String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

The reason to make a DT-5% cape is because most of the time MDT isn't a huge deal and a Bruiser setup will be missing vital PDT without it.

21.5% base + 30% AP4 with 1x Light OF bonus + 10% Anwig + 16% Taeon + 4% Rimeice/Enmerkar + 5% Cape = 86.5% PDT

It'll cap if you have a Thurandaut Ring (+1) on top of that, but those who don't won't have to worry as 1% off isn't a huge deal for a maton if turtling isn't necessary to begin with.

Typically, no. But occasionally you'll need to run in for Repair/Maintenance, or maybe there's a hate reset (or some COR or RNG pulls hate), adds, etc. You'll also often be in range immediately on a pop/deploy, until you can run away to safety.

I do have Eva/Meva dust slot on my tanking cape to cover those occasional moments. Not a super high priority though, I'd suggest coming back to that later once finishing your important capes/stats if you have extra Ambu points to burn.

Which are?

Read the post I linked yesterday (which is just a month old, still totally current): https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/52194/string-theory-a-puppetmasters-guide-new/38#3493648

Detailed explanation of important PUP capes and recommended stats.

Obviously tailor it to your desired use: if you only care about using PUP to tank stuff or do pet things, master TP and WS capes are gonna be less urgent for you.

Thanks Capu~chan

Is the pet MagAcc/MagAtk Cape really used? When do you use magic automaton or do the other automatons have magic effects? Magic Mortar?

It's really just actual puppet nukes with Spiritreaver frame. I'm honestly not a fan of PUP nuking, particularly due to the delay between spells and obnoxious Aspir AI requiring regular deactivation (and then needing to put up 3 more vital maneuvers before you're operating at a high level, meaning you're out a significant chunk of damage for an annoyingly long time). Resists are also an issue on anything serious.

BUT, the 2019 job adjustment that allowed Ice Maker to function without consuming maneuvers was a pretty strong change. You can indeed get some flashy numbers on single nukes if you're getting SCs. It has some practicality for lower difficulty stuff like Apex CP farming, if you still need PUP CP.

There's also fairly easily obtainable pet nuking gear these days. shards/voids for Relic +3 legs/feet are very cheap, and Tali'ah gear is a strong Macc option for the other slots (unless you're lucky enough to have Udug Jacket).

All that being said... yeah, I don't really use my puppet to nuke and it really isn't a big priority. But I maintain my sets anyway LOL (one of those things to just have around for the sake of OMG BIS SITUATIONAL SETS... for situations I rarely use)

I posted about Spiritreaver before and while it definitely has issues on non-Dark mobs due to Aspir spam (Scanner prevents it on mobs that have medium-to-high Dark resistance) it's still pretty good as an on-the-fly extra nuker for certain content such as Omen, Dyna, Vagary, Geas Fete and possibly Odyssey in the future.



The lower numbers were due to the MB wall, not resists. Also was without any 1hrs, just BoG+EA Malaise and Puppet Roll.

At the time I was also missing Udug body and Grape/Rolanberry daifuku hadn't been buffed yet, so those two things would have improved the BLMaton noticeably. Of course Marine Stewpot is and was a thing, but Rolanberry daifukus are a lot more affordable.

What is the rest of the party set up for something like that? I'm planning to lowman Oman with PUP COR GEO. Debating PUP SCH GEO.

If your SCH and GEO can nuke hard enough then PUP SCH GEO should indeed work, but it could be slow. In lowman situations the PUP will typically always be maton tanking, so you can't really use the BLMaton.

PUP uses Valoredge/Harlequin maton with Light/Wind/Fire, capped Pet: Haste and Acc/DA/DT Taeon. Maton damage also doesn't matter so Ohtas for Acc/Haste/Regain is best. Fit in as much Acc/DA/STP in other slots as you can.

Attachments:
- Strobe 1+2
- Inhibitor 1+2
- Turbo Charger 1+2
- Flashbulb
- ARK4
- OF2
- AP4
- MJ4 (not super necessary if you bring enough oils; drop for a Stabilizer 5 if you have Acc issues)
- Coiler II or Target Marker depending on Accuracy

Near the beginning of the fight the PUP steals TP from the maton via Tactical Switch to hold 900+ TP at all times to stop the maton from WSing freely. The SCH can then cast Immanence Blizzard whenever the maton has close to 1k TP or more and a few seconds later the maton will always close into Fragmentation or Impaction via Slapstick (I think it was Fragmentation), which the SCH and GEO can then MB.

