String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

I mean, as I said before Scanner solves the Aspir issues completely at least for Kei or other dark-based mobs. BLMaton works wonderfully reliable for that fight in particular as you don't have to DAD until your maton has run out of MP completely (and you can stretch it with Repair JP).

I posted the damage screenshots precisely because 100k nukes on higher end NMs is new info (to my knowledge) and the Aspir AI is a non-issue for that fight.

Oh, I’m not claiming there aren’t fights where Aspir isn’t an issue. Kei is a good example. But having to get those conditions to avoid Aspir ruining things is simply not a thing player mages have to deal with. Pretty significant disadvantage for Spiritreaver as a general thing.

I have different point of view on that.

Aerix was showing not only good damage but also better AI on dark based mobs. Non dark based mobs require further testing

Compering only Automaton straight to BLM is probably not a good idea. BLM sure have more raw damage etc. but the whole point of PUP is that automaton is part of a duo. If you can for example take 2 ppl for some fight. You can take PUP + GEO. Tank on PUP (Malignance 5/5 makes it very viable option now and you only need pet gear during nuke) and make self SC and let both automaton and GEO to nuke.

Why is ANYONE expecting that pup SHOULD nuke as well as a BLM?

No job should be able to nuke better than a Black Mage.
Let alone a pet job who has all the advantages of a PET.

The fact that the Automaton can nuke and burst viably, as well as it can, is FANTASTIC!

Does anyone honestly think a Puppetmaster should be able to Cure better than a Whitemage? Enfeeble better than a Red Mage? Tank better than a Paladin? Ranged Damage better than a Ranger? etc?

The coolest thing about Puppetmaster is that it can DO all of those things VIABLY and switch roles very quickly if you are prepared for it.

SCH says hello.

(ok ok, it was a silly joke :-P)

If it cant do the same level of a job as the specialist, just bring the specialist, is the typical mindset since everyone has all jobs leveled and geared out equally

Yes with the difference that the Automaton is usually a disposable sacrifice whereas a specialist is tipically not.

Which is quite a big difference and it's the reason why SE has been so scared of buffing pet jobs for the longest time. It's a pretty big advantage when you think about it, compared to players and their 3-5 mins of cooldown with Weakened, supposing you even get a Raise.


But I mean, this is probably not really an issue for PUP.
Other than being an awesome tank in a bunch of niche fights (or for Pet setups) the Automaton isn't really at risk of shadowing any of the other specialist jobs.
Not at all!
To the point that there's actually space for even more power creep/improvement for the pet, if you ask me.

The problem with this is Overdrive.
Overdrive is so *** insanely powerful that I can understand their concerns or saying things like: "Omg if we buff the default pet even more what's gonna happen to Vana'diel when they Overdrive?! It can't handle all that power!!1o1ne!" lol
No but seriously, I think they had concerns like that since when Overdrive became so powerful some time ago.

Just saying what most people seem to think when it comes to jobs that can do multiple things these days. AU jobs and following are some of my favorites simply due to how versatile they can be if you really want to go in depth with them, blu/pup/cor/sch/dnc especially, but honestly im fine where pup is right now, best thing i could hope for now would be better hate management tools, its bst that really needs some love as far as pet jobs go.

DD pets are uh... they're not bad, but they could clearly use more improvement. They kept improving them in small tweaks over the last 2 years but it's still not where it should be if you ask me.
Problem with this though, as I mentioned before, is Overdrive.
Overdrive is already close to be in a "danger" zone. Not there yet of course, but if they keep increasing the normal pet Overdrive will definitely get there and honestly I don't think it's healthy for the game.

Tank pet is super fine, I'm even fine with the fact it can't tank multiple targets.
They'd need to fix the enmity thing though and give some additional tools for hate reset moves.

Mage pets are... uuuh, don't let me get started on it.
BLM pet can be fine when Scanner works (thing is, it sadly doesn't work for all the monsters! And the Mburst Attachments too sometimes glitch out, unless they ninjafixed it recently), but it's SUPER ANNOYING to deal with the Aspir/Drain thing, to the point it makes you wish there could be something to simply turn the goddamn things off.
A small boost to Macc too is needed, unless you intend to use your pet nuking exclusively for Magic Burst, in which case the Macc bonus given by MB is tipically enough (or close to that) to compensate for the lack of macc.

