Animator's Workshop: A Puppetmaster's Guide 2.0

Basically it's going by how many are consumed while OD is basically just making active maneuvers count as extra.

So I have a question. I'm in a group trying to get JP at the moment, and I'm having an issue with my automaton not magic bursting off of summoner made skillchains. Has anyone else had issues with this, and if not, does anyone have any tips? I have on the right attachments and I'm popping either 3 ice or 2 ice 1 water maneuvers like normal, but midge will either cast a t5 nuke that isn't made to magic burst off of the skillchain or he'll try to ask if with 90% mp still. I'm just confused. I've never had this happen before

Could be as simple as it is not reading the BP as a WS so it does not see a SC going off. With the code SE has for FFXi, any number of glitches or bugs could account for this.

Also if I'm fighting apex mobs, should I stack more mab or macc for pet

barely touched the mb side of puppet for cp but id think just a tranq 2 and some macc food would be enough for basic crabs depening on puppet gifts, really would be easier to go the way of scing with you and/or the puppet though as mbing can be a royal pain

I tried MB back when I needed CP, and I find PUP nuking to be pretty terrible in a CP party. I had solid nuking gear for the time (pre-Omen), and setting up for Macc I could get decent enough damage and generally minimal issues with resists. It's even easier now with access to stuff like Tali'ah +1/+2 gear, AF and Relic reforged feet, Adad Amulet, Enmerkar Earring, etc.

However... puppet AI is just WAY too slow to sustain in a decently paced CP party. You'll get 1 MB nuke off one SC, maybe a 2nd crappy one if you're lucky. And the next nuke up, the puppet will tend use a different element than what you WANT it to use. Oh, and it will use water on crabs a lot (because innate Scanner effect on BLM head = sees low chance of resist even though water is garbage on crabs). It's also annoying to have to deactivate and reactivate constantly to refill MP and avoid stupid Aspir AI kicking in - not bad to deal with occasionally, but mindless CP party for a couple hours? Gets VERY tedious.

If you have any half competent mage with access to T4 nukes or better, they'll stomp all over the puppet in overall MB damage through doing multiple MBs per SC, and always use the right nukes. Even though the puppet can get a higher max damage nuke in ideal situations, with 3x Ice, on a single spell, it won't win over time. And if you don't have half competent mages, you're better off not using a MB oriented CP party strategy anyway, so there ya go.

Now, all that being said, Spiritreaver can have a use in CP if you're just doing like a solo w/ trusts or lowman party (like, I'd go duo with a friend sometimes on weaker apex mobs, like stuff in Moh Gates) and the SCs aren't flying as quickly. The pet can keep up, and it adds a lot more damage than trusts or something, if you don't have real nukes. But the typical multiple nuker fast paced Apex Crab/Jagil parties? Spiritreaver just can't keep up, in my experience.

PUP in general also does have some place in MB oriented CP parties... with a puppet as the tank. Not a half-assed nuker.

Far from an expert, but I had Rouleteau nuking in a CP party the other night, and with both amplifiers on and 2/3 ice maneuvers I saw some good numbers, highest was 70k.

In regards to MACC/MAB, I totally just ignored MACC since you get such a huge boost from a magic burst. Doubt there's much endgame you'll be using Soulreaver on, but I would say probably stack more MACC instead of praying you don't get resisted on every nuke.

For the SC question, have you got your Auto deployed for when both WSs go off? I had the issue that my pet would nuke the wrong elements or not cast on MBs if I deployed them after the 2nd WS, but if Rouleteau was deployed on the mob for both WSs going off, I found a lot more consistency in the nukes (I.E. Actually casting Blizzard 5/Stone 5/LolWater 5)

The issue I found wasn't that high numbers for a single nuke were bad, but that overall frequency of appropriate nukes is way, way lower than any half conscious player. Nobody should really expect a puppet to compete with BLM SCH SMN for nukes, but you'll even get smoked over time by "lesser" nukers like RDM GEO. Never pay attention to single nuke numbers, look more at parsing your overall results over a longer stretch.

