String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

Already been a thing for years with windower. Nice of them to finally add it though.

I am very interested to see how this turns out. I want to see how the burden gauge works.

It might encourage me to finally go back and get Kenkonken.... even though still pending on nirvana...

another power boost to pup is what it sounds like. Hurray!

as much as I understand the desire for AoE pup tanking, I don't think it fits puppetmaster at all.

The BLM automaton won't do AoE nuking either. It would be a very major overhaul to change all that.

I'd much rather have the AoE enmity tools on bst than pup.

I don't think the Overload display is entirely accurate with Autocontrol (possibly only an issue with KKK). So having a completely reliable one in-game one is a welcome addition if we're going to be doubling/tripling up maneuvers a lot more in the future.

Regarding my comment about multistepping above: if we end up replacing Speedloader II with Flame Holder for good, then the Inhibitor behavior will be to use the highest level WS that can still chain instead of using whichever WS will create the highest tier of SC.

Meaning our strongest multistep would be:

HF/RF > Arcuballista > Liquefaction > HF/RF > Fusion > Armor Piercer > Gravitation > Victory Smite > Fragmentation > Armor Shatterer > Light > Victory Smite > Light

It would be very hard to pull off (possibly only with AM3/XiucoatlB) and not much would survive that long. But it's something that might be worth considering.

Su5 kinda wrecks kenkonken (doesn't it?)

and actually using flameholder is going to probably be impossible, it's going to generate "way" too much burden.

(*) unless burdon-equip works on it, and even then it'll be close. (**) unless it's modified to have a cool-down so that it can't go off on every tp move

If you're talking about Path B FUA, I can say from personal experience that it's not as good as it looks on paper. KKK AM3 tends to generate TP a lot faster, possibly due to KKK's very low Delay.

I don't have a Path A Xiucoatl, but I'm not sure it would be worth using over a R15 Verethragna anyway.

It was more about 25% special attack being better than AM for the auto

Well, I can't say how the Master/Puppet damage balance will be post-patch, but currently my Automaton does maybe 20%-25% or less of my personal total damage if I'm getting solid buffs. Even the +25% from Su5 couldn't tip the scales.

KKK AM3 allows the maton to WS fairly frequently even without Inhibitors, too. It doesn't output the same numbers as with XiuC, but when you're just spamming WSs alongside others you don't have much of a choice.

Of course, if we're talking pet burn, then currently a Su5 Beast/Comp-buffed Automaton can match/outparse a Beast/Drachen buffed Nirvana SMN outside of AFAC. Just the other day I parsed ~27% (no Inhib/SL) vs. 20-21% from a Nirvana SMN on Fu/Ou. Might not be an ideal benchmark as the SMN wasn't BiS/didn't have AM3, but at the very least it shows that PUP can hold its own.

Use Kenkoken in an Overload reduction set and then switch back to Xiucoatl.
Looking forward to the new Overdrive numbers for Arcuballista,Armor Shatterer and Bone Crusher.
If Icemaker is buffed as well. It will be big playstyle change for BLM puppet.

Yeah pup mains should work on getting both weapons.

Kenkoken= Weapon to use if master is recieving super buffs
Xiucoatl=Weapon to use in Pet burns

What they should do is enhance the potency of strobe and flashbulb, and give the puppet more CE with them equipped.

Literally a nonissue with heyoka, yeah it sucks to solve the problem with gear but it's there.

It's only a nonissue if you're tanking for pets or mages. Any buffed melee or ranged DD will grab hate off of an Automaton easily even using full Heyoka+1 and both earrings.

Matons need a considerable headstart on enmity to keep monsters on them as 30s and 45s reuse timers on Strobe/Flashbulb are nowhere near enough.

You should never be doing that so it's a non issue. Not even a real tank can keep enmity on DD.

A RUN can hold hate well enough until reaching the enmity cap, but it requires solid damage output.

PUP can't AoE tank anyway, so there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to hold hate reliably on single targets. Additionally, it costs the party a RUN DD slot, so it wouldn't really be broken and would make PUP useful for RNG&COR setups where RNG's Decoy Shot can't even be used.

