String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

Huh? I counted FC and enmity set as "required" sets for RUN. Its interruption- set that I think it's skipable unless tanking 5+ adds.



I agree that without DD set it can be difficult to hold hate against DD going all out....IF the DD is very very elite. Its not like new players will pt with r15 server top DDs all day so starting with RUN is still very viable.

My point has more to do with time and Gil investment anyways.

No, you guys were arguing that PUP is mechanically easier when it comes to pt setup and playing it. Rua argued that it needs more Gil and time investment for a new player, which I agree.

"Mechanically easy" isn't the same as "fast and cheap to gear". But when it comes to being new player friendly, you can't ignore initial investments.

Maybe you forgot it, but I don't see any mention of FC gear. I assumed you excluded it because of Inspiration.

Its in the 3rd paragraph and I quoted it again in the last post, scroll up.

Edit: quoting it for you, since you missed it twice.

I don't know about other servers but my friend just made another pup mule and just going through for frames/attachments (not sure if he tried to go around to find the cheapest possible way either) was about 7 or 8 million he said. For a *new* player, that could be a big hit for initial investment.

Let's look at how much PUP actually costs to gear.

All the typical turtle tanking attachments cost about 1.5m altogether at vendor prices but on bigger servers can be gotten for a fraction of the price from the AH due to the goblin chest. Attachments that drop from Ob can either be bought for a pittance or farmed essentially for free.

- Strobe 1+2
- Flashbulb
- ARK 3+4
- OF 1+2
- Eraser
- Analyzer
- AP 1-4
- Barrier Module 1+2
- Regulator
- Disruptor
- Mana Jammer 1-4
- Steam Jacket

Stuff like Equalizer, Schurzen, Resistors, Shock Absorbers, Galvanizer etc. can typically wait because they are either niche or a newer PUP won't have the elemental capacity for them anyway.

Midnights are free (DI), Anwig takes some grinding but is free, 4/5 NQ Rao runs you only about 200k on Asura (Abjurations from DI), Shepherd's is free, Isa Belt just requires some help with Delve farming, Handler's Earrings cost Accolades but you get Sparks in return.

So to fully gear a basic tank PUP it will run you under 3m gil. Even just the mats for reforging AF/Relic/Empy just to +1 will cost a RUN far more than that. And then you need all the other sets you mentioned and Aettir to boot.


Fine, so I missed it because you didn't list it in your initial paragraph that literally said that's all RUN needs. Big whoop. But that still makes RUN far more costly to gear regardless, so your argument has little to no basis.

That list also assumes that pup is going to farm DI for 30 days straight for the 2400 points needed for 4 abj and their weapon.

Farmng Escha NMs is still a thing if needed lol. It's not like RUN can get all of their gear easily with zero help or time investment.

Man, you are arguing for the sake of arguing at this point. I said time/Gil investment, not just Gil. So listing DI points to argue that gears are free doesn't make your argument more valid.

How many days does it take to farm all the DI if going for free route.

Using "buy it from AH because big server has it" is also not valid. What if we just don't play on a big server? You can't possibly argue that a job is new player friendly ONLY if they play on a big server >.>

If you are doing that then I can use the same argument: you can get vagary mat for free if you do vagary RoE!

So RUN is still cheaper, lol.

Oof, no self-awareness whatsoever. You literally came to the PUP forum as a non-PUP just to argue with every single person here.


As I said above, you can still farm Escha itself like before; DI is just an easy grind that anybody can do. RUN's gear is gated behind certain content as well. You're acting as if reforging doesn't require Rem's Tales, Vagary or Delve mats. Then RUN also needs Herc or the like for FC, Aettir which costs REMA stones and a Cehuetzi Claw and so forth.

And even on smaller servers NQ Rao will cost you 1m-2m at most. All the mats for RUN gear are still significantly more expensive.

All the mats for Run gear are farm-able as well for free.

You only need empty legs and feet though, don't need the whole set.

Since you need vagary clear to begin with you get 1 mat from RoE.

So nope. You are trying too hard to defend for your argument.


Sure if you think you represent the opinion of every single person here. Rua made the argument about initial investments and I agreed, not just me.

You seem to attack anyone who disagree with you with "you are not a PUP" comment. First it's Shiraj then it's me. It doesn't make your opinion more valid though.

I have both PUP and RUN geared, that's why I can say 100% for sure that PUP takes longer to "get ready" than RUN.

I'm not defending any arguments, I dismantled yours. You act like PUP costs are prohibitive when I literally just laid out how much it actually costs.

