Exploit?

A couple of weeks ago when I talked to Stealthkiller in a pt about freezing brew timer to kill multiple NM at once to finish my lv 90 Empyrean(and some other random NM here and there), he mentioned I may get ban by doing it and used Salvage dupe ban as an example, SE mass banned players using Salvage dupe in 2009. Zeig also believe that it's an exploit and shouldn't be used. There seems to be some players in community believe that this is an exploit and there are chances of getting banned by using it. And my question is, so what can be considered as exploit and what is not?

When Salvage dupe trick was discovered, SE didn't say anything about whether this is an exploit or not until 1.5 years later they finally fixed the glitch and banned players who used it. It caused fears in old players for doing anything that may be consider as an exploit just because SE may not say anything about it being an exploit and decide to ban players after.

I personally don't think SE would ban ppl for freezing brew timer, because it's hard to tell whether this is an exploit or just game mechanic. There are too many gray areas for this kind of subject. I popped a brew to kill Isgebind, and after I killed it a gold chest popped, I examined the gold chest and brew timer just automatically froze, so should I get banned because I checked a gold chest after using a brew? That means I'm not allowed to check gold chest at all after popping a brew?

This can apply to all the little game mechanic trick people use it all the time. You can solo NMs in this game by pinning strategy, and never get hit once by NM, should all those player who used pinning strategy to solo Lord Ruthven got banned too? CORs can remove the JA animation lock by gear swap, allowing them to spam damaging JA every 45 sec and never get hit once by keep running, should those NM solo CORs got banned too? A couple of months ago before SE fixed it with a patch, every pt kill Carabosse near ramp so the mages never got hit by Carabosse AoE, should all those pt got banned too? Those LS who killed AV before Alexander released, should they all got banned as well?

There are just way too many little tricks exist and commonly used by players and accepted as game play mechanics, I'd say at least 95% of players all used little exploit trick at least once in their life time in this game. If SE doesn't like how it works then it's their responsibility to fix it. I personally dont think freeze brew timer is a big deal, if SE doesn't like it they will fix it in the future, and that's it, no need to overreact.

Anyways, SE already mentioned on their forum
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/2817-Brew-Lock?p=34730&viewfull=1#post34730
that freeze brew timer is "currently [03/18/2011] a known mechanic and by design", so time to finish lv90 Armageddon with brews =D