Trulusia's pup tanking guide is perfectly applicable for using /blu at start of fight. and how to cap pet enmity, then keep it there.

That was before improvements to strobe/flashbulb and the heyoka set. so people got lazy. but its perfectly doable

There are several issues I have with PUP/BLU tanking:

- even with PUP/BLU you won't generate nearly enough Enmity to keep a boss off of buffed DDs for very long & it's generally unnecessary for pet/mage burns. An argument could be made for a Coronach RNG setup, but that's very situational.

- for most fights nobody wants to wait around while you spam your Enmity spells at the start and then Ventriloquy/Deploy (you're doing this primarily for the CE, as a maton with Heyoka will generate 2-3 times as much VE than you per action anyway). And if you Ventriloquy after only a handful of spells you won't have generated enough Enmity to really make a difference. A RUN can generally just engage, pop JAs and then everything's good to go.

- making the master hold the boss for a while means you'll be taking hits to the face and will require healing. Depending on the type of enemy this could be insignificant or a substantial MP drain (risky too, as you only have Cocoon/DT to rely on)

- PUP/BLU has almost no utility outside of tanking and weak cures. /WHM, /SCH and /RDM provide much better spell selection for lowmanning such as -na/Erase, Raise, RR, Dia 2, Cure 4, Refresh, Stoneskin. PUP can be a relatively solid support thanks to all our mage gear and Refresh options.

Just my two cents on the matter. It certainly has its uses, but unless something changes with how Automatons work it's wasted effort.

Seriously. I don't care what tank you have, enmity will capp on all De and THE boss Will spin (Dyna d 1 min in). Just give pup aoe strobe and I'll never use another tank again.

I know that the defensive buffs (rampart ECT) and offensive buffs (rayke ECT) help damage and mitigation for the group) but pup with aoe hate could make setups so much safer and (to me at least), more fun from what we're use to.

So I just tested our current Flame Holder on the sheep outside Western Adoulin.

Standard setup: 3k TP, 2x Fire/1x Wind, Magniplug 2, Truesights, Attuner, 2x Optic Fiber

Neither Magniplug 1 nor Flame Holder:


Magniplug 1:


Flame Holder:


I'm not sure whether that beats the white damage added by Magniplug 1 especially since we wouldn't have to deal with potential Overloads. Though it might become a decent attachment for Overdrive post-patch.

My understanding is that flame holder increases ftp by 1 for 1 maneuver and 1.75 for 2. Would it really be that effective for arcubalista in the first place? Based on your findings, it looks like flame holder is a terrible choice for arcu post-patch but I'd like to see the diff for bone crusher. (On mobile sorry)

Third pic isn't magniplug1 AND flame holder right?

It's showing that they're roughly equivalent. But if you used both together (like you will be after the update) how much does it do?

Those numbers are correct. Given capped tp arcu has 13.0 ftp yeah adding 1.75 is only going to add 13% dmg.

Could math things out with some time and a little bit of investigating melee base dmg

Based on the numbers posted that looks to be during OD with Xiucoatl.... actually that's doing it the hard way lol. Should just be (mangiplug 1 dmg) * 14.75/13 so roughly about 30641... hmmm those numbers have me curious about some things though

No, it's Magniplug 2 + Magniplug 1 OR Magniplug 2 + Flame Holder. Replaced Speedloader II for testing in my standard DPS maton setup. There's really not enough room to fit both Magniplugs, Inhibitors, Flame Holder and all the other important ones, sadly.

Also no, those numbers were without Overdrive but with Xiucoatl C.

That's some rather unusual numbers then for maniplug 1 compared to having neither.

To whit we can math out the difference there should be.

it should be the increase in base dmg from mangiplug * ftp * pdif * Truesights * Xiucoatl

2 fire magniplug = 30 *1.25 from OF1/2= 37.5 floored to 37

ftp =13

pdif= should be capped at 3 and since everything is divisible by 3 looks that way

1 wind Truesights = +15% *1.25 = 18.75% floor to 18%

Xiucotal =+25%

So increase in damage should be= 37*1.18*13*1.25*3 ~ 2128.425 (I didn't floor each step and such because rounding will differ done as a whole an unsure of order... in fact I'm sure it's wrong now)
But the difference up there was 4545...

