String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

Just someone who has played all three. Unless all you care about is solo play/tanking. But, we can compare it to SMN and BST np lol

We were supposed to be the jack of all roles but SE has(had?) forgotten..

With Mpaca gear we're currently very, very close to the damage output of a MNK even without our Automaton. It's just our pet that is really lagging behind.

Nice! I guess I'll stop trying to make the automaton work and just go full master DD then..the hybrid dream is dead.

I wouldn't say that. Mpaca lends itself well to a dual TP setup even with Godhands (currently our best master weapon) and you really only have to "sacrifice" 3 slots (head, legs, back) to make a DD maton viable. The rest of your TP gear isn't hugely different from a full master DD setup--perhaps slower in terms of TP, but Mpaca is much safer than something like the fastest TP set that uses Ryuo/Herc.

ItemSet 382640
(I added this set to the guide)

Even if the maton lags behind a fully buffed master it can still make up somewhere between 5-10% of your total DPS. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, but comparatively that still makes a bigger impact than a offensive JA like Impetus would. Ideally we'd have something like a 50/50 split, but SE would have to stop being so scared of buffing pets.

PUP is not even close to MNK and I know that from both sheets and in game experience.

Kick Attacks rate of 44%
Impetus with Bhikku body +1 - this JA alone is ~40% boost to DPS with Veret. At capped attack, uncapped attack its even more.
Footwork - 25%+ boost to dps with Godhands Tornado Kick build.
Focus - Another significant damage buff
Damage Limit III
Smite II

EDIT: I would estimate PUP being 40%+ behind Impetus Veret MNK and Footwork Godhands builds. More if attack is uncapped.

A simple way to buff pets without creating specific buffs for them is to create a new trait for Pet jobs that gives a certain % of some specific master stats to the pets.
Even with simple stats like att or acc without getting into complicated ones like multiattack, haste, storetp etc.

It wouldn't make Pet: specific gear useless, it wouldn't make pets too powerful (ahem... hello Overdrive) and it wouldn't be enough to split damage 50/50 but it would surely be nice to close the gap.

That would also make support jobs without pet specific buffs somehow indirectly and mildly relevant for pet jobs too.
That would create a possible small incoherence with food and rolls that are specific for pets though, and I guess SE can't be arsed to address that and that's the reason why they refused to go that route?

I didn't say PUP was equal to MNK, only that it was very close (in terms of a jack-of-all-trades pet job vs. a dedicated DD). Regarding Smite: PUP99/DRK55 will have access to Smite III once SJ levels are raised.

I guess I can do a controlled parse when I have time, if absolutely necessary, but I'm not sure what exactly that would prove except that MNK is still ahead--which it should be considering job roles--by a large enough margin where it matters for minmaxing. But there's no content in the game that absolutely requires a DPS check like that (except Sheol C farms where MNK sucks anyway), so a PUP can fulfill the role of a blunt DD more than sufficiently.

And a good PUP beats a bad or mediocre MNK any day.

You said they are very very close. ~40% behind is not very close at all. Its very hard to do a controlled test, because you would need to have target with enough HP. On trash mobs your DPS is very influenced by engaging, switching targets. Victory Smite will also look worse on parse when half of them will kill the target and only hitting half of hits. Also Austar showed simulations on Impetus MNK few times and the lower and upper DPS is very far from each other, so your test would also need to be very very long to get true and valid average DPS.

At this point MNK will have access to /DRG and 10% WS damage to all hits, which will result in even bigger difference between those jobs, than PUP subbing /DRG too probably.

The difference is nowhere near 40% in any in-game scenarios I've tested. It's closer to 15-20% and less when factoring in the Automaton. Big enough to make MNK a better DD, yes, but imo "very, very close" enough considering PUP is not actually a dedicated DD job. Certainly a far cry from the days where we only had Tali'ah and Taeon gear.

Also remember last time you were so convinced in Discord that PUP couldn't match COR SB based on spreadsheet numbers and I had to spend time to prove otherwise with a controlled parse? Spreadsheets and simulations aren't always 100% accurate and can often contain errors or oversights--but more than likely just doesn't account for every single factor that comes into play in-game, such as enmity control or JA delays.

Of course I may be wrong, but that's why I always test and double-check my claims and post them here.


/DRK adds an extra tier of the PDL trait and lots of Attack to help with actually capping that out. /DRG is amazing, no doubt, but outside of significant buffs I don't see it beating /DRK in most fights.

Nah, that was completely different. That was only gut feeling, since there is no PUP sheet or simulation that I know of and also I didn't have R15 KKK or good geared PUP at that time, so I didnt have in game experience with it too.

