Dancer Archive
Thread: We should be able to buff ourselves..
Btw...with regards to "grinding"
The server that my beloved and I made our new chars on...i started as a dancer...he a medic. He went from noob to Master Doc in two days, quite cheaply I might add...under 20k...which can be made easily by a noob in a couple hours of the right kind of missions. No exotic resources were needed...just the stuff to make stim As. He used me (and the group I was in) as a dancer to get the med ex on a healing macro while he had 6 crafting stations pumping out stim As. I even played us both for several hours one day.
It took me 10 days to get Master Dancer 
You are not in control of your own destiny as an entertainer. Since the amount of healing exp you get is dependant upon the number of injured who visit the cantina, and on smaller servers...well sometimes this takes forever. My masters on big servers finished healing exp two full boxes before dance exp. I had 6...count em 6 full boxes of healing exp yet to go to master my dancers on smaller servers.
Bottom line....no ifs, ands, or buts, Entertainers SHOULD be able to buff themselves...anything else is totally unacceptable imo and in the opinion of EVERY other entertainer I know and have talked to who does anything other than "passive' professions.
Master Dancers Pandorra1, Pandorra2, Pandorra3, Twi'light, Tabu, Miztress.
"He went from noob to Master Doc in two days, quite cheaply I might add...under 20k...which can be made easily by a noob in a couple hours of the right kind of missions. No exotic resources were needed...just the stuff to make stim As."
Yes, you can reach master doctor without needing any of the exotic resources, but if you want to produce the enhance packs that provide a buff with power and duration on par with a master dancer, you need the exotic resources. That was the whole point-not the requirement to attain master doctor but the resources *required* to make top quality enhance packs. Sure you can buy them from someone else-but that requires you to pay for the enhance pack. As far as dancing clothing being an expense...your clothing doesn't poof after 20 or so uses like an enhance pack does, and you could buff while in your underwear.
Master dancers/musicians are essentially walking 100% experimented enhance packs. *chuckle*
Elite entertainers are about the last group of people you could classify as overpowered. For 106 skill points, you sure don't get much as a master dancer/musician. For the insane, 203 skill points to be master entertainer/dancer/musician equates almost nothing extra.
You don't want to tip an entertainer, fine. You don't want to interact with them, fine. But get the frell out of the way to little bits of improvement the entertainers deserve.
Should they be able to buff themselves? Yes. Will it upset others--who cares.
In the intrest of balance (when compared to Dr buffs) I don't think we should be able to buff our own mind stats. I've got a friend who's a master doctor, and the stuff he has to collect via heavy harvesters, plus the fusion generator to power them all, plus the factory costs him in credits over 10k per day to keep runing to make the packs that enchance action/health stats.
And on a realism note, *how* would you buff yourself? You can't watch yourself, unless you had a huge mirror and then you'd be too busy concentrating on your moves/tune to focus on yourself appreciatively.
The pay-off for doctors is they have a huge monetary outlay to get the enchance packs, ours is we cannot buff ourselves (which makes sense to me). To give entertainers the ability to buff their own mind would make with no more cost that 5 mins in your house/cantina would make a mockery of the resource farming and statistic values - all master entertainers could just migrate all their mind points to the minimum, spend them elsewere and then continually just double their reduced mind. Not very balanced, yes?
Taboux wrote:
Resource expenditure:
Dancer - none
Doctor - I'm not sure what resources are needed (to be honest, I don't know if they need to craft for this; I am assuming they are, but if they don't then please correct me)
HAHAHA....
I don't know what Galaxy you dance in....but the six Galaxies I dance in, my Masters have a HUGE resource expenditure....its called DANCEWEAR.
I think you have been misinformed. You don't need to buy clothes to buff minds. Whoever told you that was either wrong or was leading you astray.
I am able to buff with no resource expenditure. It is completely free of monetary expenditure. Now, my image requires me to go clothes shopping. But my buff is free. It only takes time.
So, yes, doctors have to spend resources (whether they craft or pay cash) to buff others. Dancers do not. I'm sorry that you have been needlessly buying outfits in order to buff others. On a bright note, you have a lot of different wardrobes in impress the patrons, which is the best reason IMO to buy new clothes. But I'm glad to let you know this, as it can be pretty expensive to buy a new dress every time you buff. Armed with this knowledge, I'm sure you'll be able to buff people even more now.
JohnReed, as a dancer I'm fine with not being able to buff myself. I'd also be fine with a change that allowed me to buff myself--but not if self-buffing would require the addition of some sort of resource requirement.
My posts were made to clarify what goes in to making the enhance pack that allows a doctor to buff at all--it's pretty time consuming and I'd hate to see something similar added for dancers if that's how the devs feel it should be in order for game balance.
Another thing to note when comparing doctors to performers is that dancers buff only mind and musicians buff only focus and willpower. This restriction further reduces the utility of our buffs, to the point where I think "I made master dancer and all I can do in the field is buff a single stat and heal wounds in downtime" is a good counter to "I made master doctor and my requirements are hard to get, but I can heal damage in the fight, remove poisons and other states, resuscitate, and in downtime heal wounds and buff six different stats." Sure, we don't have the expense, but we also don't have nearly the range of useful abilities.
Hypatian wrote:
If an expensive item were needed to buff one's self, I would actually want it to be needed for all of the buffs--because otherwise, well, nobody will make them. And it doesn't make sense for dancers to craft it themselves.
Hmm, well, I could see an argument there for buffing ourselves. Keep the method we buff others as normal. Keep the status quo there.
But a dancer/musician can buff himself with an item (holorecorder or CD or mirror or magical charms, whatever) that he must purchase from an artisan. I could see that being balanced.
