String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

Those proposed double attack rates aren't really substantiated but I also used the same unsupported assumptions about Coiler II double attack rate and also assumed Optic Fiber doesn't affect Coiler.

Below are some data samples (used Fortifications as a target) to get a sense of effect size without Optic Fibers (and no Light Maneuvers)


There is nothing to suggest OD provides an inherent DA bonus in itself (like magical haste +25%). Also the Coiler II double attack rate with 3x Thunder could be 40% or above as the above data rules out 35% (here's a mention of estimates but no interval estimates provided). If you subtract the known 30% Coiler I rate from the pooled Coiler I/II result, the corresponding adjusted CI for Coiler II still covers 40% or 50%.

With Optic Fiber and Optic Fiber II, the Coiler II DA rate with 1x Light and 1x Thunder during Overdrive is still < 100% but significantly higher than 61.25% (68/82 = .8292 with ~95% CI [.7302, .9034]). 40%x1.75 = 70%, which is lower than the lower bound of the CI obtained, but 45% or 50% seem reasonable.



In conclusion, the Coiler II double attack rate under 3x Thunder and no Optic Fiber appears to be higher than 35% and even 40% (perhaps 45% or 50%) and Overdrive doesn't provide a distinct DA bonus. Also triple Light and triple Thunder maneuver effects during OD allow the DA rate to be high enough with only Coiler II and Optic Fiber I/II that you could get to 100% without Coiler I provided you have enough DA on equipment

I've tried antisense's setup. It's not working. What is an actual setup that works on normal mode?

For cait Sith normal

It works if you pound dawn mulsums. If you go into repair range you get 1 shot by holy ??. I take it this is one of those spam mulsums fights then?

I'm not aware of anybody else suggesting OD provided an inherent DA bonus? Or were you just proposing we test for it?


Hmm, if what you say is true and Coiler II is actually 40-45% DA at triple Thunder Maneuver, then my Automaton would have over 100% DA just from OD + Coiler II + 2xOF + Thunder/Light + 4/5 Taeon with DA+5% + C. Palug Ring + Shulmanu Collar + Domes. Earring. But I'm pretty sure I've seen some single attack rounds with that setup before, as rare as they might be. Perhaps I need to retest that to make sure.


Try PUP/COR with AAMR Trust/Beast Roll + VE/VE with Overdrive Light/Fire/Wind (or Light/Fire/Water if your DT gear isn't great):

- Inhibitor 1+2
- Attuner
- Magniplug 1+2
- Flame Holder
- Turbo Charger 2
- Steam Jacket
- Auto-Repair Kit 4
- Optic Fiber 1+2
- Coiler 2

Optimal gear would be Su4/Su5, Anwig (DT/Haste+5%), Ambu cape (Haste+10%), 4/5 Taeon (Acc/DA/DT), Shulmanu Collar, Klouskap Sash (+1), Rimeice Earring (or Domes. depending on whether you have Thurandaut Ring), Enmerkar Earring, a combination of C. Palug Ring/Thurandaut/Varar (+1).

You shouldn't need any Dawn Mulsums that way, even without rolls. I used the above setup to do Cait Sith on Difficult with Regal COR rolls (though I replaced the Inhibitor 1 due to Comp Roll), so it should be sufficient for Normal without COR main rolls.

Wait for a TP move then go in to repair.

With good gear snd Regal rolls you won't need repair at all. But before getting regal necklace I'd repair 1-2 times a fight if I didn't have lucky/11 Comp.

My setup (bolded differences):

- Inhibitor 2
- Attuner
- Magniplug 1+2
- Flame Holder
- Turbo Charger 1+2
- Steam Jacket
- Auto-Repair Kit 4
- Optic Fiber 1+2
- Armor Plate IV

Hmm, I just tested my setup on N completely solo and even without Armor Plate 4 my maton wasn't really taking more damage than OD ARK 4 could Regen on its own. Is it maybe because of a difference in Pet: DT-% gear?

Also I used only Turbo Charger 2 and a Wind Maneuver to cap Haste to free up an attachment slot for more damage. Of course, it might not work for everyone and it's risky on D-VD (usually requires Water Maneuver), but on N it was fine.

For what it's worth, if you have someone dispelling Enlight (such as another PUP via Disruptor/Regulator) then you basically don't need any defensive attachments at all under OD. From my personal experience, anyway.

My guess is with your gear you can OD from the jump.

I’ve been taking him down to 80% before OD. I’ve been playing it safe until i get SU5 weapon.

It also lets me TH8/9 up. After Bene it’s very risky. (Started bringing a second mule for TH.)

On the subject of OD, is the haste guven job or magical? Bg desc seemed unsure

Magic

Thats what i always assumed til i checked the desc on wiki, noted.