It's not 15-20%, its much more, but like I said, MNK upper and lower end of DPS is very wide, because of nature of Impetus and also how massive is damage difference when you get few lucky TA proc on Tornado, so you would need very long test for valid averages. I think the best test would be probably fighting Ngai few times, but I for sure won't attempt this. I don't have Segments to throw away like this :D

If you have a well-geared PUP now feel free to parse it yourself and post your results here. I can definitely admit I'm wrong if there's solid in-game proof to back up spreadsheets/simulations.

That said, Ngai is about as far from an ideal target for a controlled parse as I could possibly imagine. Way too many mechanics that would mess with the results. I haven't tried meleeing Apex Archaic Cogs yet as I heard they were better suited for manaburns, but they seem like decent targets as their TP moves aren't too disruptive.

Also I'm not sure why mentioning MNK's upper and lower ends of DPS even matters unless you only parse for like 3-5 mins at a time. That wouldn't be anywhere enough to be conclusive. If you used nothing but MNK's Impetus or Footwork numbers for comparison then of course it'd do far more than PUP (such as during a zerg), but I hope that's not the case.

While there are several fights that can potentially be very short for an extremely powerful team, it's not a realistic indicator for average job performance. The majority of people will spend a lot more time fighting. For them it would be valuable information whether their extremely well-geared PUP would be worth bringing over a MNK that someone slapped together because they thought they had to due to fight mechanics.

Optimal use case of MNK would be 3min with Impetus R15 Veret and 2 minutes with R15 Godhands (half of that 2min being Footwork Tornado and half Raging Fists). Ofc if attack is uncapped (on cogs it might be), then Godhands might use Howling Fist maybe. Its hard to say without knowing exact pdif values. 5min cycles like this can go as long as you want ofc. My MNK and PUP are ML20, so I don't plan to visit Apex till we see another ML cap. I still have many other jobs that require EP and not enough time XD

I very much doubt most MNKs minmax weapon usage in every fight like that instead of just sticking with Vere's AM3 or just Godhands, especially in endgame fights with a lot of stuff going on. It's these (potentially) ultra-minmaxed simulations that make me skeptical of spreadsheet claims because maybe only a handful of players could actually replicate that on a regular basis--while possibly needing third-party tools in the process to automate things. Sure, weapon swapping every 2-3 mins is not a big deal on paper, but making sure you don't lose extra TP and having perfect JA usage over the course of longer fights doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for error.

And parsing anything but ML capped jobs would be pointless as randomly leveling up during a parse and getting new traits/skill ups could skew results drastically between the jobs.

I mean, the only thing that needs to be done is just swapping weapon when Impetus is down and up. It's not that hardcore. There was person on RDM or NIN forum who was switching weapon (between katana and sword or dagger and katana, I dont remember) after every WS to make more optimal skillchain. Now that's hardcore to me, but not weapon switch twice in 5 minutes.

I dont think parsing while leveling from ML21 to 22 would be a problem, since it will probably take 1h+ before you get another ML.

A simulation can perform everything you'd want it to, including JA delay which was one of the first things I added to all of mine. I believe the spreadsheets add them to some degree as well.

My H2H one covers all jobs, I just haven't played in awhile to get PUP's base stats and without the most accurate automaton information it would be master only, even for skill chains.

It was used as an example that even during a zerg that a parse isn't conclusive of much. You used to see a lot of "If a fight is X minutes" as an argument for weapons such as mythics which is why I used 3 or 5 minute duration fights to show the range you can have even with the same character. My simulations can run for any duration, though. As well as simulate a CP style party with engage delays between mobs.

I don't go so far as to switch weapons in my results. And Verethragna AM3 is crap anyways unless you're starting fights with 3K TP which isn't always a reasonable consideration.

A parse is only an indication of how well you are playing, though. You can do two hours of parse on each and the second job you could be bored, tired, hungry, whatever and not pay attention to everything you should be. Not to mention anyone else in your party keeping up buffs and debuffs. Parses should be used to find unknowns.

I would be curious about such simulation for pup, even against Veret only MNK if switching weapons is not possible.

PUP has a 1 min hate dump with ventriloquy deactivate as well so they need to hold back much less then a Monk, especially in Gaol.

So there is the variable of Monk doing too much more damage in a burst pulling hate in Gaol causing them to die or have the dds buffs wiped lowering party damage. Apex damage meter is not as accurate to current endgame due to hate.

If you want to be that accurate, MNK is only used for Ngai in Gaol and it's tanking it, so can go all out or even should. Anything else below T3 with buffs is a joke and without buffs MNK will never pull hate over tank.

Outside of Gaol you have Super Jump now, so you wont grab hate on any longer fight anymore.

Also if you consider survivability, you are talking about MNK, a job with lowest TP feed, tons of HP, counter, ohshit SP2. Lets talk about PUP TP feed and how it can die from AoE spam maybe :)

This looks perfect for any DPS situation where you have adequate buffs. What WS would you use with this?