I guess PUP *can* fill a slot as a kinda subpar nuker if you already have a couple real mages in the party, but man... it's also a lot of busywork maintaining automaton MP with deactivate/activate, redoing ice manuevers, etc. (sometimes causing you to straight up miss a MB opportunity or be poorly set and get crap damage). Personally, I have a hard time justifying it for the occasional solid nukes that don't outweigh the cumulative damage from any player controlled mage who is putting in way less effort.

I found it far better to just serve in other roles when partying for CP on PUP rather than trying to force it as a kinda bad nuker. Had more success doing:
* Puppet tank for a nuking CP party
* If you have enough support/buffs (and Kenkonken AM3 helps a ton), you can even serve dual roles of tanking AND opening frequent SCs by yourself (master + puppet) for your backline.
* Just a straight up melee job participating in a skillchain with others (TBH, I kinda preferred something like RDM puppet here for hastes, enfeebles, occasional cures, and some weaker nukes; a meleeing puppet will screw up too many SCs, a nuking puppet will be even worse than usual in this setup since you'll often get caught in master TP gear when the puppet nuke goes off)

Or, PUP is one of the better CP solo/duo jobs. It might not be a bad one to just go out and kill some weaker Apex mobs (or blaze through Reisenjima) on your own time solo, and save your CP party time for other jobs. "Self" SCs galore with you and puppet, can just set up some speedloaders and go to town spamming WS, maybe some moderate additional damage from a MBing trust (Shanotto II, AATT, Iroha II, Arciela II, etc.)

YMMV, and if you end up managing to be decent on nukes in a party, more power to ya. It's kind of a headache for mediocre results though, so be ready for that (and possibly putting off the other people in your party when they see ridiculous stuff like a crappy Water MB on a crab from your idiot puppet).

Hey all looking for a bit of advice. I am trying to solo cp on triple bats, and its going ok, but I am finding I am getting TP WAY faster then my auto and I am unsure why. Is this common? her is my set up for when both myself and auto are engaged :

main={ name="Ohtas", augments={'Accuracy+70','Pet: Accuracy+70','Pet: Haste+10%',}},
range="Animator P",
ammo="Automat. Oil +3",
head="Tali'ah Turban +1",
body="Tali'ah Manteel +1",
hands={ name="Herculean Gloves", augments={'Accuracy+5 Attack+5','"Triple Atk."+3','STR+10','Accuracy+14','Attack+3',}},
legs="Tali'ah Sera. +1",
feet="Tali'ah Crackows +1",
neck="Shulmanu Collar",
waist="Moonbow Belt",
left_ear="Brutal Earring",
right_ear="Telos Earring",
left_ring="Epona's Ring",
right_ring="Niqmaddu Ring",
back={ name="Visucius's Mantle", augments={'DEX+20','Accuracy+20 Attack+20','Pet: Haste+10',}},

Auto is VE head SS body I am at 194 JP Auto set up is:
Optic fiber 1&2, Repeater
Turbo Charger 2, Scope 3
Inhibitor 1&2, Tension spring 2
Speedloader 2, Condensor (debating if i need that)
Stabilizer 4. Coiler

I thought the P animators make the Auto run out of melee range, did I dream that?

-II animators do that.

No P just means it gets a bunch of extra stats. It's the ones that II in them that make it ranged. So like animator P II or Divinator II etc

When meleeing along side the puppet, I prefer to get TP faster than the auto tbh. I don't want the Auto to fire off a WS between me closing double light and opening the next one. When that happens, I end up closing the first light SC and not getting the SC bonus from the auto. Feels worse than gaining TP faster myself and always being the opener + closer of a 3 step.

VS > AS > VS, VS > AS > VS, so doing 2x the WS as the puppet. Also, if using speedloaders the auto will delay closing an SC to the last second, so after you WS, by the time the puppet closes, I often have almost 1ktp again anyway, so I can close 3 step, and get 800+TP before the pet fires off a random WS.

Edit: Could remove the condenser for a second turbo charger and the repeater for a second speedloader. Remove scope 3 and swap to Target Marker. With OF1+2 it's 7.5% evasion ignored, so 75 less evasion at 1k evasion compared to scope 3's ~60 acc with 1 wind and 2 OF. Swap the tension spring to Attuner.

