Animator's Workshop: A Puppetmaster's Guide 2.0

I also didn't say it was slow I said that slow. As in the barely making skillchain timing you spoke of

Question for you puppetmasters out there, how good is denouments for main weapon if you don't have the mythic or empyrean?

not great, way i remember it is if you dont need the stats from ohtas jolt counters are the way to go unless you got lucky and got a pair of comeuppances from tumult or unity dial

My Autoomaton will self skillchain, completely solo with 1 light and 2 fire maneuvers.

No buffs whatsoever.

On reisenjima trash mobs, he'll do 10-11k arcuballista in tp set and 14-16.5k in ws set.

Completely solo. No rolls. Don't remember if I had kusamochi or not.

what setup are you guys using for DD?

For instance ambuscade doesnt need tank setup. I want to swap out head/body and attachments for DD.

Thank you in advance!

Actually I'm curious what the best set up is too now for tank/dd. The ones on string theory don't seem like the best possible. maybe they are.

-Mana Jammer

I don't really get why the SStank would use repeater/Magazine, if the Standard DD would opt for TC I&II instead

All right, so I went out to parse the STP setup with Light/double Fire vs. Light/Wind/Fire on Apex Toads, using only Drachen Roll to cap my maton's accuracy.

Double Fire set had a pseudo 3-hit build thanks to TP feed from getting hit, but according to TP calculators and my own calculations, a true 3-hit build would require about 40-45 more STP or something, which is impossible with current gear, even if it's perfect. Generally, the double Fire build had trouble skillchaining unless it got lucky with a Double Attack proc. Which means unless the Automaton is tanking, it only has a 4-hit build and its self-skillchaining capabilities are highly luck-based, making it considerably less viable compared to Light/Wind/Fire.

I caught about 90% of all WSs with my maton WS set, so Shatterer did about 6.1k-6.2k, Piercer did 6.5k-7k and Arcuballista did 9k-10k on the toads, using only Dia 2, Attuner, Inhibitor 1+2 and Speedloaders 1+2. Frailty and Beast Roll would definitely have skewed the parse in favor of double Fire, as Arcuballista would have done 12k on average with those, but Shatterer/Piercer were practically unaffected by the difference in defense. So it basically comes down to how much buff support you have. Double Fire/Wind would obviously still reign supreme if you Repair/Mulsum your Automaton.

Here are the results:

Light/Double Fire:


Light/Wind/Fire:


Light/Wind/Fire with Anwig/DA Taeon for comparison:

Here are Light/Double Fire and Wind/Double Fire with Dia 2, Frailty and Beast Roll on Apex Toads. Arcuballista did about 12k-14k:

Light/Double Fire:


Wind/Double Fire:

(the Skillchain (Aer.) is also maton damage, the parser somehow attributed that to me due to Dia 2)

Wind/Double Fire actually managed to self-skillchain Arcu > Shatterer > Piercer occasionally when the maton got DA procs after Shatterer.

Light double Fire- Used in most situations for the Regen effect, Pet tanking or if your pet will be closing scs.

Wind double Fire- For when the target monster doesn't aoe much and your pet isn't tanking.

Wind,Light and Fire for soloing

Thanks for the parse tests. But your pet having complete freedom of self skill-chaining is more for solo situations or situations like when your solo holding Frigg. In alot of group content it will hold tp.
Companion's roll to boost auto's tp gain is another factor to consider.

Oh yeah, Companion's Roll made a huge difference. That alone made Light/double Fire almost competitive with Wind/double Fire, allowing the maton to self-sc Arcu > Shatterer > Piercer occasionally with barely any Haste.

This is Light/double Fire with mostly just Companion's Roll, no Frailty or Beast Roll. I didn't even keep up Dia 2 fulltime cause I was getting tired:


So basically it comes down to how much you can abuse Arcuballista's damage potential, the better double Fire will be vs. the alternatives. Armor Shatterer and Piercer are nice because they have very consistent damage regardless of buffs due to their defense-bypassing effects/attack boosts.

Arcuballista may or may not underperform vs. Shatterer/Piercer on NMs due to the halved effect of Attuner. (Idris) GEO might very well be a necessity, as Beast Roll alone wouldn't cut it. Either way, keeping up Shatterer's Defense Down effect is the highest priority, as it increases group DPS and not just maton damage.

What auto setup did you use?

Attuner, both inhibitors, both speedloaders, both OP, but the rest?

Standard full DD loadout pretty much: Attuner, 2x Inhibitor, 2x Speedloader, 2x Turbo Charger, 2x Coiler, 2x Optic Fiber, ARKIV. Coiler 1 is pretty replaceable though, if you need more utility or defense. Tension Spring might be more useful than DA if not attack-capped, though as mentioned before it only matters to Arcuballista.

