Musician Basics

Notable differences between the musician profession and the entertainer profession include access to special abilities such as Colored Lights, Dazzle and Fire Jet in the musician technique skill line. While these abilities do not generate experience, they do add additional flare to performances.

Other features become available at novice musician such as the ability to use playback and special effect droids as well as a quest path leading towards gaining unique songs and dances. Also importantly, musicians gain the ability to add mind enhancement buffs to other players.

Mind Buffing Basics

Any entertainer who has reached at least novice in the Dancer Profession or Musician Profession may administer mind buffs. The strength of the buff depends on advancement in the Technique line of either profession.

There are two different types of mind buffs. One buff is to the mind pool, the second buff is to focus and willpower. Dancers are responsible for the mind pool and musicians are responsible for focus and willpower.

In addition to two different types of mind buffs, there are also two ways of administering mind buffs. They can be applied actively to a single target, or passively to everyone grouped with the entertainer. Aside from being grouped or not and how many can be buffed at once, there is no difference in how the buff is applied.

Steps for the person being buffed

Before starting the buff, it is best to make sure that the recipient is not watching or listening to anyone. The recipient should then start watching or listening to the entertainer as appropriate, and watch or listen to nobody else until the buff is complete. A minimum of two minutes watching or listening is required to apply a buff effect. Once the buff is finished, it is not applied until the recipient walks away, or stops watching or listening with either the radial menu or the /stopwatch or /stoplisten command.

Steps for the entertainer

When buffing, an entertainer has two options. They can perform for the recipient with the /setperform Entertainer Command, or they can invite them to the group. If the recipient is invited to the group nothing else is required from the entertainer for them to be buffed. An entertainer can be buffing group members and a target at the same time.

Once the recipient is watching or listening to the entertainer, the entertainer performs for anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. The more active the entertainer performs, the quicker the buff will be applied and the longer it will last.

How much will the buff be?

Unlike doctor buffs, entertainer buffs are based on a percentage of the recipients base stats. The entertainers musical or dancing mind enhancement determines the percentage. A Master Dancer will have 100 dancing mind enhancement, and a Master Musician will have 100 musical mind enhancement. There are also skill enhancing attachments (Sometimes called SEAs or skill tapes) which can give a boost to mind enhancement. Multiples of these can be put on different pieces of clothing (One per article of clothing) up to a bonus of +25. Higher will show in the skills, but the buff will be unaffected.

How long will the buff last?

Mind buffs can last anywhere from 10 seconds minute to 2 hours. The duration of the mind buff depends on two things. How long the entertainer performed, and how much they flourished. Every 10 seconds performing is 1 minute extra duration, and every flourish is 1 minute extra duration. This means the minimum amount of time needed for a full 2 hour buff is 3 minutes 20 seconds, assuming flourishing as fast as the game allows; The game counts queued musician flourishes (5 flourishes every 10 seconds).

Buff Durations

There are two things that add to a buffs duration. Every xp “tick”, and a flourish. Each of these events adds to both the time, and size of the buff.

Buffs are a minimum of 10 seconds. From there it's minutes at a time. Every flourish, and every xp tick adds 1 minute to the buff. So if there were not a 5 flourish limit, 120 flourishes would be 2 hours. Since there is a 5 flourish limit, that means at most you can add 6 minutes every 10 seconds. (5 for a flourish, 1 for the xp tick)

Buff Size

The buff size is the amount that the buff adds to the player's ham bar. As with buff duration, every flourish and xp tick add to the buff, But what they add is different. The base amount they add is based on the level of what you are performing, or what instrument you are playing. Specifically:

Note: Guide did not offer values for the Master Entertainer lines such as Ceremonial, footlose2, formal2 and the instrument Mandoviol nor for the special Theater Manager reward song and dance, theatrical (1 & 2) and Western song.

I will assume they are the same as the other Master Professions until new evidence is uncovered to show otherwise:

7%
35%

Now a little explanation on how that works... That is the base gain without any flourishing. The xp tick always adds that amount to the buff. A flourish, however, adds 5x that to the buff. So a flourish of basic adds 10%, while a flourish of virtuoso or exotic3 adds 35%. So, while the level of the performance DOES effect the gain.. 10 flourishes and even basic is 100%.

Experience from buffing...

Buffing gives Entertainer Healing experience. Healing xp shows up as the last of 3 lines of healing xp each tick. But where does it come from? Every % buffed by the xp tick gives 1xp. So, if you look at that chart above and replace % with xp, that is how much xp you get per tick, up until your max. The max, of course, being your mind enhancement skill. Thus, if an unenhanced master is dancing exotic, and flourishes once early on, they will get 35% from the flourish, and 65% from the xp tick, so they will give the group 65 healing xp. If you get to 100% before one tick, you get no xp at all, as the xp tick isn't buffing any percentage.

On the 2 minute minimum...

The only effect the two minute minimum has is exactly that, a two minute minimum for the buff to take effect. It doesn't matter if they started watching/listening before being buffed, nor does it matter if you are performing for the entire 2 minutes. They can start watching/listening, then you stop performing, then 2 minutes later start again, and you could grant them a tiny buff nearly right away. Other than that, the minimum has no effect on the buff.

Getting the best buff

So basically for the best buff, you need to do 120 flourishes or xp ticks. So every 10 seconds you spend buffing is one less flourish you need to do. Thus, the minimum is 3 minutes, 20 seconds.. That is 20 xp ticks for 20 minutes, and 100 flourishes for the other hour 40 minutes.

If I wanted to do math I wouldn't have a computer. What does this all mean?

Well, to get the best buff, how long depends on how often you flourish... Based on the interval between flourishes...

2 seconds or less: 3 minutes 20 seconds
4 seconds: 5 minutes 42 seconds
5 seconds: 6 minutes 40 seconds
6 seconds: 7 minutes 30 seconds
8 seconds: 8 minutes 53 seconds
10 seconds: 10 minutes
15 seconds: 12 minutes
20 seconds: 13 minutes 20 seconds
30 seconds: 15 minutes
never: 20 minutes

If you want to figure it out yourself, the formula based on Pause length and Time for the total buff is:

Time and Pause are in seconds.

10*Time Pause = ----------- 1200 – Time

1200*Pause Time = ---------- Pause + 10

Special Effects

Dancers and Musicians have special abilities to use automatically as they train the techniques branch. These abilities act as flourishes and can be called on via commands and when used they perform some sort of flashy ability or effect. Like some flourishes, some special effects can be executed back to back.

Executing a Special Effect

Back to back Special Effects

Related Tags

Ability List

Skill Modifiers