String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

.... /sigh

I'm not speculating. I'm reporting on what I've actually done.

I referenced Trulusia's pup tanking thread so as not to rehash the whole thing. And he spells HOW it works.

In dynamis, the pup will pull hate off me on run, unless I keep a fast pace of using enmity tools. (on bosses that is)

the dd's are not pet jobs. though 1 is smn. they don't pull hate off.

I guess it's possible I don't have one to test... but it would have to be some really weird spaghetti way of doing it given it deviates so much both on something that adds xx dmg and something that increases damage by a set percentage. Which would be pretty weird and hard to math out but either way given how much extra it gave if that were the case they'd be even better for autos than advertised.

Hard to say for sure not knowing order or if levels differed but some quick math suggests if we assume magniplug II was left out of just the first one the numbers then come pretty close to lining up

And yeah they don't have a distance penalty. Their ranged moves are weird and don't really count as such in a lot of ways.

My apologies, it seems like I messed up. Despite double Fire Maneuvers with Attuner my Automaton was not PDIF capped on the sheep. Retested with 11 Beast Roll this time to hopefully have more accurate results. Gear was locked in for all three tests and rolls didn't change in between.



Sorry for the abrupt cuts, but Windows Photos sucks as a movie editing app and can't do transitions for some reason.

Please don't give me that kneejerk exasperated reaction. It's entirely possible your group doesn't have DDs who are as buffed/geared as in mine, so our experiences could differ vastly. Also, not to be rude, but if you make a claim then it's standard to provide some sort of proof. I believe you that it's possible as I've read Trulusia's thread in its entirety, but that thread is old and things have changed vastly since then, so it is not enough to simply refer to that.

In any case, what kind of numbers are your group's DDs actually doing? In my group PLDs and RUNs sometimes have trouble holding hate against DDs spamming WSs in excess of 30k-50k damage on Wave 1-2 NMs depending on the zone.

yeah, we are hitting ws's that high on wave 3 boss. Highest I remember seeing was 80k but it sounds like damage range is about the same.

then again, magical ws from corsairs won't generate as much enmity. The war's generate plenty though.

The claim I'm making should not be anything out of the ordinary. I backed it up with reason, and Tru's numbers on enmity generation are a perfect explanation. you are asking for what I already provided.


The changes that made Tru's methods less important did not make it ineffective at all. That part did not change in anyway. it was simply that most pups could achieve good enough results without going to as much trouble. So things have NOT changed drastically since then.

Yeah, DP Leaden COR is absolutely bonkers on Wave 3 bosses with all fetters cleared + Malaise. 70k-99k is about right, but as you said they have less Enmity generation than physical attacks.


I'm sorry, but what? Tru's post is from 2015 and since then we've gotten AF+3, Relic+3, Shining One, Naegling, R15 REMA, Su5, Omen accessories and so forth. As far as I can tell there hasn't been a single new piece of Enmity+ gear for the master aside from Ambu capes to improve our /BLU enmity gain.

We've gotten Heyoka(+1) which presumably works for Ventriloquy and is thus pretty huge (but only at the start of the fight or AFTER you manage to steal hate from the maton midfight according to Tru), but you can't even use the Heyoka legs with it due to the Relic bonus. And even that is probably not anywhere close to the boosts DDs have received in recent years. You also lose merits in Fine-Tuning and Optimization to cap Ventriloquy which will cause the maton to take more damage and lose more CE.

No offense, but your "reasoning" alone isn't convincing enough. I absolutely want to believe you because I love PUP to death, but there are too many factors at play here. For example, your group might be giving every DD Adventurer's Dirge to keep their Enmity in check which could be a detail you forgot about or missed. Not saying this is what happened, but it could simply be one of many possible factors that make PUP/BLU work for you (or the PUPs in your group) but not for other people.

Honestly, I'd go out and test it myself in Dynamis, but the PUP/BLU prime era happened before I resubbed to the game so I never geared for master Enmity and I'm still missing rare key pieces to make it work. It'd take me quite a long time to actually test your claim myself and that is why it would be great if you could provide proof to show me and other PUPs it's (still) worth pursuing.

ah ok that's a lot closer. the just adding is a little off but nothing that can't be explained by just a couple level difference really

As someone mentioned previously the benefit to Arcuballista isn't great, so Flame Holder might just become one of the staple attachments for a Warrior or Bruiser tank Automaton setup with VE/VE or Soul/VE. Full Acc/DA/DT Taeon with Light/Wind/Fire, Magniplugs and Flame Holder could result in some very spicy Bone Crushers. I think I'll go out an test that later with Magniplugs.

Using the new Cait Sith ring + 4/5 Taeon + Shulmanu + Domes. Earring + Coiler II would result in a 48% DA rate. This could be pretty fun.

Edit: Okay, so with hopefully capped Attack (TS5, Attuner, Idris Frailty, Beast Roll) the maton was consistently doing 14k-18k Bone Crushers on Apex Toads depending on DA proc, 24k-32k during Overdrive (Light/Earth/Fire) using double Magniplug and Flame Holder with 1 Fire.

