Musician Archive

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Tralmek wrote:

I can'tfind the exact post that you're talking about (although I do remember it.) I do know, however that it takes 120 flourishes to do the full buff time, and the server will only "read" 5 every 8 seconds. That works out to being 3 minutes 12 seconds for the buff. Even on active buffs I normally do 4 minutes just in case floursihes got dropped for some reason. Passive buffs I usually take to 5 minutes so everyone gets the chance to start listening.

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The exact formula seems to be 120 flos OR xp ticks. Each flo or XP tick adds 1 minute to the outcome with a max of 2 hours (and 9 seconds). IF the 5 flos every 8 seconds was EXACT then technically you could do a full buff in between 166 and 170 seconds depending on when the final XP tick hits. However, due to lag, flos are not allowed EXACTLY every 8 seconds. My buff method....The "Patent Pending Fragpuppie Uber 3:10 Quickbuff" uses 190 seconds to allow for these variations and adds an extra 8 second loop of flourishes because I do not spam the flos contantly. I do them in bursts of 5 every 8 seconds....and invariably one burst is missed in the 3:10 and does not register.

Fragpuppie Uber
Master Entertainer, Master Musician
Guild Leader - Performer United Professional Society (PUPS)
Founding Member - Frag's Puppies
Contact S'ita for bookings
President and CEO - Fragpuppie Enterprises and Uber Instruments
Coronet, Corellia, Chilastra

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Tralmek wrote:

It must figure somewhat differently than each flo adding 1 minute then....

I figured it this way:

120/5 = 24 (the number ofbursts needed)

24*8 = 192 (theseconds it takes to perform all of those, assuming noburst losses)

192/60 = 3.2 (the total time in minutes required)

3.2 minutes is 3 minutes and 12 seconds. If the buff consistantly lost at least oneburst, then the buff would need to take 3:20.

Where is my math going wrong?

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You are forgetting the 1 minute of buff duration you get at each XP tick. at 3:12 you will get 19 xp ticks and that would, in theory (if it went over 2 hours), give you 139 minutes of duration.

Now when I put together this method, I didn't know the formula. I did tests! I first tested to see how many flos the computer would "see" and that turned out to be 5. Then I did tests with macros to see how fast I could reliably do bursts of 5 and have the server "flo acceptance" timer reset. Sometimes I got 3 or 4 bursts through in a row at 7 seconds between them, but it was not reliable. 8 seconds was the fastest I could do them with MOST going through (90-95%). I then got guinnea pigs to receive free buffs while I tested how long I needed to run it to get 2 hour duration. I timed from "/setp" and then I moved to stop playing at the EXACT time I was testing. After MANY tests I saw that 3 minutes was giving me between 1:48 and 1:52, but never 2:00. Adding the 10 seconds seemed to solve the problem.

Soon after I published the "3:10" the buff exploit became know and popular. I even used it myself until its demise. But then again doing music buffs in 40 seconds and dance buffs in 8 seconds was a bit excessive. It was from these methods that people pieced together the 120 flo and XP tick formulae. In doing the exploit "/stop /start" buffs I would count the number of 5 flo bursts and once I hit 120 flos I'd end the macro. I did tests here also and found that 100 didn't do it and because of the delay getting into step with the flos going through, it was best to count, not time the buff. I timed dance ones when I did it though. Dance didn't have the issue of starting and stopping music and would also allow 4 bursts per second. Its kinda hard to count them when you can do 120 flos in 8 seconds.

Fragpuppie Uber
Master Entertainer, Master Musician
Guild Leader - Performer United Professional Society (PUPS)
Founding Member - Frag's Puppies
Contact S'ita for bookings
President and CEO - Fragpuppie Enterprises and Uber Instruments
Coronet, Corellia, Chilastra

Message Edited by Fragpuppie on 10-06-2004 03:44 PM

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Fragpuppie wrote:

You are forgetting the 1 minute of buff duration you get at each XP tick. at 3:12 you will get 19 xp ticks and that would, in theory (if it went over 2 hours), give you 139 minutes of duration.

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