Thanks for the responses. I see a few things I could improve on now. I have a second character I can bring as a second pup or regal Cor. For now I've been using her as a regal Cor. Haven't geared the second Pup as well. Here is what I use on Bite when doing OD:

ItemSet 368487

Try my set up. You have the same gear as me but you have. A far superior weapon.

Stupid question about Heady Artifice.
I of course know it changes according to currently equipped head, but what's the relationship with the body?

Like if you have Sharpshoot Head but Valordge or any mage body, would it still use Eagle Eye Shot?
Or if you have Soulsoother Head and Valoredge Body, would it still Benediction?

I thought it would work regardless but after a couple of non very reliable tests, I think Heady Artifice needs a "compatible" body with the current head.
Harle body probably being compatible with every head.

Also a small curiosity about a run I did on VD Ambu vol1 this month to help a few friend.
We had 2 PUPs. Me (Master) and another friend (barely 1200 JPs).
I used these attachments:Friend used the following attachments (couple were a mistake, but still this is what he used):
Our gear was similar, but with a few notable differences. We both had capped accuracy regardless. Here is what was different:Then there's the differences coming from the fact I was Master and he's just barely 1200 JPs.

Anyway, on the last parse he won by ~10% more damage than me O_O
So... I'm kinda puzzled.
Is this a coincidence?
Is it a matter that I activated Overdrive a bit late? Not sure how much but I used it a bit after deploy, he used it before.
Is it a matter of me being too far from the battle (around ~35 yalms) and so I lost some packets which didn't reach the parser?
Is it a matter of the Parser being stupid?


I dunno, I'm really really puzzled. Anybody got a clue lol?

Quenching Hammer resets TP. Just random chance that his auto went faster once or twice while yours got hamma'd

Sometimes auto holds tp too long and gets 0'd

Yeah but I mean, in theory my Automaton setup should be much better than his.
Ok he has 14% more DA (plus the DA from Coilers), but that's it.
He was also lacking ~12% total haste compared to my setup.
And the attack? We're talking 80 in gear plus the att you get from gifts from 1200 to 2100. Unless we were att capped, I dunno. (Beast Roll and Dia3 btw)

This is the sort of difference that shouldn't be compensated by 14% DA and a couple of hammered TP, no? Unless that couple is actually like 5 or 6 lmao

The thing only has 600k

10% is 60k

That's 2 bonecrushers.

it's also possible your auto closed a skillchain with string shredder, or he got some lucky bonecrushers.

Random is random no matter how good your gear is.

If your friend wasn't using Flame Holder it is unlikely he would win the parse unless your maton got screwed over somehow. Flame Holder adds significant amounts of damage to Bone Crusher and 14% DA alone can't make up for that. However, looking at the difference in DA, he has at least 36.75% DA over your maton (assuming that's 14% DA more in gear and you had neither Coiler equipped). That's pretty massive for TP gain as well as WSs like Bone Crusher who have fTP transfer.

Well, the TP gain matter is negligible if you have Companion's Roll, but if you didn't it matters. TP gain without Comp Roll, Inhibitors nor Coilers and low DA gear is really bad. That might be where the difference in damage came from. Although a 12% Haste difference is pretty big, too, so you may have been about even in that regard at least.

You could try parsing against him again vs. something easy like Shockmaw to confirm the difference. Not sure about its max HP, so maybe only one person should OD at a time and then just compare total DPS. If you get lucky maybe you'll get a glowy weapon drop while testing, to boot.


Mighty Strikes (Harle), Invincible (VE), Benediction (SoS) can be used regardless of the frame and having a backup Bene on our default tank setup is really nice to save a party from a bad situation. It's also a direct counter to Gin's and Ou's Zero Hour move.

However, Eagle Eye Shot (SS), Chainspell (SW) and Manafont (SR) do indeed require an appropriate frame. If an incompatible Head/Frame combo is used, the Automaton will default to Mighty Strikes instead--even if you aren't using Harlequin head.

Yeah Aerix 14% DA is just gear difference. I posted our two different attachments in the post above, under spoiler.
He was also missing like >12% Haste to reach cap. (only 1 turbo charger and 18-19 pet Gear Haste, whereas I was completely haste capped)

We had Beast Roll, Drachen Roll, Companion Roll and I forgot what the 4th roll was.


So Benediction is supposed to work on Soulsoother head / Valoredge Body.
Strange, I used it before during our runs and I saw the animation proccing but the HP of my Automaton didn't change at all.
But, in hindsight, that could've been a lag thing with my pet HP addon.
I mean that the HP really changed but I didn't see it change because of reasons / packets / lag etc.