It's possible the numbers could get a lot higher with a dedicated VIT set for BC, but I reaugmented mine a long time ago due to inventory issues.

So, using GS (Selin), any way to equip pet enmity gear when the pet tank uses enmity /ja?

Nope. GS doesn't react to puppet timers/actions. They were working on it, I don't know if it ever became functional or not though.

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/53071/pup-gearswap-testers-needed/

Well poop.

Well, we do have enmity swapping. Its just based on our timers. Which works well enough. :)

Are there specific addons recommended to keep track of timers for pup? I can't imagine people are sitting there with a stopwatch :P

I think it's PetTP that gives:

Burdon Tracker
HP/TP
Puppet Timers (though not every attachment is tracked strobe/bulb are)

For those who may be interested we have all that built into the gearswap and have nice HUD window that displays it all for you. We also have a discord channel with over 30 users who are usually active and very helpful.

Regular timers shows pup timers.

Do you have a link to the Discord?

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/53071/pup-gearswap-testers-needed/

Link's in the first post

Well, SE's burden tracker gives you a chat message whenever you use a maneuver now. They couldn't have implemented it in a more annoying way, to be honest. It also becomes nearly useless if there's too much spam going on. It is more accurate than Autocontrol, however, especially taking KKK into account.

In any case, the burden added by repeated Flame Holder WSs with Light/Wind/Fire seems very low, so the attachment should be pretty much a staple for a WAR-type Automaton with Attuner/Inhibitorx2/Magniplugx2/Flame Holder/Turbo Chargerx2/Coiler 2/ARK IV/Optic Fiberx2.

With 3x Ice maneuvers, Ice Maker, Heat Sink (imo a staple), several casts and reapplied maneuvers as they wore off, it took about 5-6 maneuvers before I went above 0% chance of Overload. Even without using KKK.

Using KKK, it took me about 12 maneuvers spammed on recast + 4 maton nukes before I got 3% Overload chance. So yeah, Ice Maker is really, really good now.

A guy posted on the OF that he overloaded even with 1% burdon from their tracker, even during OD

That's either a yuge bug or OF being OF

Just tested it. Unequipped all my gear except my Animator P+1, no Heatsink and spammed Fire Maneuvers until I had 10% Overload chance, then popped OD. Continued to spam FM for the entire duration of the effect and OD definitely seems to cap Overload chance at 1% rather than 0%, but I never managed to Overload even once.

So realistically, it's not an issue whatsoever and the guy just got really unlucky.

For a Bonecrusher Taeon set which features Pet: Double attack+5% and Damage Taken-4% is better for the last stat to be Acc+25 or Atk+25.

really kind of it depends on the fight. But most the time you doing stuff like this probably capped both but acc is going to be a bigger problem when something is a problem. For this fight specially it's super squishy and I'd been capping acc on it since the first time it was introduced so pretty sure neither matters during OD. Maybe atk outside of that

Other note went around just keeping up 3 fire maneuvers with flame holder send it out to one shot things with ws took about a couple of minutes using my normal non kkk maneuver swaps to get above 0%. No heatsink either btw. The problem was I went from 0% one maneuver to 19% and overloaded on the next maneuver just a few seconds later. So the usefulness of this might not be the greatest

All right tried it out. Just locking my full dt set which is mostly what you expect except 3/5 of the above mentioned taeon with taliah legs and anwig salade making up the other visible slots killed it about 1.75 minutes into overdrive with autos never getting less than what looked about 70-80% hp and would go back up quick (note this changes drastically while OD is down. You can still possibly kill without repair but need to watch it and do things like change the fire maneuver to a light or water. Meanwhile can full afk with OD if you have something that puts up maneuvers).

Tried again doing swaps for jas and swapping in shulmanu collar and taeon legs in when over 1k tp. Went down to about 60% hp a couple of times but kills went to about 1:15 into OD. Basically any 2 pups with the right attachments and decent DT set should finish before OD is over. A single pup with cor could probably do it

edit: 3rd run took way longer (almost 2 minutes) because yes I can confirm you can overload. Not only that but from what I can tell OD keeps you at 1% at all times so yeah OD can actually increase your odds to overload. Fun note because your burden is build without using maneuvers you can build it really high and end up with overloads over 1 minute long easily... it does seem the Flameholder burden is only for fire maneuver so you could just cool your heels for a bit

Are you talking about Ambuscade or the new Alexander fight?

FWIW, I also managed to Overload while ODing Shiva VD. I was using Fire/Thunder/Light and managed to overload on Fire despite having a 1% chance to do so and OD active. I assume I just got really unlucky, but this is the first time I've ever overloaded during OD.

Is this a bug? I don't remember ever being able to overload while OD. Hmmm. Or maybe intentional?

Seems to be a bug yeah, it should be pretty impossible to overload in that fashion, but don't ever expect it to get fixed... so it's the new working as intended.

ambuscade

And yeah the OD overload thing is a bug... what makes it super fishy is the whole how it doesn't even let you go down to 0%