To put things to test I shot some level 0s... I don't have Xiucotal so used bees which have 25% bonus to piercing dmg and using otherwise same relevant maneuvers and attachments I got 26116 without magniplug 1 and 28243 with... a difference of 2127.

Similarly the only difference between flameholder and not should be ftp so should be 13/14.75 so should 13.46% increase but that showed a 24.48% increase. Meanwhile when I did the same switch I got 29628 a 13.45% difference.

I'm guessing something else changed from the first thing


Regardless still a small difference between the 2

More reasons to keep using my KKK most of the time if they are going to convert maneuvers consumption to a burden, eraser is nice for tanking pets and flame holder for dps. too bad replicator attachment is only 2 shadows with 1 wind maneuver, a little increase to flame holder effects would be nice as well.

There is a realistic expectation that current items with burden minus will have zero effect on the changed attachments.

Basically, it is impossible to overload with mythic and all the minus burdon gear, that would be imbalanced, with new flame holder.

I guarantee you it's exactly as I described. The only thing I did was Deactivate, replace Speedloader II with Magniplug 1, Activate, Companion's Roll to 3k TP and then Deploy. Repeated for Flame Holder where I simply replaced Magniplug 1 with FH. Then Comp Roll, Deploy, screenshot.

I mostly agree with the concerns you list.

Yes, /blu is useless for anything other than pup tanking. but the way ANY tank keeps hate is by quickly CAPPING enmity and making sure it stays there. That is, the continuous enmity generation EXCEEDS the enmity loss.

If you can do this, then the tank will only ever lose hate from a hate reset move. This is exactly what Trulusia describes how to do on pup in his thread. So YES you CAN generate enough enmity with pup/blu to do this. OR you give the pup more time to build enmity before others join in. which you CAN do. even though MOST dd will chomp at the bit enough to make it challenging.

YES this is best attained with CE. Especially since the pup can take almost NO damage.

My primary point is that Pup can hold hate against any DD just as well as PLD or Run can. It just matters that the tank actually understand what they are doing. Pup however cannot RECLAIM hate nearly as well as RUN or PLD. ESPECIALLY with multiple targets.


In my Divergence group, we often have a pup tank and a run tank. I've played both. I can keep hate away from the pup on my Run, but I really have to work at it, and as long as the positioning is good, it usually not worth keeping enmity off the auto. less need for healing.

The CE retention on pup is just better than run or pld. Honestly Its often better to NOT swap to heyoka set EVERY time flash and voke come up. Reason being is that you lose more enmity through taking damage than the VE you gain from voke/flash from increased damage taken. if you can swap w/out getting hit hard, its better to swap to heyoka. but otherwise its better to stay in capped dt set.

Did the sheep use Rage?

If nothing else changed then this is a bug as shown by math... an intermittent one at that as a quick retest shows it worked correctly for me.

I suppose there is the possibility of uncapped pdif even though it looks capped and should've been under those circumstances but would take some decent def differences for that big of a difference to show up more than just a couple level difference. Would have to be losing a maneuver/attuner or like as suggested rage, Even then that's still a change

I'm not saying it can't work, it just probably can't work well enough against real DDs which is the only scenario where we would even need it, but top tier DDs generate CE much faster than PUP/BLU can due to limited Enmity+ (lack of Crusade, for example). Matons usually don't lose hate to SMNs, BSTs or mages unless they 1hr or if you're still missing Heyoka(+1) as mentioned before. Well, it's possible a really good PUP/SMN/BST could rip hate off or you could lose hate during damage multiplier mechanics such as when fighting Fu, but those are exceptions rather than the norm.


No, the maton WS'd instantly as I deployed, one-shotting the sheep where it stood.


Might it be possible that Xiucoatl interacts with attachments in a way that's more than just a multiplier at the end of the equation?

I'm pretty sure it's been tested that RNG matons also don't have a distance penalty, so it can't be that.

I'll try to retest it later tonight just to make sure I didn't mess up somehow.