RDM pet is sorta fine if you're soloing, but to make it meaningful it would have to be a sort of content where you cannot use trusts. How many content like that are there today? Limbus? Salvage?
/rolleyes
Either way RDM sucks for Party Play, don't even get me started on that.


Whm pet is... UUUUUNGH, my god. Especially for party play.
Having to rely on that to heal a party is, really, just use another automaton and any WHM trusts will be WAY ABOVE.
Which makes me wonder why the *** can't they apply one of the marvellous Trust AI to the pet.
WHM pet could also use an AoE heal. Curaga would be fine, just give it a longer than usual cooldown.


The solution to most of the mage puppet issues imho would be through an additional menu that allows you to turn on/off a few things, without having to rely on Attachments that would waste your slots.
Simply have an Automaton Menu where you can turn off some things (WS? Drain/Aspir?) and Decide some very very basic/simple stuff like prioritizing debuffs or heals? You can already do that with maneuvers and attachments, to a certain extent, but it's super wonky.

i honestly forget whm frame exists, yeah that's another issue altogether. As far as DD frames go i think its about in line, could use better gear honestly and id be overjoyed if they let stp attachments work without *** up the autos ability to WS effectively, but as it stands its not terrible for what is essentially a disposable robot, bout 60~ish DA and 40ish DT at all times, biggest problem comes from how to handle debuffs but thats been an issue since the beginning.

BST can hit i think upwards of 80~ish DA and spurs a nice boatload of STP, but the jobs also vastly undercapped on haste, only getting and haste at all if it uses the boar and/or familiar if i remember right, aswell as beign even more screwed with debuffs due to rewards awful timer and dying hurts that jobs pets more due to again, lengthy timers ontop of jug costs if that comes into play.

As for the automaton menu, doubt itll happen as i think it conflicts with their whole idea of an automated pet, at best youd get attachments that lock a tier, and we really dont need more situational attachments/maneuvers <_< unless they want to add an extra row of slots to compensate and even then could probably find better things to put there

I agree that there is a certain mindset that only wants the specialist jobs, but I also think there are plenty of players who like to get different setups to work on different types of fights.

Hybrid Jobs are just alot more interesting and versatile to play, imo.

I think having attachments that tweak the AI in different ways is exactly in line with the design of the Puppetmaster class. Any adjusting of AI should be done on either the attachments or the head. Unlike Bst and SMN it is not designed to have fine control of the pet. I think that is a good thing.

trying not to get too much on BST stuff here in the pup thread, but pet haste/stp/da really does NOT matter for building TP on Beastmaster pet.

Between Aymur, Nukumi manoplas and Kumbhakarna there is 1300 ~1800 TP bonus. There can be another 530 TP bonus for warrior pets. Building TP is almost inconsequential for Beastmaster pets. Though Multiattack and haste are not bad at all for white damage.

(FYI BSt can cap DA at 100% for at least Randy and Yoko... they just don't have that much use for it in ready moves.)


@Sechs

I actually used whm bot for Dynamis run the other day. doing dynamis 2x per week, we go serious jobs on 1 day and work at wave 3 goals.

other day we focus on farming wave 1/2 and just unlocking gear upgrades.

This means on farming days we get alot of people on weaker jobs and not as well balanced for support, which is fine for what we are trying to accomplish.

So I am finishing up augmenting puppetmaster collar and we were lacking healing.

I pulled out my soulsouther automaton and stayed in backline removing status ailments /whm whild most heavy curing was done by my bot.
Couldn't sue a trust in that situation, and whm bot worked out just fine.

Oh it was just a comparison really, though id still like bst to have better haste/tp gain as my understanding for ready is the tp scaling doesnt even begin til 1k+? So that 1300 to 1800 gets reduced to 3 and 800, aswell as just increased white dmg as you said.

Aa for attachments, well like i said we really cant fit much more situational ones in unless they want to make combined tier attachments that dont stack but effectively work as 1/2 i.e turbo charger or optic fiber

I use the WHMaton all the time in Omen, personally. As a PUP/RDM (Phalanx with Phalanx+ gear) I often gather up all the trash mobs of a floor for my party and have my maton keep me alive, then let the SMNs Shock Squall -> Thunderspark everything to clean up.