And the item degrades, of course, to keep the economy going.
If we can buff others with the only cost being time while buffing ourselves costs extra, I would think that is more balancing.
And yes, I got to see this inequality firsthand. I joined a group on Dathomir. While there was an entertainer, she was not a Dancer and certainly couldn't provide a 75% buff. I gladly would have paid a few thousand credits for an item that allowed me to increase my mind...especially since a rancor tore me apart by bleeding my mind. Oops.
So buffing ourselves the same way we buff others would be too unbalancing, I feel. If we incur a cost doing it ourselves, I would feel pretty good about it.
I agree with hypatian. plus some of the other posts. It is hard to ask to change something in the game. atleast concerning skills. I would love to buff myself and all...but highly doubt that they will change that. Basically we have the abilty to buff more and longer. Since we are entertainers or some of us here. We should be able to go to a cantina and get buffed by our friends in there. I have noticed , I made alot of friends going from novice entertainer to master dancer. Im only stating this because if it does not change...we still have our friends to help us 
For me anyways I will be a master TKA soon. That will be kind of unfair because of power boost. He he, that would be great though. Im just making different points now, just to look at, so dont get mad at me If you take master dancer and stick with it. I think you should be able to buff. Being a dancer gives sort of a benefit, but I rather be a M doc. Im wasting my points to master dancer if I also want to fight . I do get some defense being master dancer. I figure either way we can get buffed from our friends or if things changed from ourselves.
Cloves- Starsider- Master Dancer/TKA 1/4/4/3
Sorry for double post but I also wanted to add , if we are allowed to buff, why not add a longer time to buff ourselves. like 20 mins or something hehe
Cloves- Starsider- Master Dancer/TKA 1/4/4/3
Kuildeous wrote:
Taboux wrote:
Resource expenditure:
Dancer - none
Doctor - I'm not sure what resources are needed (to be honest, I don't know if they need to craft for this; I am assuming they are, but if they don't then please correct me)
HAHAHA....
I don't know what Galaxy you dance in....but the six Galaxies I dance in, my Masters have a HUGE resource expenditure....its called DANCEWEAR.
I think you have been misinformed. You don't need to buy clothes to buff minds. Whoever told you that was either wrong or was leading you astray.
I am able to buff with no resource expenditure. It is completely free of monetary expenditure. Now, my image requires me to go clothes shopping. But my buff is free. It only takes time.
So, yes, doctors have to spend resources (whether they craft or pay cash) to buff others. Dancers do not. I'm sorry that you have been needlessly buying outfits in order to buff others. On a bright note, you have a lot of different wardrobes in impress the patrons, which is the best reason IMO to buy new clothes. But I'm glad to let you know this, as it can be pretty expensive to buy a new dress every time you buff. Armed with this knowledge, I'm sure you'll be able to buff people even more now.
Hehe..read it again Kuil..I didn't say you had to have clothes to buff....I said you had to have them to be a "GOOD" dancer....'if' you take the proffesion seriously that is.
Lord knows, I am NOT knocking Docs...I work hard on a couple of MDs myself..so I know exactly the time, money, and pain in the butt it is to gather resources. I ALSO know lots of MDs who shout near cantinas and star ports selling buffs for 1cred per point buffed If you are an MD using really good resources (thats all most will bother with using, frankly) that adds up to around 12-18k worth of points for a full set of 6 buffs. I know LOTS of big-bawlers who will and do gladly pay that for full buffs when they are solo knocking off 22k per mission and those buffs last 3-4 hours (at least my doc chars do).
So....IF an MD wants to offset the cost and pain of making enhance packs...they can. I know several who do, we don't tho, but rather save those buffs for the parties we group with.
I would be more than willing to shovel some money into the abiltyto buff myself as a master dancer/tk master who tanks in direct mele and never gets a mind buff of her own 
BTW....you CAN watch yourself Try targeting yourself and type /setperform and see what message you get
Too many master dancers to mention......
the resource requirements arguments for doctors are interesting, but i think doctors overall have a lot more flexibility and their buffs are more in demand than ours also.
a doctor can buff any of 6 stats, and though they use resources, they can buff any or all 6 instantaneously, whereas we can buff one stat (musicians 2), and it takes us 5-10 minutes to do so. personally, i think their versatility and speed balances out the resource requirements pretty much... so i really do think we should also be able to buff ourselves.
Taboux wrote:
Hehe..read it again Kuil..I didn't say you had to have clothes to buff....I said you had to have them to be a "GOOD" dancer....'if' you take the proffesion seriously that is.
We were talking about buffing ourselves. Being a good dancer is a whole different issue.
In comparing Dancer/Musician buffs to Doctor buffs, I stated that Doctors have a buttload of resource expenditure. I said that we have no resource expenditure. This is where you contradicted me by saying that we need clothes. If you did not mean that new clothes were necessary for buffing, then this thread is not the place to bring up the costs of clothing.
Trust me; the devs will not be impressed with an argument that says, "We should be able to buff ourselves because it costs us money to buy clothing."
If you want to convince me that a good dancer expends money on clothing and that it's not cheap, you don't need to say a word. I already agree with you.
If you want to convince me that dancers should buff themselves as they do others, you need better arguments than good dancer = new clothes.
But as I said before, I think that forcing us to spend resources/money to buff ourselves would be fair.
And if I read another thread correctly, the devs will work on allowing us to buff ourselves, so maybe they do agree with you. It's not like I'm arguing strongly against this. I'm just shooting down the theory that if doctors can buff themselves, so should dancers. If we do end up buffing ourselves, I'll gladly enjoy it *grin*