Pup doesn’t have nothing for survivability either. It gets a zero to full hp healing job ability every 2 mins with role reversal and the option to have Whm/Rdm automaton. Sp2 on Whm auto is aoe healing benediction for party.

But I agree Pup gains less with the mastery levels patch now that all dds get a full hate dump job ability outside of gaol. Pup loses the big advantage of having ventriloquy and doesn’t get much to compensate.

Pretty sure you'll use howling fists if not att capped and probably VS/SP if att capped.

As I said, it's not a big deal on paper, but in actual content where things are hectic and you have to pay attention to more than just DPS it has potential to cost you an extra attack round of TP. Either way, I'll parse with weapon swapping in the future so there's no doubt at the end.


That's actually fair. We can pick this back up in the future then barring any major job adjustments, assuming I don't find the time to test it myself before then.


I haven't kept up with everything posted on that matter so that's good to know about the JA delay.

For the record, I'm not saying simulations and spreadsheets are inherently inaccurate, but human error or additional unknown factors/settings are always a possibility and I'd rather double-check something (given my own experiences with the two jobs so far) than simply take someone's word for it. Plus almost nobody else ever seems to post any test results in this thread, so it always ends up as one word against another and that helps nobody.


Since so far we only have a 40% estimate by SimonSes as to the gap between jobs: if either you or SimonSes feels like posting the results of a 10 to 20 min simulation here that would be very welcome for reference. It'd be very useful to compare the results to my own future testing.

As I said, I'm fully willing to admit I'm wrong if both tests say I am, but at the moment I still have reason to believe the gap is nowhere near that big, especially with the Automaton contributing a little.


Last time I recall AM3 being discussed (a long time ago) it was supposed to be a net gain, but good to know that's another thing I may want to test in the future. Almost every other MNK I know always builds to AM3, so I'm guessing there's not much awareness about it being bad.


Those factors are pretty much opposite of what I consider a "controlled parse". When I do my testing I generally make sure that buffs (especially rolls) remain fully consistent and I don't test it all at once so boredom or exhaustion don't mess with the results, i.e. I parse in small bursts. I don't just do all my tests for the sake of the community but also to improve myself, so having crappy results benefits nobody.

Either way, a parse may not be super accurate, but it should be accurate enough to corroborate whether there's actually a 40% DPS gap between the jobs or not.

I agree that MNK is definitely more than capable of surviving any enmity accidents, but PUP also isn't that squishy as it generally wears plenty of PDT/DT/MEVA in their standard DD sets and the maton generally won't randomly die from AoE spam thanks to Repair. Plus having an instant self-heal on demand like Bixbite mentioned.

As for /DRG: it's definitely very strong and the utility will surely make it a must-have in most endgame. However, you'll be losing out on Berserk/LR and Attack Bonus traits--and even MNK can often benefit greatly from that extra Attack due to all the PDL these days. PUP/DRK or PUP/WAR (will) essentially have the benefits of Super Jump while also having more Attack on average than a MNK outside of superbuff situations. WSD traits are fantastic, but not every battle is fought with (over)capped Attack and it makes a difference, especially if you aren't using HF.

Again, just to stress this, I'm not looking to compare the jobs at their peak in extreme/niche situations but rather their average performance, because the latter is actually useful information for the majority of the playerbase.


Godhands+Howling Fist reigns supreme for master damage at the moment regardless of buffs; other options don't come close enough, unfortunately. AM3 KKK with the Automaton may close the gap in that regard, but it's unlikely and I haven't tested it enough to make sure yet.

Well, my issue is I hardly touched Odyssey content, so I'm nowhere close to being able to obtain any of the Mpaca pieces let alone getting them fully augmented.

I also have no group to do Odyssey with. I tried to solo it but I suck at the game, apparently. I still can't solo Lady Lilith on my MNK or THF just to give you an idea on how terrible a player I've become.

Unfortunately, I can't help with the augmentation or group parts, but I could help you get the Mpaca unlock at the very least.

Wasn't one Mache Earring +1 enough with Godhands?

Other than just making a class and some new gear, it would be easy to add, since it doesn't have any other JAs to add that aren't already in.

Human error is more likely in a parse than in a program. If I mess something up I can just say oops and change what I need as far as settings go and take 30 seconds to get a new result.

I think 40% for a full five minute cycle is a bit high, but I wouldn't be surprised if it could reach that point in certain setups.

I don't think anyone besides me has ever checked from starting at 0 TP. The spreadsheets don't without some extra work. For H2H it's only 20% extra at a one time proc, unlike every other weapon so it's pretty minimal and AM1 will even overwrite itself.