Under 3m-5m is trivial with Sparks even for a new player.

Seriously, just stop posting here, please. You're not adding anything to the thread; you just keep shitting on PUP for the sake of it.

Well sure if you get your feelings hurt so bad because more than one person said the job cost a bit for new players. That's shitting on the job, seriously?

If you don't want people disagree with your points, stop pushing yours so hard by shitting on everyone else who disagree with you.


3m is the merc market price for abj, 4 abj is 12m. That's before attachments. RUN doesn't need any attachments, DI nor escha abj. Just do vagary clear and AF quest, get an Ambu back then done.

Not convinced with your pov in anyway.

Not wanting the PUP thread to be spammed by argumentative trolls like you is hardly getting my feelings hurt. I just want the thread to be informative to actual PUP players and baseless claims do not help that whatsoever.

And I'm not talking about the gil thing, I'm talking about every other post you made here where you argued against PUP in endgame.


You argue with everyone, all the time. Nothing gets through to you, ever, because you apparently have to be always right. Literally the only way to get you to stop is to stop replying to you. Which is why I'll try to make this my last response to you for the time being.


The whole merc mentality is mostly an Asura thing. On smaller servers people typically help each other out for free. And you can get all the pop items just by farming Unity, but DI is simply an easier option. At 100 points per day you can get all the stuff in under 3 weeks (1800 points) while working on missions or JPing, but that is just an alternative to farming directly.

I find this all funny since it reminds me when I reached 1200 JP on pup and my ls leader asked me to help tank T4 HELMs in Reisenjima early on. I didn't know how to tank on pup, and had no spellcast/gearswap, and somehow everyone thought I did a decent job using only 1 gear set. I'm not sure if it has been said yet, but one thing I enjoy using overdrive for during tanking is the capped? status resistance gained during the duration, because *** all the enfeebles some of those T4s do, especially doom.

Nope, I agree with people that made their argument in a rational manner.

I didn't agree with Ruas tank list which included DD job like WAR which is obviously not a tank, but left hybrid job like PUP out. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But then he made a point about initial investment of this job, which I agree because it matches my experience gearing it from scratch. I upvoted his post anyways. Even though I still don't agree with his tank list

Basically, if you express your argument in a rational manner then I will agree, and vice versa.

You are the one who tried to argue with "just farm DI for a month" which flat out doesn't make sense when people argued initial time investment.

I can get vagary legs/feet clear + RoE mats in a DAY if I gear RUN tank, why would I farm DI for a month to gear PUP tank? It makes zero sense to me.

Then you made a point saying "you can buy attachments from AH on a big server" then proceed with "we help each other on small server so abj are free". So are you arguing that PUP is easy to gear on a big server or small one? Make up your mind.

Your points are everywhere and inconsistent. Then when you are called out you play the "you are just a troll" "you don't play the job" card which just seems incredibly cheap and irrational.

This discussion is totally in the weeds. If Rua just say, "hey, I was wrong, PUP is more useful as a tank than NIN or WAR" this would all be over, and the topic could go back to helping puppetmasters plan gear and tactics.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Very few of the people that participated in this thread actually came here to be convinced of PUP. The majority is, sadly, just here to argue in bad faith.

Also, in the interest of not messing up this thread any further I will try to practice what I preach and refrain from posting anymore in the context of this debate unless it's to clarify PUP mechanics or related to testing. I'll just try to tone it back in general, tbh, because I'm fed up with this.

Best thing this little diversion did for me was inspire me to... finally pick up a Xiucoatl today! Have had a Su4 for a while now, but decided to step up to the fancy one for pet DD and "bruiser" automaton solos. Mostly motivated to do that thanks to the intense PUP discussion :P


Anyway, my last point before I also try to pivot away from the probably fruitless tanking discussion is about barriers to entry...

I've seen like 4 different players in my own Dyna LS who are NOT major PUP enthusiasts cobble together an easily obtained tanking set (including attachments, weapons, and armor) that was good enough to do Divergence wave 3 PUP tanking with total success. There's really not a big barrier to entry from the perspective of either (a) cost/difficulty to obtain gear perspective, or (b) skill/technique required to use play the job.

a) From a skill perspective:
As someone who plays both, I think there's a heck of a lot more of an art to timing your spells/abilities on RUN than there is to pointing the puppet at a mob and doing fire/light maneuvers while remembering to keep wearing my pet DT- clothes. That's 95% of the tanking role. Honors class: look at timers and swap in pet enmity gear before the flash/voke timer is up. It really doesn't require a genius to PUP tank.

b) From a cost perspective:
Does anyone really think it's some major difference to maybe have to farm 5 million more gil for one job than another to put together an endgame kit? That's splitting hairs just to argue, in this day and age where anyone (even a total newbie) can farm that amount easily. Real significant cost differences come from expensive weapons:

• PUP: the job's best-in-slot tanking kit doesn't use any RMEA/Su5. You're using something like a Skirmish weapon (can even avoid farming that by using free Kupons/ROE) or Escha Ru'Aun drop (2.5 days of Domain Invasion points if you don't want to bother spending gil on pops for the T2 Geas Fete). Minimal expense.

