String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

Tested Sroda Earring can confirm it does not increase Automaton ranged attacks. It does boost Automaton melee attacks by about 5% and chimera ripper by about 2%.

I think its not worth the gil currently with mastery levels pet has really fallen behind in damage compared to master outside of overdrive. When master can do 25k+ howlings unbuffed / 60k buffed every few seconds. Earring is adding like a 200 damage boost every time pet does a weaponskill lol.

Hopefully af3 will close the gap a little bit, or the new prime weapons. Who knows

Question about Bone crusher WS set. On main page, this set is build with Taeon Tabard (assuming we get get acc +25 and DA +5% on it),
even if Bone crusher has Double Attack as it transfers fTP across all hits, is it still better than Pitre Tobe +3, with acc +50 and attack +60?

short answer is itll depend, if you're really atk starved then the surplus of atk could be better, however if you are that atk starved id say BC isnt the way to go to begin with. In a general sense id value the acc/DA over the 60 atk

I mean, it's ALSO an excellent master TP earring. I'd still probably agree with you that, especially if only considering PUP, it may not be worth buying at current prices - but it's good.

Kenkonken AM3 up you'd probably still prefer something like Telos/Dedition for master TP. Non-Kenkonken it's probably not a BIG step up from Telos/Schere (depending on your augment level on Schere) but at the very least I'd go Sroda over Schere without augments.

If you also play DRG and/or BST, that's another a reason you may be more interested in the earring since it's a great TP piece for both of those jobs too (no Schere on either job, so you're currently probably looking at Sherida, Telos, maybe Dedition as your primary options), and arguably worthwhile for some BST ready moves too.

Main issue is it's really difficult to capitalize on Sroda's pet bonus. It's only really interesting if you're buffing the maton with Mythic AM3, but outside of that it's basically just a DA+7% earring with an MEVA penalty.

It wouldn't be terrible to use Mache+1/Sroda with Godhands or Xiucoatl, I guess, but a DD maton probably won't be doing much in that situation. And it's probably basically a toss-up with Balder Earring +1 due to TA diminishing the DA from Sroda.

Though I guess we can count ourselves lucky to get something that's basically Balder+1 or Schere-equivalent that'll be very cheap soon, assuming you've got enough buffs to make up for the lack of Acc/Atk and the MEVA penalty. At the very least it opens up the ability to TP in Sroda and WS in Schere to focus the MP consumption on WS enmity.

Maybe noob pup question but still learning: any reason neo animator is used only for some ws? I imagined that the acc/wsdmg would be worthwhile using on all of them compared to nothing but I guess I'm misunderstanding something?

Also is there a breakpoint in which the neo animator takes over other options for pet related stuff, or the sets in which it is, it is good at r0? Just unlocked it so not had a chance to put RP in it yet.

sorry for the noob questions :P

Super buff Master only DD? Howling Fist Spam? Using a support pet? Use Neo animator.

Both Master and Pet are DDing? Some Master and Pet skill chains? Your pet may be using overdrive? Use PII+1.

A lot of Pups high level hand to hand weaponskills don’t benefit much from Neo’s +5% wsd. It’s mostly Howling and Raging that do which also lack skill chain properties.

RPing neo is one of the last things you should worry about. It only gives pet acc and pet +40hp at max rank. Which if you are using Neo you are probably going full master dd so you don’t need pet stats lol.

Only final heaven really cares about wsd, but 5 is still better than 0, its remaining draw the acc+10, new line might change that but for now I wouldnt waste an inventory slot on it really.

Generally most h2h WSs with ftp replication don't benefit much from WSD and all ftp replicating WSs has the same starting ratio of 1:2 DoubleAttack:WSD, meaning that 2%WSD is as good as 1%DA (ofc this relatively changes if you add more WSD or DA and also when you add QA and TA, but it's just to show some perspective).

When there is no choice between WSD and multiattack in the slot, then then only thing to care is how good is that WSD. fTP replicating WSs with less hits benefit more from WSD, than WSs with more hits, so Raging Fists (5+ hits) isn't exactly good example of WS that stacks well with WSD. Howling Fist, Tornado Kick, Dragon Kick and Spinning Attack are good examples of PUP h2h WSs (Like Nariont said Final Heaven is best example, but it's MNK only).

String Theory node: Added Sroda Ring to Asuran Fists setups and included a note to potentially do the same for HF, RF and SP in case of significant buffs (where it might beat Gere's TA on average).

Also replaced Blistering/Heyoka/Ryuo pieces in the SP WS setup as Mpaca's has overall higher attributes, close to the same Crit rate bonuses, massive amounts of Acc and Atk (potentially interesting for PUP/DRK), a bunch of TA on top of AM3 and added defensive benefits. The loss of Ryuo's Crit Damage is probably the most contentious part, but Mpaca's Attack+ and TA+3% should allow for more consistency overall and helps with PDL traits. Since PUP/DRG doesn't have Berserk/LR it should benefit from that a lot.

I'm open to change it back depending on good opposing arguments, but spreadsheeting it got me very similar results with Mpaca's outside of superbuffs. Since a lot of content has been moving towards being rather dangerous if you WS without any DT—and AM3 KKK spams SP very quickly—the PDT on Mpaca's alleviates that issue. Plus Mpaca's going to get a fourth augment slot in the future, so it might not even be a contest anymore.

Once I find the time to rework String Theory on BGwiki I'll include the old setup in a pre-Ody set.

Feedback welcome.

Couple things that would help noob pup like me is a few more options for master only tp accuracy and maybe optional swaps for people that have no dark matter/decent herc augs? Dunno if that was the feedback you hoped for but it's really difficult for someone like me that only plays pup here and there to have specific pup augs.