Keep Kei in the center of the arena and the PUP should be standing behind their maton. Retrieve the maton as Kei readies Dancing Fullers to save them from dying, then redeploy and continue damage.

If you go PUP/RDM and lock your pet gear in you can also cast Water/Blizzard to prevent Kei's Regen mechanic during the skillchain downtime.

Note that I strongly recommend bringing at least a Barataria Ring COR mule (if you don't have a geared COR for PUP COR GEO shooting available) or else the maton's TP gain will be very slow whenever you accidentally trigger the Slow effect from Kei. But outside of that the maton will usually have 600-1000+ TP by the time the MB windows closes unless delayed by Provoke/Flash, so SCing should be smooth.

Alternatively you could just turtle up and let the SCH make solo SCs, but that means you'll be waiting on strat recast half the fight and the SCH can't double MB. That's probably even slower overall.

i have done it a number of times with PUP,COR,GEO. the strat is to have the cor use last stand to close light after bone crusher and MB with GEO.
you can make almost constant light skillchains this way with tact roll on the pup and it works much better than sch in general which gets limited by strategem. another good thing about this setup is PUP should always survive fullers if you despawn your geo bubble a few % before thresholds as it will only do 2.5k damage. it's hard work on GEO spamming T1 spells to prevent regen and constant aspir III to keep MP up and MB's going but it usually took me somewhere around 15mins to kill Kei doing that.

Hard to say which of the two setups would be more efficient. One has faster SCs while the other has more nuking power. I guess it depends mostly on the quality of your GEO.

That does sound like quite a workout for the GEO. I'd prob try to have the PUP go /RDM to handle T1s (same as Aerix's above suggestion in the PUP SCH GEO context) to help lighten that load.

Great input though, thanks for providing that perspective.

And of course... I know we're talking 3 person lowman setups, but if you happen to have another player available there are lots of ways to significantly reduce time and add flexibility. BLM (or even a 2nd nuking PUP) for powerful MBs, RDM for enfeebes/refresh/inundation and possibly some nukes, 2x SCH, two SCing melee puppets and a nuker MBing, etc.

Anybody mind explaining to me how exactly Wave3 Fomor pulls work on PUP?
I have absolutely no idea.

I explained it a couple pages back. Deploy on the fetter > pull auto pack with both fomor parties > alliance kills fetter > puppetmaster releases auto > parties path back to where fetter used to be.

If you wanted to kill Fomor pulls you'd deploy on the Divergence weapon mob, have the auto super-tank the Volte mobs while a co-tank pulls them out one by one, I guess.

I'll add some details.
for sac-pull supertanking, enmity doesn't matter. you can reclaim some slots for defensive attachments instead of flashbulb and strobes.
typically I keep as much regen as possible on top of defensive attachments. It matters more if you are holding them in place vs kiting them. So triple light maneuvers is common, or perhaps water and 2 light. pay attention on pull that nothing binds your automaton.

It is easier to survive kiting, but faster to travel if your auto can hold the full crowd in a good spot. Dawn mulsums also make this easier if your pup is having a hard time surviving.

Its most important to plan your kiting path or holding positions and make sure the rest of the alliance does not mess it up. you need to figure out the mobs return path as well.
For example in Bastok, if you pull the mobs from the light or dark circles toward the Mog house, they will return BEHIND the Auction house.

Along the same lines, you want to be able to release the horde of mobs at the right positioning and timing. Make sure you can return to the alliance to pull or tank the next group. you dont' want to be trapped BEHIND the crowd. The whole point of sac pulling is to save time for the wave 3 boss kill. it defeats the purpose alot if you take forever to return. Its good to have someone report in ls chat what the hp of the circle is. its probably a good idea to release mobs before its completely dead, so that you can position yourself ahead of them. They return very slowly, so not usually a problem depending on how far they are pulled and how quickly your group kills the circle.

This is one example, but there and many. it is important to plan your kill order, which circles to kill and which to sac pull. you need a clear path for alliance and horde to not cross paths.

Going back to Bastok as an Example, I like to full clear the Water, Wind, and Ice Circles, and possibly the earth. (killed wave 2 boss on ramp between zeruhn mines and wave 1 boss).
This clears paths for maneuvering thru the zone. It is easy to pull the light are dark toward the MH, but I would not want to pull earth or thunder that way, because of the mobs return path. Better to pull those circles towards Zeruhn mines. Fire circle is easy to pull the MH and do circles if needed, even though its a short pull.

