String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

Probably best to get other data still but could possibly be that they didnt apply the change to multi-hits, the BST numbers have also just been from single hits.

Tried on Arebati V25, beast/companion roll, frailty, grape daifuku forgot to do dia (whoops)

This is the highest it went with an OK gear set, think this one was around 1600TP never got to see a 3k TP arcuballista, but it was averaging around 20k-22k during OD, got 2 armor shatterer in both of them also about 20k

You should be using Empy head and JSE back, both with total of +1100 TP Bonus, so lowest Arcuballista should be 2100 effective TP. Also I think it would be really hard to reach attack cap with pdif cap at 8.0 even with OD and all the def ignored with Attuner. I think you was barely taking advantage of update changes or maybe you weren't at all without that dia.

oh yea I was using empy head/jse back so I guess that it close to 3k

went again, this time with dia ii+light shot

Beast Roll, idris frailty, bone crushers have remained the same vs lilith E, melee damage has gone up by like 300/hit.

Pup equipment SU5 R25, Mpaca Gloves, Neo Animator R30, Mpaca Boots, Kara. Earring +1. Taeon Pet DA pieces in other slots, incarnation sash, shulmanu collar, enmerkar and sroda earrings, varar+1 x2.

How can I force my auto to only use bone crusher? I'm using the bone crusher load out from the guide. I may be using the wrong maneuvers, but I've experimented and haven't had much luck.

Its priority is light, provided you have enough skill to use it

You may also be triggering inhibitors, if you're over 1k TP the puppet wont ws until after you do and will prioritize a ws that SCs instead

I appreciate the reply, but it doesn't answer my question. I have capped skill. Is there a way to only use bone crusher without me being engaged?

If you don't use thunder it should default to bonecrusher (assuming you have a light on)

But it will try to close skillchains with whatever will work if you have inhibitors on.

If you want exclusively bonecrusher, no inhibitors and no thunder (or use 2 lights) And no double fire/dark.

Thank you!

To further explain... Have at least 1x light active, and do not have thunder or dark active unless you have 2x light (albeit unlikely you'll ever have this combination). Also limit fire to 1x or it will default to Chimera Ripper.

Thank you for the replies. I noticed during overdrive it makes distortion with string shredder. I had two light and single fire up. I swapped to 3 lights and it still continued. Is this just a part of using overdrive?

You may have had Inhibitors on so it tried to make a skill chain.

It's the inhibitors, that and speedloader will change the puppets priority on WS' itll open with BC but itll close with SS to make distortion as that's its highest possible SC it can make

Did it have inhibitors on.

I think it will still skillchain if it can get tp within the window regardless. During overdrive that's basically always.

No, I removed the inhibitors. Outside of overdrive it performs bone crusher after beautiful bone crusher. During overdrive it makes a skillchain. I do have a speedloader on. I'll try to remove it and give overdrive another go.

Speedloader is specifically for skillchains. That shouldn't be in your set.

(the recommended set uses them because they're skillchaining with the pet)

Thank you. This was the issue.

Thanks everyone for your help!

Its kinda funny turn around in BST thread. It looks like 8.0 pdif is only against low lvl stuff in non ilvl zones. Against ilvl mobs BST pets seems to be at old 4.0 cap for non crit hits and 5.0 ONLY for critical hits. If thats the same for PUP, then I indeed was hyping numbers achievable before, but I honestly don't remember Bone crusher doing up to 30k with Fire/Light/Wind at ML26.

Thank you for sharing really appreciate your work and guide . /Respect

Has anyone done any comprehensive testing between Animator P +1 and Neo Animator R30?

From just eyeballing the stats between the two, it seems like Animator P +1 still offers better stats, but with a trade off of +5% Special Attack damage on the Neo R30.

Is this only useful for an overdrive piece? Or does P +1 still beat it in that regard? I've not been able to actually test just yet, but figured I'd ask here in case someone else already had.

Neo also has +10 damage for pet, which should overall push Neo over P+1 for everything afaik

Having had a chance to actually look at in-game numbers, I can agree. These are the stats (naked, no attachments, sharpshot frame/valor head):



First is with no animator, second is P+1, third is Neo R30.

Deltas for Neo R30:
Accuracy +23
Attack -14
Ranged Accuracy +23
Ranged Attack -13
Evasion -11
Defense -44
All Stats -20
Magic Accuracy +30
HP +60
DMG +10
Special Attack +5%

IMO the negative values are worth the trade off. I'd say it's BIS for anything that doesn't need the II variant.

