they made it so it doesn't overwrite the blind spell or kurayami. Of course, if you have sea access...you can just flash tough guppies until the cows come home and be fine. >_>