• PLD: Aegis (and maybe Burt) are practically required to be seen as an acceptable endgame tank. Those are significant hurdles.

• NIN: You really need a tanking focused mainhand weapon, either Su4/Su5 or Mythic, if you want to actually hold hate on NIN while tanking (if fighting alongside real players with decent gear). Su4 can do it on the "cheap", but that one item is still probably near the cost of ALL of your baseline PUP tanking gear.

• RUN: Yeah, Aettir can tank most stuff fine - but let's be honest, if you want to become a serious RUN tank you're gonna want Epeolatry. And a lot of people will expect you to have it, especially when considering that plenty of other RUNs who could fill the slot do have one.

Specific to RUN versus PUP non-weapon gear costs - once we go beyond entry level tanking gear, RUN additional costs start to add up. Staple gear for high end RUN tanks include Relic+3 head, AF+3 body, D.ring, Moonlight ring, +1/+2 neck, Turms +1 hands/feet, etc. A top end PUP is able to use a very cheap weapon, Skirmish gear (Rao+1 is an option too, but basically sidegrade so either one works), Anwig Salade, easily obtained old UNM/delve/HTBF accessories. Really the only PUP tanking gear with serious cost is Su3 gear for enmity swaps (and the difference between NQ/HQ isn't that significant from a tanking perspective), unless you decide to spend the gil on optional Rao+1. Enmerkar Earring from Kyou is probably the piece of high end PUP tanking gear that's the biggest headache to obtain.

The difference between job performance in any 1 role is not as big as the difference in player performance across an entire server. It's easy to shrug off content as easy once you beat it and out geared it.

Good job those pups were around in the early days of the content to help you figure out the mechanics and get the gear for your other jobs I guess? Reminds me of the guys complaining about ACAF Aeonics after using ACAF to do their own Aeonics.

How many pages of Butthurt now because some guy couldn't say "I forgot to include it, my mistake"?
Who the *** is tanking endgame content on WAR? Native provoke and a DT set doesn't make you a tank.

I was talking about basic functional level for new players so they can start doing endgame, not a dedicated tank for an elite endgame group.

I didn't have any of the bolded gears when I tanked omen, T4, WoC, RP farming run years ago and I never bother to get any of them after they release too. I still use RUN if I can't find a tank and I've never hear complaints like "hey Afa do you have +3/turms/moonlight/+1 neck? If not please gtfo" kind of question from my party.

Its one thing to insist PUP being new player friendly (despite myself and many people that I've spoke to disagree), it's another to exaggerate the requirement of another job to an extreme level just to win an argument.

We can agree to disagree about the new player friendly thing, and I can agree that at least PUP doesn't require tons of reaction speed. But in terms of gears, please stop posting false and exaggerated informations about RUN gear requirements which is just not correct.

well, its because the person arguing against you is changing the scope of the argument every time they fail to make their point. its because the real reason is "I don't like pup"... Not anything really substantive.

Or because people can't tell the difference between "new player friendly job"(cheap and fast to gear up to functional level) and "jobs/setup that needs less skill and coordination"(pretty much applies to all the pet jobs).

No, nobody change the argument. People were arguing totally different things from the very beginning.

What capes does pup use from Ambuscade?

What do I take on dust? Evasion / Magic Evasion or Acc? (or do I have to make one of each?) For instance, a pet DT cape
thread
20 pet acc
dust
???
sap
pet haste 10%
resin
pet dt -5
dye
10 pet acc

Quite a bit of recent discussion on page 38, starting here.

Holy crap I can't believe that's 9 pages ago in only about a month.

I was debating Eva MagEva + from dust when not meleeing, but pup doesn't really have to go in range?

only time you should need to be in possible range is when using repair/maint or engaging trusts if thats a factor

I'd consider changing from pet dt -5 to magic damage -10. It's very easy to hit pdt cap from gear and manuevers without the back. It's much harder to get mdt.