String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

this increase is for master melee hits, not any damage from automaton.

1) Each Automaton Lv+1 adds roughly STR/DEX/VIT/AGI/MND/INT/CHR+4, Accuracy+32, Ranged Accuracy+33, Attack+29, Ranged Attack+28, Evasion+23, Defense+43

before gear. These stats may vary depending on Head/Frame and merits, however. In my case it's 5/5 Skill, 5/5 Optimzation, 3/5 Fine-Tuning.

2) Pet Def does reduce damage taken slightly, but there's no way to stack large amounts of it for Automatons, so you'll generally see better results just using Rao+1 for DT and Max HP. Higher HP will help survival, reduce Enmity loss from taking damage and scale up the Regen from Auto-Repair Kits.

3) Head/Hands/Legs are solid pieces for maton WS, but not always the best. There's also Nyame D, Mpaca hands/feet and DA Taeon that are situationally better.

And the set bonus activates only for master white damage, as far as I'm aware. Might work on master WS, but the proc rate is too low and the stats on the Empy are too lackluster, so there's no chance of it replacing our current WS sets.

Thank you for the info again. I switched on Naga Kyahan path D for the feet and was trying the Mpaca feet (automation +1) but didn't really know the value of +1.
This is actually way more than I thought it was-
"Each Automaton Lv+1 adds roughly STR/DEX/VIT/AGI/MND/INT/CHR+4, Accuracy+32, Ranged Accuracy+33, Attack+29, Ranged Attack+28, Evasion+23, Defense+43"

I also thought the Emp bonus affected automation. Glad I asked this as the way it was explained.

When you calculate repair values does the Rao HP gear give you more Hp heal at the start?
Then regen is based off potency gear value? I don't have any Rao gear yet. I only seen repair potency on the guide so I aimed for potency. Is there a reward cap value similar to beastmaster?

I played beastmaster and summoner for years. I liked the pet jobs and thought I try puppetmaster. It is very different from both.

Initial Repair heal is based on Automaton Max HP and the Regen is boosted by Repair potency+% items up to a cap of +50%.

Gear priority is generally AF boots (for status removal) > 50% Repair potency > Max HP.

Understood, I will have to get some of the Rao gear and try it out. I just noticed you updated the guide.

I kept clicking on the link to the older one on BGWiki. I didn't realize they were both different until now.
Most of the answers were your guide I just didn't see them. Appreciate the help thank you again.

Put the Anwig in storage. With ML and new gear it is silly to gimp the master with it and the bonus just isn't needed for much of anything anymore.

Anwig still has some uses as an extra source of Pet: Haste if you don't have a Thurandaut Ring +1. Unless you are fine with always using Bean Daifuku.

Agreed, if you don't have to engage and can stay out of range (and 99% of the times I'm on PUP is for situations like that) Anwig is quite useful for its DT and Haste

The haste 5% is really nécessary tho ? I was thinking to make a new one with pet dt 10 and waltz recast for dnc

It's not absolutely necessary, but it's an easy way to cap Pet: Haste while maxing DT for pet burns if you don't have a Thurandaut, as mentioned, and it lets you use more offensive gear in other slots like DA Taeon or Mpaca feet. Here are some examples with alternatives:

Ohtas + Ambu cape + Anwig = 25%

Klouskap +1 + Ambu cape + Anwig + Rimeice = 27%

Klouskap +1 + Ambu cape + Anwig + Bean Daifuku = 27%

Klouskap +1 + Ambu cape + Rimeice + (HQ) Bean Daifuku = 25-26%

Klouskap +1 + Ambu cape (or Ohtas) + Tali'ah feet = 26%

Klouskap +1 + Heyoka legs + Tali'ah feet = 26%

All of these are viable, but those without Anwig will have noticeably less DT/MDT, which can matter in high magic damage fights with a VE/SS. Personally, even though I have Thurandaut Ring +1, I still use Anwig occasionally for OD and for my VE/Harle skillchain tank setup, since the HQ frame is squishier than VE.

It's what I use, and it allows me a lot of freedom in the other slots.
It's not BiS or perfect but it's a quick and viable approach. Especially for people like me who already own that gear, so I don't have to go and farm/buy more stuff.