You shouldnt need condenser at all for that setup, also if puppets lagging a bit consider varar rings if it drops the puppet a hit

I made a post earlier in this thread for BLM puppet to have Ice Maker, Amplifiers and Mana Channelers...stack 3x Ice and deploy immediately after 2nd ws or as the sc animation is active. With the right gear setup (i.e. MAB > MACC), you will hit 99k consecutively.
You may find yourself de/reactivating often even with mythic to avoid overloads as Ice seems to be worse than Fire Maneuvers.

The last time I did this was when I went to help Kuro/Mysticat CP and they would light sc. A few nukes only hit 60-70k, but could rather be seen as a constant 99k Thunder or Fire.

I would suggest that you go with VE for CP though, even over ranger with Flame Holder and either Inhibitors or Speedloaders or one of each of the latter. Shijin > Bone Crusher will more than suffice in DPS.

Not to sound fanboyish but i ended up finding this video on youtube randomly when taking a break from the game and it intrigued me to come back. Decided to 99 it and im having a blast, and the guide was extremely helpful and well detailed in making the learning curve easier.

One issue i noted in the guide for new players: The skillup attachment build exceeds the light threshhold (repair kit IV can't be equipped because of it). I ended up reducing the kit to lvl1 and that did it, but i just wanted to mention that for newer pups, you can't really fit all of those attachments without gifts, unless there is something I am missing.

In any event, thanks for your hard work. I've watched it several times for assistance.

The problem is that you shouldn't have TIME to constantly re-set 3x Ice Manuevers with Ice Maker in a CP party with any decent skillchain speed. The SCs should be flowing non-stop, and you'll be missing a ton of them. It can work for, like, a 2 man + trust party. But not a serious high speed CP group. In that case, even if a real mage is doing half your damage on nukes, they're probably also landing 3x or more nukes (quantity wise) so they'll far outperform your puppet over time. Even though the puppet might hit some max number nukes with the proper (and finicky to maintain) setup.


This I agree with. Or, just be a H2H melee alongside another melee to do a SC (and maybe use WHM or RDM puppet). Or, tank mobs with your puppet. Point being, there are more efficient ways for PUP to get CP than trying to force a nuke strategy.


Use both Turbo Chargers, make sure you keep 1 wind maneuver up. Otherwise, your gear/attachments look reasonable.

For CP purposes, I generally had better luck with VE/VE (which also frees up the attachment slots you were using for ranged stuff). For attachments, the rest of what you put mostly makes sense (except I doubt you need the Condenser). Personally, I like to go heavier on the Coliers.

For gear, you aren't using crazy stuff. If your puppet is lagging too much behind you, I'd maybe sacrifice a couple master accessory slots for puppet ones. Maybe 1 earring/ring for master, 1 for puppet: Enmerkar Earring and a Varar Ring are really nice swaps for pet TP generation.

I also have macros for full master TP and full pet TP, which are occasionally nice if one or the other gets lucky with multi-hits or something and the other lags way behind. Just do a quick swap into fully pet-focused TP gear (or vice versa) and it/you will catch up in a couple attack rounds.

Right, I suppose my suggestion was more for soloists. For a CP party,
remove the Flame Holder and start off with using wind and light to build timers. After you've got sufficient time on maneuvers, swap to 3x fire, and spam skillchains.

Apply the same idea to Ice Maker for BLM puppet, but still only deploy at closing WS or skillchain animation. Also, keep this frame with high HP or it will keep casting drain.

Drop Condenser, Scope 3, Tension Spring 2, Stabilizer 4.

Instead, equip Turbo Charger 1, Coiler II, Attuner, Target Marker.

Ranged Attacks on the Automaton are usually kinda subpar and even with Repeater, the boost to TP gain is fairly minimal. According to the old wiki, VE head + SS Body has a RA delay of 36 seconds, so with a 18% Double Shot rate (Wind+Light), you're looking at something like 2 procs roughly every 4 minutes (unless my math is off). I'd recommend replacing it with Speedloader 1 for a nice increase to Skillchain damage, but the call is yours.

Stick to Fire+Wind+Light maneuvers. Fire will boost Store TP and Skillchain Bonus, Wind will add Haste, Light will increase everything, including the Double Attack from Coilers.

