String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

Yeah you are right, what I meant tho is that BST and PUP suppose to be taken as sum of Master and pet. Pet dont need to make much damage or majority of damage when master can do it, but pet should be able to always contribute some damage too. Supporting pet with lots of acc and attack is perfect for that, because it only let automaton to be consistent, not overpowered. Even if you give it 1000 attack and accuracy, it wont suddenly start doing broken damage, it will just be able to do his small part even against higher level target.

Is Pup/Mnk worth doing once you get ML10 and get Kick attack traits?

I could see it maybe benefiting NIN more due to a lot of +kick gear being Mnk/Nin/Sam, and you should be able to get Daken and a Kick proc.

is 10% KA better than 12% DA and loss of berserk?

Nope

Maybe at 99pup/88mnk

10 KA and 12% DA would be fairly similar in MA potential id think, aswell as losing attack bonus traits, then losing the 25% atk from zerk when pups usually wanting for attack, /mnk just seems like a for fun thing and /war or /drg be your top DD subs.

Once cap raises to 55 would think /drk comes into play too with smite III and PDL III, you lose the MA but gain atk bonus 3 and 10% extra attack from smite, easy trade off in my mind.

While I could be totally wrong, I think you guys might be overestimating Kick Attacks.
Some things you might not have considered:

1) Kick Attack damage is the default damage without weapon equipped (i.e. it will do less damage than a DA)
2) Kick Attack can proc once per round (DA can proc twice, once per fist)
3) Kick Attack cannot proc during WS (DA can)

Now if we were talking about a % number much bigger for KA than DA, the higher number could compensate and be a decent trade-off.
But here we're talking about 10% KA vs 12% DA, no chance the first is gonna beat the second, I'm afraid?

KA is better than DA because PUP has so many great gear options for increasing kick attack damage.

Was mostly running off the assumption that DA might get slightly diminished due to the amount of TA PUP has access to, while KA wont receive any of that


Maybe I'm missing something but what KA gear does pup even have access to?

dragon fangs

This is one very rare option

Had this discussion in another thread previously: https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/56338/new-character-development-system-master-level/11#3599995

tl;dr KA has potential to be slightly faster TP depending on gear and if you have mythic AM3 because it can proc outside of multiattack, but adds no benefit to WS as you said. And /MNK isn't worth it because it offers nothing else of value until Impetus.

I for one look forward to someone asking if they should sub mnk for kick attacks every couple days for the next year and a half.

That's gonna get me through the winter.

Moreso in the WAR threads though, cause think about it. 100% DA why WOULDN'T you sub MNK now, right?

(someone is already typing)

Oh, someone just posted a fun bug in the forums.

Master level is still working for pets when you cap your level. Not that it really does much of anything, but 5 second faster kc battles!

You joke, but I can see people theorycrafting around /THF because of Trick Attack+Assassin and the TA+5% trait in the future.

Fortunately that won't be relevant to PUP, but /DRK55 will make things quite interesting because of Smite III and DL+ III. Stalwart Soul II and Souleater with a WHMaton and Role Reversal may also have niche applications.

Does scanner add magic crit to puppet nukes? Spells vary in damage when equipped. Pet choosing to skil magic bursts in favor of aspir is really rough.


Edit i iniatally didnt see this bug once i was able to replicate it. Pet was doing bone crusher for 2k against Fe'eh without overdrive. So basically kills it in 2 weaponskills lol.

Time to ML Pup and burn some seals XD

Just tested Nyame body and legs Path D with Bone Crusher. Nyame's DMG+5% affects white damage as well as all hits of a WS unlike Xiucoatl B and Mpaca's hands. Both Nyame pieces also seem to be multiplicative with each other, as I had originally postulated, and not additive.

As such, I'll be adding a Nyame Bone Crusher WS set to the node on the first page.

Capped attack, no DA & no damage bonuses:


Mpaca only (+10% WSD):


Nyame body and legs (+10% DMG):


White damage without Nyame:




White damage with Nyame:

Added a Nyame Bone Crusher set and incorporated Crepuscular earring to several sets now that it's in the database.