I mean, if you use pup in any serious capacity though why you no have su5(4)

I use ohtas cause I'm not wasting 100m on temporary accounts but under normal circumstances Ohtas shouldn't even be considered

If you can reliably do WS swaps for your maton then technically Ohtas is the best TP weapon for matons due to having the highest Acc bonus, Haste+10% to free up other slots (for DA or STP) and a small amount of Regain. Xiucoatl only affects WS, Ranged Attacks and other damage JAs, so outside of a pure ranged setup you're not losing any notable white damage if you only swap it in for WS.

I suppose that's fair

Non optimal swapping after a tp move will cost you all the haste though, then you're tping in 15-18%

Hello, a few questions if anyone can advise.

-Is there something about Armor Shatter ws that makes it miss randomly? Was just reading it has- (wiki)
Armor Shatterer has a +50 accuracy bonus.
Only ws I noticed that misses frequently.

-When a automation is paired with another automation does inhibitors/speedloader mess up their weaponskills off each other?

It feels like it misses more as it's ranged and has no multi attack procs.

The physical attacks may miss primary hits but rarely miss all attacks.

Those attachments only really interfere when other players have tp, multiple auto's will chain off each other as best they can properly

Is it better or worse dps wise? It'll matter which frames, they'll be holding tp for no reason potentially.

It has the lowest (noted) accuracy bonus so you could say it has the highest miss chance of the bunch. As to the WS attachments, yeah it can mess with them pretty easily depending on what WS' the other puppet is doing, for ranged frame it's not really the worst thing since all of the ranged WS do pretty well but for something like VE or harle who have some poor WS it can be a potential dip

Automatons are also capped at 95% Accuracy no matter what, so just like 2H players any single-hit WSs will miss frequently enough for you to notice.

so i blitzed up t0 99 on pup and now i need to go back and skill up my rdm/whm/blm automaton magic skills.. since we only get spells at skill lvls and the only way to increase skill ups is percolator. Where is the best camp to skill up automatons magic skill?

Always the answer to skill ups.

You can also do a thing with cursna and the afflictors in beaduex after 90 (deploy with ani2 on whm and stand close to it so you get cursed and it spams cursna with a "macro" to light dark and water)

Is this ok to swap mache +1 for karagoz pantaloni +3 ?

ItemSet 388561

Unless gil is an issue, you'd lose a ton as the master by not using Moonbow (+1).

Does the puppet even keep up anymore even in low buff/solo situations? Seemed like it fell off hard once the h2h update rolled around and gear creep hasnt been as giving to pets vs players

Of course it doesn't keep up. That's not the question.

Is fully gearing the master, better deeps than the splitting of master plus auto is the question.

For every dps the master has to give up how many dps the automaton add back. Is the result net positive. The sacrifices are pretty minimal though. So probably.

That was my main poorly worded question I guess, is the puppet even worth considering anymore. In that setup you i think are giving up the head slot, the cape aug, and the waist to cap out pet haste, so mostly MA, and i just wondered if its worth it anymore.

The Automaton can do 8-12k Shatterers at a relatively decent rate along with white damage, which is likely to be a small DPS gain over the DA/TA you lose from wearing Pet: Haste gear. I think at full standard DD buffs a VE/SS is somewhere around 5-7% of the master's total damage, from what I recall.

Alternatively you could just use a full master DD set and have the Automaton shooting at range. It'd barely show up on the parse, but it'd be free damage.

Sadly, this is a result of SE plastering nothing but Acc+ on every single piece of gear that has pet stats. Needless to say, PUP could use some serious buffs. Still holding out hope that 2023 will have job adjustments again.

The extra stat on Nyame Path D v25 and Neo animator is the final HOPIUM for them to make pets viable again.

I could be wrong, but I feel like when they stopped doing the job adjustments a while back, they said it was going to be resumed later but as an all inclusive update to balance jobs. I really think the job needs more than we could hope from just an additional stat line.

It was poorly worded, but the "all job adustments" thing was referring to master levels. And those are done now at ML50.

Not sure why they thought it would balance anything at all—outside of benefitting jobs with high stat mod WSs the most—but it just served to weaken pets even more since they only got a fraction of the benefits that players receive.