WHMaton is also really useful to curebomb player tanks or DDs if your main healer is too busy. With 2xLight/1xDark and Naga FC/Cure gear it's pretty effective as long as you make sure your own HP values don't fluctuate too much due to Naga's large HP+, which often makes the WHMaton cure you instead. I've been using 2xMephitas's Ring (+1) and Influx Earring to counteract it.

In any case, I think the WHMaton needs some sort of Afflatus: Solace cureskin effect if it continues to be limited to single target cures.

The RDMaton, on the other hand, should have the fastest AI/spellcasting and just spam buffs/debuffs left and right including Haste II/Refresh II on party members. That would make it useful again, particularly for party play if you can't get a real RDM. Haste 2ing everyone would allow BRDs to stick with only Honor March instead of double March.

BLMaton should be fixed so it only casts Aspir when the amount of Dark maneuvers equals or exceeds your Ice Maneuvers or if the maton is below like 200-300 MP and can't cast tier V spells anymore.

All of that would pretty much make those mage matons really useful again without making them OP. And imo I don't believe a PUP should be able to match a BLM for nuking, but BLM has so much more to offer a party than just single-target standard nukes (vastly better timing, -aja/-aga, Impact, Mana Wall supertanking, Burn, Death, Sleepga/Breakga) that even an improved maton wouldn't be a match in a 6-man party.

However, I think having PUP has a viable nuker is pretty useful for (future) Alliance content, especially those who didn't bring any BLMs to start with. PUP can/could start out as a tank or melee DD and then switch to BLMaton for specific fights. It already worked for me in Dynamis-D when I popped Manafont to avoid the Aspir issue--before all of the attachment fixes.

Exactly what kind of further testing do you think is needed? We already know how Scanner AI works: when the puppet is below 75% it will prioritize Aspir over nukes, unless the chance of a resist on a darkness-based spell is too high. Hence the only mobs that realistically avoid the Aspir trap being dark based like Kei.


If you're trying ultra-lowman setups, sure, knock yourself out. I never said that it isn't viable to try to use PUP for nukes. I was just adding to the discussion of Spiritreaver as compared to a real BLM (a comparison that someone else brought up).

If you have access to a real BLM (or SCH), there's really no reason not to prefer that to PUP. PUP nuking to me is kind of a "well, we'll manage with what we've got, and we have no BLM" option. And honestly, I'd add GEO or RDM to that list as well as a preferable second nuker (since they give substantially more utility through buffs/debuffs, and can pitch in with some fairly solid nukes).


This seems unnecessarily risky to me. You're still swapping out of master defensive gear while fighting a mob that can flatten you in that short time you change into pet nuke gear with minimal protection for the master. Aside from showing off that you can do it lowman or PUP style, there's very little point in bothering when it's so much safer and more efficient to just bring a more standard tank/backline setup.


This is totally right, and I say that despite my personal enjoyment of playing with jobs that have some of the dreaded "versatility". Let's be honest, the main reason PUP is more viable these days in serious events is because it finally achieved "specialist" status in a couple of key areas:

1) Automaton tanking is one of the safest ways to tank single mobs thanks to massive DT-, immunity to charm, and no need for a dedicated healer. It's arguably the ideal tank option for those situations (which are fairly common), so people use it.

2) Pet DD/hybrid tanking (particularly with Overdrive): automaton can be a main source of safe damage as a disposable pet with much stronger DPS potential than it used to have. Plus, can tank mobs while simultaneously doing good damage.

Nobody wants to bring PUP to be a melee that has a lower DPS ceiling than many other melee jobs. Or a healer with severe limitations over a player healer (or even some of the trusts, as Sechs astutely pointed out). They will just bring players on a melee-focused job, or healer job. By the same logic, why would people be excited to bring a BLM "minus 1" in the form of a puppet if they have access to an actual player nuker?

I totally get it for situations when that's all you have, lowman stuff, things where job isn't super important (see below re: Dynamis farming), CP parties, etc...

What I don't like is people getting delusional because they saw a screenshot of a puppet hitting an cherry-picked 80k+ magic burst. Let's look at what really matters, and that's sustained damage over the course of an entire fight/event. Got news for ya, Spiritreaver generally loses to player nukers there, outside of some potential in infrequent niche situations (like Kei, where the puppet won't Aspir).


