Quote Originally Posted by monterrey4ever View Post
No, it just saves you time on the gathering phase, you just open the gathering window, see contents, if the map / hidden item you want is not listed, just close the gathering window and move to the next node. You dont need to actually gather the nodes to make them refresh. Just try it on a small zone and you will learn easily how the node spawn works.
^ exactly this. Personally, I haven't been doing it; I go to search for my maps at nodes that have something that's of use to me. I have a lot of crafters to level up, and hunting for maps helps grind mats and gatherer exp. ^^