Also, although you are wearing a lot of Pet: Accuracy gear, you might want to eat Shiromochi for extra Accuracy, as your Automaton might not be capped without JP and lack of Pet stats on your JSE cape.

That said, even with all of the aforementioned, the Master TP gain is pretty much always faster than the Automaton due to multiattack gear options if you ever start moving away from certain Tali'ah pieces (especially the legs, as they offer no multiattack, Store TP or Pet: Haste).

Thanks for the advice, changing the Auto's attachments really helped kick things up a bit, skillchains are much better now.

Thinking about making my next aeonic, and I wanted something PUP could use. I've heard a few people say that Godhands are only really useful for Master-Only/self skillchaining situations. Does anybody here use Godhands and not suffer from Pet acc issues? I'd like to see what setup you are using in order to accomplish a good tp flow, particularly soloing Apex mobs.

Thanks

I'm using PUP only in event or when i'm in solo situation like solo NM, i'm a pure lazy pup and just let my puppet doing the job, so for me aeonic is not usefull.

I'm kind of curious why you'd make an aeonic to cp...

Idk, because it's fun to use? What else would a PUP or MNK use it for honestly? They rarely get invites as DD otherwise.

It was an example though, it's one of the main things I do in my off-time, and it's how I've solo'd pretty much all of my SAM/DRG job points. Solo'd every point of my DRG with Trishula making Lv4 SCs.

I wasn't saying to make one solely for CP, was mainly asking who has it and what setup they were using for stuff (CP) with their pet.

So I went back and tried my multistep SC setup for CP at Outer Ra'kaznar bats.
Came out with >3000k cp/hr, since campaign is up so I guess cut that number in half (1500k cp/hr). I was easily reaching capped CP per kill even without Mecistophinis mantle.
Here is the setup I used. I'm pretty confident it can be improved, but I had to do with the gear I already owned!


Trusts
Amchuchu (August will WS, messing up the SC)
Cornelia
Kupofried
Koru-Moru
Yoran-Oran (doesn't cast Haste, won't mess up with Koru-Moru)


Attachments
Speedloader 1 & 2
Inhibitor 1 & 2
Attuner
Target Marker
Coiler 2
Stabilizer 4
Optic Fiber 1 & 2
Turbo Charger 1 & 2

Maneuvers Used: Light, Wind, Fire

Notes:
I originally used Coiler 1&2 and no Stabilizer but my Pet's acc was occasionally falling under 90% since when I started using Sublime Sushi instead of Shiromochi/Akamochi, so I decided to swap that. I guess it also depends on how much pet: acc gear you have on master.

Master Gear
Othas
Hizamaru Somen +2
Tali'ah Manteel +1
Tali'ah Gages +1
Tali'ah Seraweels +1
Tali'ah Crackows +1
Shulmannu Collar
Telos Earring
Cessance Earring
Epona Ring
Niqmaddu Ring
Visucius Mantle (Acc+30, Att+20, Pet: Haste+10, Acc/Racc/Att/Ratt+20)
Moonbow Belt

Food: Sublime Sushi

Notes: I tried a lot with Godhands, but with my gear I just can't get to the desirable levels of acc/multiattack/stp without sacrificing pet stats as well. The few times the SC was working of course it was better (higher base damage, Radiance > L3 Light etc) but it simply wasn't working in all of the steps most of the time, CP/hr was lower.
I've been also messing around with my Herculean Gloves (TA+4), with HQ Sushi I'm confident I could've reached the necessary level of accuracy (~1350) even without Tali'Ah Gages +1.


SC used
Five steps:
Shijin Spiral > Armor Piercer > (compression) > Victory Smite > (fragmentation) > Armor Shatterer > (l3 light) > Victory Smite > (double light)

The "key" is all in knowing exactely when to hold TP and when to go as fast as possible, judging by your pet's current TP.
If you go too early and he has TP, he will go too early too, which means most of the time you won't be able to do the 5th step of the SC.
Ideally you want to WS when your pet is at around 500-600 TP. That way it will take him a couple of seconds to reach 1000 and WSing, during that time you gonna build TP on yourself and be ready for the double light.
Probably wise to keep pet's acc slightly under cap? Or give him like 24-25% gear haste instead of 26?