Perfect example of where PUP versatility is great. Low impact content where there's a lot of flexibility in jobs, to allow other people to go on whatever "non-optimal" jobs they want. WHM puppet is good enough to heal for Dyna farming, so no reason you can't do that. You obviously wouldn't want to rely on a puppet healer for more intense stuff though.

FWIW, I've also used BLM puppet in Dyna farming when we've been light on magic damage. It's a great statue killer if you don't have someone else to handle Leaden/Trueflight/nukes/etc., and you can just melee with the master on the beastmen mobs. Spiritreaver can also do a fine job for MBs on wave 1 statue bosses in a pinch.


Fantastic and realistic suggestions.

Specific to Aspir, even the single change of altering the Aspir threshold would be fantastic. The current setting of prioritizing Aspir below 75% MP is just ridiculously high - if they simply changed that to 25% we would already have a substantial improvement. I do love the majority dark maneuver suggestion to add even more control, though.

I wouldn't exactly call the numbers "cherry-picked" as that was the standard nuking damage for the maton over 2 full Kei fights. Aside from the very rare full resist or the GEO and RDM deciding to nuke over the BLM, SMN and the maton, the numbers I posted were the default without any 1hr boosts.

Edit: If you want a parse, even for an infrequent niche situation, here it is for Kei #1. I didn't post it originally because it wasn't a fair comparison since nobody in my group is close to BiS-geared and some aren't even job master. The BLM in particular is still missing Ea (+1), 7% Magic Burst damage from JP and other stuff.

Edit: DPS numbers are inaccurate for Kei specifically, as the parser used the entire 36 mins to claculate it. Actual time spent fighting Kei was about 12 mins, putting BLMaton DPS at roughly 1462.


In order of removed names: BLM, SMN, RDM, PUP Tank #1, PUP Tank #2, COR, GEO.

Also, the parse duration is for the whole Omen run just with a filter added for Kei. We didn't actually fight it for 36 mins straight. Maybe 10 mins at most.

I mean, the fact that it's Kei and therefore an extremely niche situation (thanks to not having to worry about Aspir) is a little "cherry picked" as far as applicability to more general nuking situations. I get that it's not just the one screenshot of a pumped up 99999 nuke (like some past laughable attempts on this forum by others to exaggerate the ability of a BLM puppet by doing dumb ***like posting screenshots of nukes on Qutrubs that take massively inflated magic damage).

I'm really not criticizing you or your posts in any way though. You were very clear about the situation and represented everything pretty transparently. My warning is more to other people who might not have grasped that this is a somewhat unique scenario, and that it's much harder to deliver sustained high damage puppet nukes on the majority of targets in the game.

EDIT: one thing your post does show, though, is that even with your fairly impressive numbers on puppet nukes... 485 dps on Kei from a primary nuker is well under what a good BLM should be able to do on the same fight. Mostly down to the ability to hit multiple MBs in each SC window.

Is that using a RUN+BLM+SCH setup with Gambit/Rayke for comparison or a dual PUP setup making skillchains? Because the former is a lot more focused and effective for BLM DPS. Not to mention my damage got messed up by RDM and GEO nuking as well as the COR WSing. I'm pretty sure the BLMaton could do a lot better under less messy circumstances. I'm just randomly doing my tests while farming Omen with a bunch of people, so I did not ask them to let me test things properly.

Also, I just went out to Escha - Zi'Tah with a friend and tested the BLMaton with Scanner. It did not use Aspirs on Shockmaw (70% Dark according to BGwiki), but it did use them on Fleetstalker (85% Dark). So the NM doesn't need to have a ton of dark resistance to make the Scanner useful.

I haven't actually fought Kei in months, but we'd typically go with a PUP or PLD tank (only rarely a RUN, just due to who has what jobs leveled... and even then, Rayke/Gambit only impact a handful of the SCs in a Kei fight due to JA timers), SCH GEO and 1-2 BLM. Sometimes random COR or melees tagging along. I honestly can't remember actual DPS numbers, but even without Gambit/Rayke when using two BLMs, both BLMs would have been substantially over 485 DPS (even while stepping on each other's toes a bit with the repeated element resist wall). And that's also not assuming perfect optimization, certainly wouldn't have been uncommon for my runs to also have interference with some interrupted SCs, SCH or GEO nuking over a BLM on occasion, etc.