The better the experience of your group, and more power to kill mobs, the less there is a need to sac pull.

Some circles also only link 1/2 the mobs. Earth circle in Windurst and Fire circle in bastok are 2 examples.

Ok I think I'm starting to get it, but what if you just wanna kill the fomors and leave the Fetter untouched? :x

Just pull the Volte mobs one group at a time and kill them. As long as you don't perform any actions (single target or AoE) on the fetter you can just run through it after the Volte mobs are dead.

Yeah but I mean, in this case there's nothing "special" about Pup pulling, is there? You deploy the automaton on one group then pull back, which means you have to be within 18 yalms to use deploy (isn't that dangerous for aggro?) then pull back and let your group handle the group you pulled.

Basically there's no pro about having a Pup in this way, right? The special part is about pulling whole groups and resetting hate by using deactivate once the fetter is dead.
Useful if you're doing full wave 3 clears, but useless for my needs, alas

It was pretty useful back when Dynamis-D Wave 3 was fresh content and people were struggling to even clear. Now that gear has improved considerably (including R15 weapons) most groups can just clear all the Volte first without running out of time.

That said, there are very likely still groups out there that have to rely on this strategy because they don't have the firepower to clear all Volte + fetters + Mega Boss in time. Possibly due to lowmanning.

Yeah yeah i have no troubles believing that.
It's just that I'm gonna unlock Pup in dyna zones soon and was looking for unique things to bring for my group, but I'm afraid I will "just" have to be a dd and that's it.

PUP can be a pretty good puller as you can supertank the mobs spawned by statues practically forever until your group is ready to deal with them. Same goes for Volte pulls that often link, like the palace in Jeuno.

You can also be an extra nuker on the Wave 1 boss or a backup tank for Halphas who tends to hate reset main tanks very often.

But a well-geared PUP is presumably around SB COR tier as far as damage goes, so you're still a decent DD either way.

Great on pull ( div dyna ) ,while pld tank boss / they can handle 2-4 stats with no prob . At last they are good for that :))

( does speed up run and Rp farm too )

Hey guys. Just came back after and year and I see a bunch of things have changed again. Are the String Theory guides for gear sets still viable?

The guide hasn't been updated in a year or so, meaning many things related to master gearing are outdated. The attachment setups are still useable, but usually require tweaking depending on the situation.

We actually like puppet tank (or backup tank) on Jeuno and Bastok wave 2 bosses too. Even with decently buffed melee setups, I don't find holding hate to be a big problem on those fights.

When I Dyna-PUP, I tend to just melee stuff on wave 1/2 along with my puppet, then tank/pull fetter mobs on wave 3.

If you don't have a lot of CORs or other people with magical WS/nukes, Spiritreaver can actually be pretty handy on wave 1-2 statues to help get rid of them quickly. Otherwise, I tend to do more of a bruiser setup, and I'll deploy the puppet to tank some of the more obnoxious mobs (BST/RNG). Or even just to be "first voke" and hold a mob that 1-2 people are fighting (including me just going off to solo some mob) to help reduce damage taken.

Ok, I need someone to answer this. I know it's not a part of the guide or anything, but whatever.

Why are so many people playing PUP in the last 6 months (since I left)? There would be an average of 8 daily (Asura), now that I've returned momentarily, there's about 70-80 per day.

I ask because as much as I wanted other players to give it a go, I did not want the bandwagon or the quality of those who did play to be watered down.

What gives?

I haven’t noticed a vast increase in pups on Asura personally. The time I see pups most often tend to be in selbina so maybe they’re using it for Lilith farming?

8 daily, are you sure? My LS on Asura has more than 8 mastered, geared PUPs by itself. There are a LOT of puppetmasters. The job has gotten years of buff after buff and it has its own niche that other jobs can't fill. I actually find less variance in pickup PUPs compared to, say, pickup bandwagon red mages or monks, who are mostly awful.

PUP allows people Merc stuff with less people, or kill things that they have issues with. "Throw PUPs at it" is just an easy solution for things. Then it spreads in the community when more people look for easy solutions to things.

As far as bandwagon goes, it's still FAR below COR MNK RDM. So don't worry about it too much, lol.

I know there's many, I'm saying throughout all of last year there was 8 on daily (at least not /anon). It wasn't until maybe September where it fluctuated between 8-15. Then something happened, and it could be Lilith, which caused this number to jump. I can assure you all, as someone who has only gone between PUP and WHM since 2006 that these numbers are very different.