SC can still be messed up by the occasional pet WS miss or by Amchuchu doing Dimidiation (which happens very very rarely anyway) or Koru-Moru not refreshing Haste2 on Master fast enough.

More meant like as fast as cp come that use would disappear quickly and that pup master DD sees even less use than mnk lol. But can't fault you for trying to make cp less boring

Interesting. I have everything you mentioned above minus the +2 somen and back (haven't done ambu yet). Also, my automaton's ranged skill isn't capped, but that's pretty interesting you're doing better with Ohtas than Aeonic. I was under the impression a PUP would outgain their pet in TP far too fast for a pet to keep up. I'll have to try this out when I cap my pet's ranged skill.

I don't have Yoran (Sylvie user), so I'd have to work around that. I guess that 10% pet haste and acc/racc is far too much to sacrifice for a high damaging SC.

edit: I'd have to unlock Shijin Spiral too. That was another motivation for me using Godhands. Hmm...

I figure i'll be soloing for a while and trying to make it as painless and fun as possible. I have MNK too, but really I wanted to punch stuff and make some pretty cool skillchains. But after reading what Sechs posted, Ohtas looks far ahead of anything Godhands can offer PUP in the scenarios I'd be looking to use it for. That, or I'd have to sacrifice too much gear to make up the other 10% haste.

I greatly underestimated Ohtas until someone in game pointed out that it should almost never leave your main slot if you're all about maximizing the Puppet (aside from KKK users). Since then, I've put away my Denouments and have only been using those (I miss the colossal blow)

Thanks for the tips Sechs.

Can probably do without, could use Tali'ah Turban +1.
I wanted to try with Somen because of the Martial Arts bonus, hoping it would've granted me slightly faster TP gain.
As I said above the "crucial" points of the chain are the Fourth step (after Fragmentation) if the Pet doesn't gain TP fast enough and the Fifth Step, if the pet goes too early and you don't manage to get 1000TP in time to close with Vsmite.
Keep in mind with each further step you perform the amount of time allowed for the next WS to SC with the previous one is reduced, so you don't really have a lot of error space when you're on the 5th step.

That's quite a vital piece of my build, instead.
Guess you could skip it with Othas, Klouskap Belt and Tali'ah Feet +1, those should cap Pet Haste even without the Back slot.

Actually it's not. I was against using Othas as well (read some pages ago my discussion with Capuchin) but I decided to give it a try.
It gives me much more acc than Godhands (1350 acc without buff is quite a steep requirement for PUP when you have to also reach certain values in non-acc stats).
It also frees up the waist slot, where I can equip Moonbow Belt in place of Klouskap.
With HQ gear or Heyoka ***I suppose you can probably reach the required acc (~1350) even with Godhands.
But I didn't really wanted to spend 30 mils in gear for CP lol

How so? Can cap Gear and Magic haste on pet as well, they have normally higher acc than their masters and can give them lots of DA with Coilers and STP with Inhibitor, blahblah. Why should you have such a noticeably higher TP gain compared to them?

I suppose Ygnas works? Altough he does cast haste1 so that might mess up Koru's priority (he usually won't caste haste2 on you if you have haste1 up), plus Ygnas has certain AoE damaging moves that might aggro stuff around.
Try with Kupipi maybe? With Koru-Moru keeping Refresh2 on her, she should be fine even without Yoran-Oran's Convert and Dagan.
There's really not THAT much of healing that Amchuchu requires, tipically.

Seriously if you have better gear than I do and can reach ~1350 acc on pet and master (actually pet requires less because of Target Marker) with Godhands you'll be fine. Consider though that in that case you might need the cape because you gonna be lacking Othas' 10% Pet Haste.

Of all months this would be the one to get your ambuscade stuff. Points are flowing like water. So if other months grinds turned you off I'd recommend going for it.

Ygnas is a decent healer. Though tends to do sometimes have a not great priority. ie will run out of range before considering to heal, or do naws before considering to heal lol. Haste is pretty low on the list though so that could be not too big of a problem.

The AoE can be an issue however there are ways around it. One is positioning yourself to get him to move somewhere out of range though that can be tricky. Or forcing Phototropic Blessing by having multiple people take decent amount of damage/be asleep since otherwise tends to wait till 3k tp to ws