Oh, aside from that just to make it clear: barring monster TP feed, both Light/2xFire and Light/Wind/Fire have the same 4-hit build with the right STP gear. Double Fire's only advantages are higher Attack and a stronger WS choice, but not TP speed unless the above condition applies.

Companion's Roll turns both of them into 3-hit builds, though.

Edit: This is the STP build I used. Condemners have VIT+13, Acc/Racc+23, STP+10, Herc have STP+10 and an assortment of stats. 26% in gear Haste. Preemptively: 2xVarar Ring+1 did not result in a true 3-hit build for double Fire.

ItemSet 361441

Whats the best way to skill up your pets magic? my auto keeps going into melee range and stops casting.

lair - with animator 2's

Quick question for the PUP community: how are you using PUP in Divergence?

In particular, interested in what kinds of experiences you've had with tanking Wave 2&3 bosses, since there's fairly little info out there that is PUP-centric. Anything particularly good? Particularly bad?

We were doing Dyna-Bastok last night, and I wanted to try out PUP on the wave 2 boss, Ka'Rho Fearsinger, since we were trying a nuke-based setup. Tanking worked great (though we were too light on magic damage). PUP's ability to handle knockback better than player tanks was a real help to easily position the mob so players didn't have to attack from behind (and deal with Diamond Shell damage negation). Survival was a non-issue; did use Repair/Maintenance to remove status effects after Thousand Fists and dropped into yellow HP, but wasn't so rough as to risk death or require the erase-spam needed for player tanks. Not sure whether getting unlucky Thousand Fists spam could be more difficult to deal with due to Repair/Maint timers (and might hold Benediction for such emergencies).

Since we were testing stuff and lacking the needed nuke power, we... didn't win. So I didn't get a chance to see Wave 3 Galka PUP viability.

Pup tanks things in Divergence very well. Supertanks wave 3 fetter clusters with ease and can be a great way to 'hold' mobs while the group kills fetters, deactivate, drop aggro, and move onto another fetter.

Tanking the wave 3 boss is NOT advised. Should your puppet get targeted by Shin Zantetsuken, everyone in the alliance will be hit, and the wave 3 boss will then use it again on the alliance once your automaton's dead. A total of 2x back to back.

In the end, it's a fine tank on any mob (except mayabe the dooming yagudos -_-) just don't become the target of the wave 3 boss unless you're happy killing your melee/tanks. :D

By "fetter clusters", you mean the fomor mobs standing around each fetter? Are you saying you can just deploy on one of them, and they'll all target the puppet until acted on by an alliance member? That's pretty nifty, assuming I'm understanding you correctly.


Ah, good point :) Glad to get that reminder before I learned that the hard way.


Do the Divergence yags actually doom puppets?

Maybe I'm just crazy, lucky, or both (or just been avoiding using puppets on Doom mobs out of habit)... but I've seen some weirdness in more recent events/mobs (Omen to present) where things that I would expect to doom players end up doing nothing to puppets. Doom was definitely an issue on Escha-era content (hi Duke Vepar), but I just haven't been running into it recently.

Perhaps S-E programmed it that way to avoid the issue of no way to remove doom from an automaton, or changed things to make doom ineffective against pets (kinda like Charm) or not used against pets? For instance, Kin seems to only use Death Sentence against player tanks (and BGwiki says only if a PLD RUN NIN has hate), but won't use it against puppets. I know this is true, since I co-tank Kin with a PLD friend frequently: the PLD needs lots of Cursna support when he has hate, but Kin has never doomed my puppet.

Perhaps the Kin mechanic was precisely due to S-E being aware of the automaton doom issues, and was carried forward into other current content?

all the Yagudo Red-Eye statue NM's use doom.

its pretty tedious. Normal mobs do not.

Ah, that sucks. I haven't done much PUP Windy, maybe only once for +3 unlock (and I might have gone with BLM puppet or something on that run).

They SHOULD continue the Kin approach of making Doom-using mobs not use that against puppets though. I like that approach! At the very least, it's absurd that Repair/Maint won't cure Doom. Hell, gate it behind AF+2/+3 feet for all I care... it's so dumb to have no way to mitigate a semi-regularly seen move.

Do you hold both sets of Fomors when killing fetters each time? Whenever I grabbed them to supertank, including Disjoined, they typically hit hard enough to make me burn a couple of Dawn Mulsums. It works, but it's kinda costly in the long run.

Also, I've pretty much always gotten hate after Deactivate (sometimes hate is weird and even alliance members that never touched the Volte got aggro, even after a full wipe). Do you pull with voke/flash and never engage the Automaton like with the trick in the old Golden Salvage days? I don't see that being safe though since the maton and the fomors will follow you around, possibly AoEing you.

So I brought PUP to Divergence Bastok tonight, and oh boy did it work well - thanks for the suggestion, Langly. Almost worked TOO well, everyone was pretty pleased with how it went and I'll prob be stuck on PUP for the foreseeable future (with less opportunity to come NIN and get points to upgrade my Divergence katana and JSE neck...)