Sorry everyone, I had an internet outage for the past weeks and wasn't able to play or test anything in-game. I'll run some tests on potential maton damage changes soon to see if numbers changed with my gear as reference.

In the meantime, though, I managed to snag a rank 1 bonanza prize on a mule and picked up the Dragon Fangs for science. However, after some limited preliminary testing I am very sad to report that Dragon Blow seems like a worse version of Howling Fist currently as it does not have fTP transfer.

Damage without multiattack procs seems practically identical using the same WS gear, regardless of whether I had zero buffs or full buffs (Dia 3, Sylvie, Chaos, SV HM/4x Minuet) while fighting Apex Toads. Therefore DB is likely very close or even identical to HF's WS mods (except probably DEX-based) and 1.5x Attack modifier. So it's basically just a skillchaining tool with the Distortion property that no other HTH WS has, contrary to SE's claim in "Freshly Picked Vana'diel 53" where they said it's HF but with its power increased.

In other words, nobody is missing out by not having them unless SE decides to patch the WS. I may request on the official forums to at least add fTP transfer, but I doubt that'll ever lead to anything.



If anybody has some suggestions for other tests to run or how I can figure out WS mods and fTP exactly, please let me know.

When I have the time for it, I'll probably test for the following:

- potential hidden skillchain bonus to make use of the Distortion property
- since DF is Kick Attack-themed and the WS has "Dragon" in it, I'll try to test if Kick attack damage+ gear has any effect on it during Footwork similar to Dragon Kick (I'll have to farm up boots for my mule first). Chances are, however, that it won't be a saving grace because fTP transfer is so significant

Is the animation the same as Howling Fist?
What about the special/visual effects?

A lot of Weaponskills share the same exact 3D model animation, but look "different" thanks to special/visual effects.

If the damage is the same it would suggest it's not like Howling at all. Howling is 2 hits. If ftp transfer doesn't work, it would change damage even without multi attack proc, because 2nd hit would already miss it. So if the damage is the same it can mean 2 things:
1. It has ftp transfer but only for 2nd base hit and it's bugged for ma proc. Report and should be fixed and be as good as Howling.
2. fTP transfer doesn't work, but first hit has much higher fTP than Howling Fist resulting in similar fTP that Howling has with 2 hits with transferred fTP If it's that and missing ftp replication is a bug, instead of being intended, then fixing that would make it way stronger than Howling.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think every single H2H WS is at least 2 hits because they are trying to "simulate" what would be an offhand hit for a 1H WS in a dualwield situation.
With the difference that with H2H you cannot unequip the offhand weapon, which means the OH hit is unavoidable, and that's why every H2H WS is at least 2 hits.

Also the Dragon Blow description says it's a "twofold" attack but that doesn't mean a lot because SE uses it in a strange way.
Check for reference below
Tornado Kick is clearly the odd one, maybe Dragon Blow is truly twofold as in just 2 hits, who knows? Needs to be tested.

Should be easy enough to test the FTP transfer thing with Fotia neck/belt btw, on a target with high enough HP to show damage from all hits.

I wasn't really paying much attention since I was watching my TP and the log, but I'm pretty sure it looked 100% identical to HF's animation.


Yeah, you're right. The same thing occurred to me last night when I was thinking about submitting a bug report on the OFs. In my defense, at the time I did the testing and wrote the info post I was heavily sleep deprived lol.

My mule doesn't have ideal WS gear for PUP, but I was using pure acc/atk gear as well as R25 Nyame B to compare both WSs, so I was testing with a lot of WSD that would have benefitted DB more if most of the fTP were on the first hit and the second was just a regular 1.0. But HF resulted in basically the same numbers (8k-10k unbuffed, ~20k fully buffed) without multiattack procs every time. Buffed multiattack procs on HF went up to ~30k-60k whereas DB hovered around 22k-26k.

So scenario 1 seems more likely and it could just be bugged for MA procs, although scenario 2 would make it a lot more enticing as a WS as Dragon Fangs don't have the luxury of TP Bonus like HF+Godhands.

Also in-game WS menu description is identical to HF's if I remember correctly. I'll check again later when I'm less tired and can test more thoroughly.

The description is not the same, I think.

Howling Fist:
Damage varies with TP.

Dragon Blow:
Delivers a twofold attack. Damage varies with TP.


There's still the thing about the xFold part that needs to be tested, as I mentioned before in my previous post.
Atm all of the xFold descriptions report the correct number of hits (including the OH one) except for Tornado Kick.
For Dragon Blow we have no info, so we can't entirely rule out the possibility that DB is not 2hits (including OH) despite what the description says.