Dancer Archive
Thread: Applying the Mind Buff, a Guide to buffing.
i've only been able to do some quick tests.... so i'm not 100% on any of this.
dancing for 5-6 minutes and spamming flourishes*and* lights every10 seconds resulted in a 40 minute buff for a group of 3. 1 person who claims they were watching did not recieve any buff at all. during thebuffing i targeted one group member for the active buff, however his buff also wore off at 40 minutes.
i did another test trying to see if the active buff stacked... but i could not get it to. danced for 5 minutes, stopped, had him /stopwatch, then started again.
another test: a entertainer with novice dancer and 2 bars of technique gave me a 300 mind buff... i disbanded, rejoined, watched him again and got 300 more. i was able to do repeat this as many times as i wanted. his buff took nearly 2 minutes after i he had stopped dancing to kick in. the duration again was around 40 minutes.
i'm surmising that the passive buff stacks. whether it has something to do with disbanding, i don't know.
i also don't know what to think about the active buffs lasting 40 minuntes. i want to say i didn't dance long enough, however i have a feeling when i /setperformance'd on a member of my own group after he was already recieving a passive buff, the active buff did not override it. i'll have to do more tests tonight and tomorrow, but so far it seems like while the dance you do does affect how fast the buff kicks in, aside from that it does not make much of a difference.... buffs from a person with only technique 2 lasted around the same as my passive buffs to a group (i am a master).
i know i'm probably insane... but the secondary stats? it must have been my imagination but i thought i read somewhere that they should be affected too? wrong?
I have a few questions for you entertainers. What stats do they buff? are your buffs the same as a muscians buffs? I was watching a master musician last night and only recieved a willpower and focus buff, never got the Mind buff 
anything I did wrong? Or is the mind buff dancers only? Do the dancers and musicians mind buffs stack?
Kane_Firestalker wrote:
I have a few questions for you entertainers. What stats do they buff? are your buffs the same as a muscians buffs? I was watching a master musician last night and only recieved a willpower and focus buff, never got the Mind buff anything I did wrong? Or is the mind buff dancers only? Do the dancers and musicians mind buffs stack?
Kane, you are correct - Dancers only buff Mind Pool. Musicians buff Focus and Willpower.
We all pretty much know what Mind pool does - but FYI, folks, in case your customers ask what Focus and Willpower do:
Focus - Directly affects the mind drain calculation for different actions (special attacks, sampling, healing). The Mind drain on a survey, for example is -100 + (FOCUS / 15). So a Focus of 200 will drain 86.6 mind points per survey while a Focus of 400 will only drain 73.3 mind per survey. Higher Focusthereforeequals lower mind drain costs.
Willpower - Determines the rate of Mind regeneration. The calculation for mind regen (at least from beta, anyway) wasWILLPOWER * 13 / 1200 (while you are sitting - it's lower when you are standing or kneeling). Using this, a Willpower of 200 will regenerate 2.16 mind points per second, and a Willpower of 400 will regenerate 4.3 mind points per second (while sitting down). Higher Willpower therefore equals higher mind regen rates.
Hiyas
Did some experimenting with a master musician last night...this is what we discovered.
If we both target the same person and do /setperfor the person seemed to only recieve the buff from the person who targeted them first.
After trying many times we decided to alternate, he would target one person and begin applying his buff while I targeted another patron and applied my buff. We communicated with each other in group (starting buff on patron #1) and also with the patrons so that they knew altho they needed to hang out a little longer in the cantina we kept them amused with out performance and conversation. When the musician was done with his patronand I was done with mine then we indicated that to each other (completed buffing , ready to switch) and switched targets. This seemed to work quite well and we had some happy patrons walking out of the kaadara cantina last night.
Another thing that's useful is that not everyone knows abou the buffs or what they will do, I'm finding that by talking about them and educating people I'm being asked to buff alot more.
We never did experience the "stacking bug" that ya'l have talked about in other posts. In fact more of the not allowing another buff occurred.
*hugs*
Caly
Did some experimenting with a master musician last night...this is what we discovered.
If we both target the same person and do /setperfor the person seemed to only recieve the buff from the person who targeted them first.
That's good info, Calyndra - I hope Ravenmist and the Devs are aware of it. It may be "as designed", perhaps, but I hope they can change it. We could buff a target's Mind and Will/Focus before if the audience targeted both of us. I'd hate to think we lost that in this enhancement.
in my experience only the passive buffs stack... but ahh, it will be another 4 hours or so before i can confirm this. to test however i found an afk macro dancer who had a /join and a /disband command. i joined... watched... disbanded after around 4 minutes... waited nearly a minute and the buff kicked in. then i repeated. i was able to get to 2300 mind in increments of 300. (1000 base)
i tried on a few people to get the active buffs to stack, with no luck.
oh... and one thing i just kept thinking over and over last night while testing.... we *really* need some sort of UI that shows us who is watching/who you are targeting for the active/how the buff is going. i wonder how hard it would be to have a little "users watching" box that you can manipulate? anyway...
i'm sure that has been suggested a million times before.. for a different thread i suppose.
Sinda wrote:
Did some experimenting with a master musician last night...this is what we discovered.
If we both target the same person and do /setperfor the person seemed to only recieve the buff from the person who targeted them first.
That's good info, Calyndra - I hope Ravenmist and the Devs are aware of it. It may be "as designed", perhaps, but I hope they can change it. We could buff a target's Mind and Will/Focus before if the audience targeted both of us. I'd hate to think we lost that in this enhancement.
Yeah, it was a bi-product of making the buffs non stackable. Of course then the code got screwed at the end of Test phase and the buffs are stackable to a degree anyway.. ahh the joys of bugs. Hopefully the stacking issue will be fixed shortly and hopefully a way to make it so we can buff at the same time will be found. Otherwise we might have to wait until the buffing system gets redone entirely.
But yes, I'm definately aware of it and so is our dev. He was pretty hard pressed for time trying to squeeze this in for us so its not too surprising its pretty bug ridden still, especially with all the other changes made that effect the same system by others. I'm sure everything will get sorted out in time but we might have to be a little patient. Getting changes and adds like this is pretty awesome even in its bug ridden state considering how much else they "our dev included" have to work on. Some of the larger problems tho will likely get hotfixed and are already getting worked on like the bug that causes incaps when buffs wear off sometimes. (this affects all buffs, not just ours)
*huggles to Ravenmist*
Hadn't seen this mentioned so I thought I best make folks aware of it 
Thanks! Good to know you and the dev are working so hard for us.
*hugs*
Caly
Ok, so, in conclusion...
No one knows how long to dance, how long to flourish (or do light shows?), or how long the buffs last. Is this correct?