I opted not to add Crepuscular earring to most Overdrive sets to avoid overreliance on Bean daifuku, as keeping track of which individual sets use Bean daifuku or not (Nyame D ones aside) would generally be a pain in the *** for most people. Plus Grape daifuku's extra Attack is quite good.

But I can adjust this if there is enough interest.

That's surprising. Does the Neo Animator's DMG+10 get multiplied out or added on after the base DMG+n%?

But also:
Small sample size, but your averages of the white damage would indicate an additive 10%, not a multiplicative ~+10.25%
Avg w/o: 693
Avg w/: 756
756/693 = 1.0909 ≈ +9.1%
Given that it returns less than a 1.1, that's likely meaning there's some flooring in there, as always; plus small sample size. If it had been over 1.1, that would have implied it was 1.05x1.05=1.1025

Didn't test Neo Animator in this instance, but last time I did it performed worse than P +1, so I'm not sure the answer would be useful for anything other than to satisfy curiosity.


Sample is definitely too small to conclude anything from that (I just grabbed some random numbers from my log; not specific ones). On the other hand, base WS numbers were very consistent (only ~30 points variance) and even calculating Nyame multiplicatvely the 14,236 Bone Crusher is slightly higher than expected.

Given that Bone Crusher's a 3(iirc)hit WS, I think the higher than expected damage there is an effect of where the +10% is going.
Where the DMG+10% is on each hit, and thusly the total, the WSdmg+10% is just on the first.
Which would also explain why your posted Mpaca example is only ~5% of an increase.

I'm also not surprised that DMG+10 was less effective DPS increase since the +20 to all the relevant base stats would be more weighted due to the WS modifiers.
Though I'm mildly curious with its interactions with Nyame's effect.

A larger sample size of the white damage would be the best way to verify, since WSs will have quirks that could skew results. Especially when they're multihit.
Whereas the basic autoattack is just modified by pDIF and the damnable randomizer.

I'm moderately skeptical of them being multiplicative, cause they're both augments.
However, thanks so much for taking the time to make them and check to see how they're working.
I really can't stress that thanks enough.

Yeah, the purpose of the test was to determine whether Nyame affected all hits of a WS, which Mpaca and Xiucoatl C do not (since they work like WSD). Bone Crusher has fTP transfer though, so all hits should be identical when unaffected by WSD.

As for the bonus being multiplicative, the results are in line with my initial Nyame testing that used single hit WSs, so the issue with multi-hit skewing the results should be a non-factor: https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/52194/string-theory-a-puppetmasters-guide-new/71/#3585281

I was wondering if anyone did testing using truesights and/or Magniplugs idk how you guys are setting pups for your tests but if you're including them as baseline I'd see it as neo being only worthwhile for tanking, but my major thought was if truesights or Magniplugs work as functions of base damage (like truesights is listed as (Magniplug is listed as flat damage boost)) would the 10 base damage be worthwhile for truesights wind builds, 45% ranged damage would affect ws's but idk if 14.5 base damage would be even noticeable vs WSC for automaton.

When do you choose a stp tp set over the default tp set

Usually it depend with the weapon u are using, for ex with Kenkonken you wanna tp in default then switch to stp for am3.
It will also depend on the content and the buffs you get, DT will be malignance, so stp mostly anyway unless its not dangerous.
I use default when i build tp for am3 or when i dont use kkk if i use another weapon and dont need acc/dt.

RIP the PUP dream. Even though, it didn't do much lol

Yep. I put FFXI back on the shelf. Will return if there's a new expansion next year.

Unfortunately, there's almost zero chance for that. They're basically already releasing what amounts to a small expansion in pieces. New storyline (TVR), higher "level cap" (master levels) and supposedly big new content next year (Empy+2-3) among other things.

Empyrean +2/+3 would bring me back, especially if the stats on the PUP set are really good and can help PUP catch up with the regular DD jobs.

For now, I'm back to wait & see mode.

Master damage is actually decent. The problem is the job is supposed to be a pet job, and outside of tanking/overdrive it's the worst pet between the three pet jobs(sorry drg).

Ugh! Blasphemy!