Aside from tanking the Wave 2 Bastok boss with ease (oriented sideways at the bottom of the ramp where Wave 1 boss spawns) for my group's mostly MB-focused setup (though also a couple pretty strong and fairly well buffed DDs that never posed an enmity control issue on that boss), it was indeed extremely effective on Wave 3 Fomor mobs gathered at the fetters.

I was very easily able to pull groups of just 4 at once, never had all 8 from a fetter attack the puppet at once. I just Deployed from ~15-16 back directly onto one mob in each group of 4. Probably best to deploy onto the "special" named powerful mob in each group of 4, since the group can kill the weaker ones fast then move onto the strong enemy. After my initial deploy and all 4 mobs attacking my puppet, I would retrieve and re-deploy the group of 4 in a position that was convenient for my PLD to pull the mobs off one at a time.

There was really no threat of automaton death, the only time it got a little dicey was when I started getting careless and using full master TP gear to kill the pulled mobs with my group... at which point my puppet obviously starting taking more significant damage. However, that only required me to remember to switch back to pet tanking gear (and maybe pop a repair to remain exceedingly safe, but really coulda handled it with regen alone). It honestly felt like it would have been fine even if I did have all 8 Fomor though, especially since you aren't triggering the mobs' 1hrs from your turtled up puppet tapping at the tough mob a little bit while waiting for your group to pull their target off of the group and fight it.

One time we also pulled the mobs off of my puppet out of order, grabbing the super-powered Fomor PUP as the 2nd kill in a group of four, while my automaton still had two other normal Fomors on it plus 2 enemy puppets (one normal PUP's pet, one pet from the SuperPUP). SuperPUP used Overdrive while my party killed it, and once that happened his puppet gave mine a few good whacks that I countered with a repair out of an abundance of caution. Really no big deal though, and certainly nothing that required spamming muslums.


Why do you need to Deactivate? I was able to just deploy onto the group of mobs standing at the fetter, no fuss. Could drag them to wherever I wanted them and they all stayed on my puppet, just don't have anyone in your group act on the mobs until they're ready to kill one at a time.

I activated once when I entered the zone, puppet stayed out all the way until we timed out in wave 3, where we fought for quite a while and damaged the boss a bit (but haven't made it to a boss kill quite yet... maybe next time).

Back during the first two weeks of Divergence, my group was trying to sac-pull fomors to only kill the fetters via melee zerg, meaning I had to grab all mobs including Disjoined from a fetter and supertank them away from the Alliance. I briefly mentioned it in this thread around that time: https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/41682/animators-workshop-a-puppetmasters-guide-20/62#3359655

It ended up not being worthwhile though, since it was pretty risky (as I said, Dawn Mulsums were necessary and it was laggy). Nowadays my LS just clears the entirety of Wave 3 for RP and drops.

I wouldn't have brought up Deactivate, but Langly mentioned doing it after holding fomors, so I assume they're doing the same fetter-only strat.

Need advice ^^
So turtle mode for automaton, full HP++ regen++ DT ++ (to cap) for master, this way can pull the fetter then retreat to let our DD kill fast the fetter and then desactivate the pup to lose aggro and let the mobs go back to initial pop ?

mobs that are linked will go back. any mob that has action taken on it will not.

So the best idea is to aggro the fetter, retreat, run with repair on + comp roll + double light mnv to put the max regen (pprox 300 hp tic) to let the DD zerg the fetter (with maybe a pld who pull the disjoined).
And when fetter down, desactivate, all the pop initialy linked should go back without aggro.

It's been a while, but from what I can remember you can't get close enough to Deploy on a fetter without aggroing the Volte mobs, unless you are able to approach from the side. In most cases, however, that just isn't possible due to the zone layout.

By the way, I made two new OD solo videos for fresher PUPs who might still be looking to nab their Rimeice and Domesticator's earrings.

Shiva VD:


Ouryu VD:


Ouryu was a bit annoying as without COR rolls I couldn't reliably make my maton kill him within the duration of Overdrive. So I made a VD video showing the fight with rolls, but if you don't have a mule or a friend to give you buffs, you should be able to solo Difficult without any issues.

I summoned Shikaree Z out of habit to boost Drachen Roll, but she's unnecessary since I went with Beast/Companion's.

I hope some people find this helpful!

Thanks for those! I actually still need one of each of those earrings (I don't have Rimeice and my wife doesn't have Domesticator's because we're both a little lazy) so that's a big help. Although Ouryu I'd probably do as RUN + RDM on VD because it's just easier that way lol.

Lair Rieves are nice but you will get much better bang for your time skilling (all skills) on Urganites outside of Audolin. Melee and ranged you may want to stack acc/race at super low levels but even then you should be okay.