I'm intrigued though, kinda want to make my LS head out to Kei this week for giggles and test it out, check DPS, etc. For the nuking, I can bring my PUP and my alt's BLM (2100jp with good but not super-HQ gear, lacking some relevant Ea/Amalric +1 pieces), tell everyone else not to nuke, and see how it goes!

Also, one thing important to mention about parses is that the longer a fight drags on, the lower your DPS usually drops unless your performance is constant for the entirety of it. Since we only had myself, a single BLM and a SMN as main nukers we took a fairly long time overall to finish off Kei, meaning more chances for resists, missed MBs etc.

If you end up killing Kei faster than us you'll probably see vastly higher DPS numbers from everyone compared to ours.

So parse says 1,050,000 damage with dps of 485. 1,050,000 damage/485 dps= 2164.9 seconds. 2164.9seconds/60 =36.09 min. It looks like the dps its calculating is from the whole 36 min run, not the reported ~10 min spent fighting kei. So if it was truly 10 min fight, 1,050,000 damage over 600 seconds would be 1750 dps. Not sure what an "acceptable" dps would be but 1750 is mote accurate to what is actually happening.

Hmm, good catch, I should have checked the numbers. I assumed adding a filter to Scoreboard would restrict the DPS to time spent fighting that particular monster, but apparently not. Also checking my screenshot timestamps the fight took about 12 mins, putting maton DPS at roughly 1462. I'll edit that into my post above for future readers.

Good catch with that dps. Also going back to that Automaton vs BLM. AFAIK its very common to bring SMN to Kei to MB with Ramuh and I havent seen many people jumping on that strategy saying its only one MB per 20+ sec, so just go BLM. Now we have Automaton who looks like it can nuke for even more than BP and tbh SMN looks more like a job that you can compare against here, but maybe I'm wrong. Also 1462 DPS looks far more viable against even BLM no?

What's the most efficient HTBF you can solo on PUP as a real solo player? On which difficulty?
SP1 and 2 allowed, but no mules or prebuffs, just trust (which barely affect PUP anyway, alas...)

I would guess Garuda. Just use Steam Jacket and Mana Jammer and something to proc White !! with pet abilities (like flash or voke attachments).

Garuda works, but takes reduced Skillchain damage unless you WS her personally, which isn't worth it, so just avoid Speedloaders. Shiva is also easy as shown in my solo vid from a year ago before attachment buffs, even though you can't even remove the Additional Effect (Steam Jacket is all you need).

Then there's Kam'lanaut who requires double Armor Plate (or capped PDT through gear) and no Speedloaders (he absorbs SC damage sometimes), but is pretty easy if you PUP/COR and never touch him directly due to hate resets. His HTBF drops Wyrm Blood in addition to REMA stones, so it's generally a bit more lucrative than Avatars. Just Deploy your maton on him and then move to a safe distance and watch him melt. Drawback is the frequent zoning and having to skip the cutscene each time you do the fight, but I think it still pays off in the end.

I wouldn't recommend farming any HTBF without OD. You either spend ages fighting with no resets or you get a quick fight and have to spend time resetting 1hrs. The latter is generally far more efficient.

Hmmm Garuda is listed on bg wiki as getting physical resist taken off with pet ability.

You have to remove magical resistance to get full Skillchain damage. Doesn't really matter though since she dies super fast to physical WS damage anyway (after you remove her physical resistance as you described).

With OD I bet you just send the pet and stay out of range yourself?
Also with OD I bet you could handle VD probably, or will I have to settle for D?
I'll check your Shiva video, get a better idea and maybe ask more detailed questions about gear and attachments.

And yes, 5 mins fight + reset sounds good to me.
When I do these things I get bored quickly anyway so after a bunch of runs I'd stop regardless out of boredom anyway.

Keep in mind that my video is like a year old, so the attachment setup isn't optimal anymore for damage.

I could make a short Kam'lanaut HTBF video sometime soon if people want one. It's a pretty simple fight, though.

Not sure about others but I'd welcome a Garuda and/or Kam'lanaut D+ fights video.

My gear isn't as good as yours but it's not the worst around either so I'm confident I should be able to handle at least D quite comfortably.