I also generally struggle a shitload in capacity point parties since the pet sometimes doesn't pull its weight and go full master tp but sometimes acc is an issue if the party is not great. Done some of my own swaps but feel like I'm stumbling :P

Ideally if the guide can cover a bit more things for non super 1000% dedicated pups it does help, playing multijobs is hard to have everything perfect for each.

your easy acc options would be the ambu sets and now mpaca in most core armor slots, with ody gear hercs mostly getting phased out outside of specfic puppet ws/nuke sets. Another option once you get enough jp is the heyoka set

Herc isn't as important these days as it was a few years ago as it doesn't offer a lot defensively (DT, MEVA). You can simply mix and match between the following TP sets mentioned in the node. That said, using Fern Stones to augment Herc with TA+4 and some Acc for fastest TP isn't too rough usually and relatively accessible for most players that aren't dedicated PUPs, but there's nothing wrong with using Mpaca's or Malignance pieces for more Accuracy. Also goes for the Ryuo+1 slots.

Nariont's suggestion of using Tali'ah or Hizamaru from Ambu is definitely a good starting point if you don't have the other sets to work with yet.

ItemSet 353251
ItemSet 375075
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(Balder Earring +1 can be "downgraded" to Schere Earring or Sroda Earring; Brutal Earring is fine too)

As for making the Automaton more useful in CP parties, that's usually a bit of an issue since pets in general have trouble keeping up with players these days. Your best bet is to either have the maton MBing as BLM, supporting as WHM or just having it apply Defense Down with some extra damage as VE/SS. If you wear full Mpaca's both you and the maton should have solid Accuracy.

Is Pup / Drk as good as / War now?

Smite III, Attack Bonus III and Physical Damage III
Vs
Attack Bonus I and Double Attack +12%

Less double attack but Mpaca has triple attack and triple attack damage up. Not sure how good consume mana is.

PUPs one of the more attack starved jobs so unlikely to hit that last pdl tier and even if you did the WSD traits from /drg likely to pull ahead along with the utility of high/super jump, DA+12 is also a better overall gain TP wise than anything /drks going to give.

Worse version of SA/TA, 1 dmg for every 10 mp on the 1st hit so maybe 20~30 extra dmg with /drk mp pool provided max mp?

PUP/DRK could be interesting if you are fully buffed with mythic AM3 as Smite III alone is a permanent +10.2% Attack Boost. Depending on the fight it wouldn't be impossible to max out PDL and outclass the WSD traits, but /DRG is definitely the safer choice.

Even so, Godhands with /WAR will likely perform better overall in most endgame since the Automaton has really fallen behind lately.

For the content where you are allowed to bring PUP master DD (non odyssey) it shouldn’t be too difficult to cap attack for Howling Fist?

garbage math so could be wrong but just basing around promy apex drifters you need round 3850 atk to cap pdl 3 + jse neck+2/mpaca maxed out with just a standard def down(25) and dia 2 (15), like everyone else if you got full powered geo bubbles its probably not too difficult with the "standard" buff array, but if you don't it gets a lot more difficult.

Standard def down might be a big ask since Apex should be dying so fast nobody can afford to spend a WS on debuffing. BLU or BST could debuff each mob, but it's not something you'd always have available.

Armor Shatterer + Dia 3 (KoH) would be the most reasonable combo for most PUPs, I think. Which just means we'd need even more Attack just to max out all the PDL, compared to what you calculated.

I was just using apex as the def baseline, since things like omen/dyna/ambu all have a wide variance from what I know so just grabbed the higher end ilvl "trash" mob we have atm which is 139~141.

Fair enough, that makes sense.

Im couple years late on this discussion lol - I multi box and Use Pup tank in all dynam D, there are endless SC you can do (Rng, SCH, Cor) as my other jobs. Pup tank there will never die, and I use OD for Yag boss under 50%.

Hey all , I just boosted pupps! x 2! Do I need to skill the attachment up? I noticed melee is lvl 1, do I need to also skill up ranged enfeebling magic etc?

Any tips for doing so? No Books to buy with sparks lol

If you want to use the matons for anything but basic turtle tanking, then yes, you'll have to skill up Melee, Ranged and Magic all separately.

Melee and Ranged are fairly easy if you just deploy on Adoulin uragnites. Magic is best done on Lair Reives or the like.

Turbo Charger x2 (Melee, Magic recast), Drum Magazine (Ranged), Mana Booster (Magic) and Percolator (general skill up rate) all speed up the process.

Hello guys!!
Anyone know a good strategy to clear Bumba V0 with PUP?
Thanks a lot.?

I've been recently trying to use the Pup lua by Faloun (unmodified), but whenever I load it up my fps drops from 30 to ~17 and even worst while in combat.. any ideas why?

Anyone have suggestions on PUP tanking in Dynamis? Does this include Wave 3? Curious how the automaton is going to hold hate against DDs. Sometimes have enough trouble as it is with a RUN or PLD.

Is it just a matter of pulling on the master with enmity + gear and dumping enmity to the automaton?

Usually they do fine.
As long as the DD is competent enough to shread their own enmity/have a decent enmity down set.

Puppet is going to have a very hard time keeping hate off a properly buffed DD, even with dirge due to lengthy recast on its only 2 hate tools, additionally the puppet has no method of gaining/maintaining hate on multiple targets outside of vent which is on a lengthy timer and only hits 1 target, which severely hinders it vs the other tanks.

As to how your best current spike that i know of is /blu soporific and venting followed by puppets voke/flash combo, gives puppet a good head start, but could be wrong there