Then I suspect it was just as Eiryl said. If you want confirmation you should try reparsing on Shockmaw or something similarly straightforward as I suggested.

Edit: Just noticed your friend was using Inhibitor II. That is indeed a large advantage to TP gain, but under most circumstances it would just make his Automaton follow-up with String Shredder after each of your Bone Crushers, making his damage significantly worse. It is really, really likely then that you simply got screwed over by multiple Quenching Hammers caused by the TP feed of having 2 matons on the boss. And it affected your friend less as he had a massive STP advantage.


You have to be within 20'-22' of your Automaton or so after activating Heady Artifice (you can activate it first then run in) or it won't use its SP ability.

So, this just happened.










No Overdrive, Manafont or Bolster. Lower numbers are from when Maton went second or third and got reduced by the MB wall.

Buffs/debuffs were Idris BoG/EA Geo-Malaise, non-Idris Geo-Languor, non-crooked 11 Puppet Roll+8 (first fight), non-crooked 8 Puppet Roll+8 (second fight) and occasionally Frazzle 3. I was using Grape Daifuku, no Udug, full MAB Herc Head/Hands, Cath Palug Ring and otherwise same gear as last time I posted. Triple Ice Maneuvers. No Tranquilizer and resist rates were absolutely fine thanks to Languor/Frazzle 3.

Soooo overall we went from this:




to Automaton doing up 99999 bursts and being viable solo source of damage on Kei?

I like this evolution and I'm happy I made that question lol :)

Tbh, there just hadn't been a lot of testing for BLMaton on anything but Apex mobs until recently. A lot of people, including myself, didn't fully appreciate its potential after the Ice Maker fix. And pretty much any non-PUP still won't bring a PUP over a BLM for any manaburns.

As far as the "wonky AI" goes, Scanner made all the difference (for Kei). The Aspir spam has always really messed with MBing. Haven't been able to test it on non-dark mobs like the Dynamis midboss who also has MP, which is where you might be stuck with Aspir spam regardless of your setup.

In any case, I'm still not sure if a maton could get anywhere close to a real BLM's dps. They can also hit somewhere above 80k per nuke and double MB on top of that, no? I only saw a single double MB from my maton the entire Kei fight and I don't know what caused it as I didn't get to utilize Manafont. Might have just been lucky timing. Tactical Processor did nothing at all (seemingly) even with triple Ice Maneuvers.



For what it's worth though, I think Heatsink+Cooldown+Midnights should be able to make BLMaton useful even without KKK. You have to DAD regularly to restore its MP anyway.

Maybe you can check it on some Escha NMs?

I could, but I'll have to ask a friend to help me out with making SCs first as my mules aren't really geared to do it without Companion's Roll.

hmm Makes me want to full puppet army to try to get thru all the content

For most relevant content (anything that's => Escha Sky T3), what's ideal?:

3 PUPs with some being /cor
2 PUPs+1 Idris GEO
2 PUPs+1 +7 COR
1 PUP+1 Idris GEO+1 +7 COR

With and without Overdrive (guessing x2 PUP better for non-OD scenarios to keep SCs going)

Thinking 1/1/1 would be best during overdrive to get 91% defense down from EA+BoG Frailty, Dia II, and Light Shot, plus the option to Torpor, Drachen, and Companion's, but interested to see what people's experience has been

I tried quad boxing Kei a while ago with BRD,RUN,idris GEO, and kenk PUP. Is that a reasonable setup if geo is able to nuke as well? Also i wasnt able to get his regen/spikes down with brd/rdm nukes. Is there a damage minimum to remove spikes and regen? When I tried several months ago i noticed runes werent working for it either.

Yup, not doing two nukes in one MB is really the kicker that won't be solved until BLM puppets can (1) reliably double-nuke during a MB window like any competent player mage AND (2) give a way to not get locked into Aspir-hell (even the bad players don't tend to wait for a nice juicy SC and... start casting Aspir when they have 70% MP). BLM also has some other more minor perks like -ja spells improving additional nukes (really helpful when you have 2+ BLMs all using -ja), Burn, etc.

It's nice that PUP can do large single nukes, and the Ice Maker change really was wonderful for maintaining 3x Ice... but even that is diluted quite a bit due to the need to keep re-activating in many situations solely to avoid Aspir AI kicking in.

Screenshots of "OMG CHECK OUT THE NUMBERS ON THIS BIG PUPPET NUKE" have always been missing the point
Edit: not in any way criticizing you here, Aerix - appreciate your posts that happened to include damage screenshots, and you weren't implying anything misguided... but a lot of people tend to get especially suckered into the fallacy of relying on big number spike damage syndrome when it comes to PUP nukes.