Animator's Workshop: A Puppetmaster's Guide 2.0

Personally, I don't think it is viable. While you could likely optimize attachments/gear more, you know what you're doing. It's unkikely that maming a few changes will cause consistent worthwile results.

Plus, even when you get past the downright luck of pet AI (e.g. the "scan" timing issue Tru mentioned), sustained nuking with puppets is so damn fidgety and annoying. Lots of JA/maneuver usage and paying attention to timing that becomes just too tiring for me in a "zone out" kind of situation like a CP party where you have extremely frequent SCs flowing.

Frankly, if I really wanted PUP CP I would implore my group to either let me tank (and even solo SC if no other melees), or act as a DD and SC participant eith the master and use a WHM puppet. Found that pretty effective to lessen the load on a non-WHM backline and let jobs like GEO RDM focus on nuking with much less need to drop some cures on the tank. I don't like using a DD puppet in a multiple melee DD party; even with Speedloaders it's too inconsistent for thr rapid fire specific SC orders you likely are after with melee parties (for that reason, WHM puppet avoids this issue and adds some amount of patry utility).

I'd rather go mindlessly solo stuff with a puppet than bring a gimpy BLM pet into a CP party and feel bad about my contribution while also having to work too hard for the crap results.

Of course, this week I did just make 3 new pet nuking Herc pieces for whatever insane reason... Though I have no real expectations of them being anything more than toys to tinker with.

If MB were anywhere close to 60k (like someone claimed on these pages!) it would totally be viable.
But how can I get that high? ;_;

Guess that guy was just being a bit too excited, and that's it, no >70k MBs under normal conditions :(

Considering I was doing ~15k last time I tried, I was expecting much better results.
Last time:
1) I was at like 500 JPs (so lower tier attachments etc)
2) No Optic Fiber 2
3) No Mana Channeler 2
4) No Animator P

With all of those changes I was REALLY expecting damage to be much better

I believe the 70k was with geo buffs (-mdb and -meva), and with bis nuking augs. Possibly with overdrive.


I just tested it a few times on crawlers. Getting 57k bursts with no buffs.


Using your attachment setup, but even worse gear. +25 mab total, +10 skill, and 0 macc, but using mab food.

to update did 10x nukes, light skill chain, thunder nuke, crawlers, mab food

27k
57k
49k
40k
55k
24k
56k
40k
32k
43k

with over drive i can see hitting 70k, and with more than 1 piece of mab gear i can see hitting 99k,

It definetly wasn't me getting too excited. for one thing, do you have a pet nuking cape? pet: magic damage +30 is MASSIVE for a damage boost. remember, that magic damage is then getting hit with all the multipliers by ice maker and amplifiers and magic burst. second, was it on apex crabs? sometimes they use bubble curtain, which puts up a potent shell. I'm not sure if it cuts nukes in half or a quarter but its pretty potent.

Third, are you getting resists? I actually had to use tranquilizer II instead of loudspeaker II because i got resisted a ton without it.

My 75k nukes were without a geo or anything, it was just solo and a mb off iroha's fragmentation skillchain.

Also, amplifiers timing is weird. you have to deploy after darkness skillchain animation starts, almost a second after, but just a hair too slow past that and he won't have time to bliz V, and will use a lower tier instead. to fix this, use a fast cast+ set. naga path D 4/5, reforged relic pants, and ukkos sash all used as a deploy precast will drastically increase the window you have available for bliz V, making darkness skillchains easy.

as far as my nuking gear goes, it was:
ohrmazd with 15 MAB
animator P
rawhide mask path D
charivari earring
burana earring
taeon tabard with 24 MAB
naga tekko path D
some rings that do nothing
visucius's mantle with pet: magic acc/magic damage 20, magic damage +10
hurch sash because i suck
herculean legs with 14 int, 24 mab
herc feet with 12 int, 28 mab
grape diafuku as food

for some reason, the grape diafuku seemed to add a massive amount of damage. i'm not sure it its because that 14 MAB is missing a 0 in the description or i was just nuking against crabs with bubble guard up and didn't notice, then nuked another without it up after eating the food...but i was getting around 45k without it then suddenly 75k with it so /shrug

that said, i'm not sure mana channelers would be worth it in an apex party. it adds such a massive increase to the automatons recast timers that it probably can't keep up on magic bursting skillchains. that, combined with apex crabs shell effect and mp to aspir/aspir II (because the automaton thinks those are somehow more important than nuking), and huge AoE bubble shower you can't avoid your auto getting hit by, make them nightmares for pup to nuke on. raptors or crawlers seem far easier, regardless of which skillchain your using.

@Dustin
900+ Dunna Malaise was down, but no Frazzle and no Languor of course.

Did you really ask me if I have a nuking cape to use BLM automaton in a CP pt? o.o


It was, but the GEO was dispelling.
While I seriously doubt it (since numbers were consistant) it might have happened that a nuke or two hit during Shell, but this went on for ~30 minutes and numbers stayed more or less the same.


There is no way to say.
I would be daring to say that yes, it was totally a matter of lacking magic accuracy (which is consistant with Dustinfoley's suggestion of using Languor) and hence of getting resisted too often.
But then again in 30 minutes I got pretty consistant numbers (ranging around 25-30k) for those Blizzard V so... I don't know what to think anymore.
It SHOULD be a matter of not enough macc, but then again that should also produce much wider numbers according to the resistance procs :( So well, yeah, I'm not sure about it anymore.


I wasn't using Loudspeaker II but IV, as you can see in the previous page.
If you have suggestions on different attachments to use any tip is welcome

Other than you using loudspeaker IV instead of my tranq II, it's pretty much the same. and that cape is a serious, massive boost. i think it added like 20k damage to my nukes alone. I realize you lose the CP boost from cape, but is it even a multiplier or does it add with the other CP bonuses you have? if its like 500% CP boost then thats multiplied by 50% for 750%, yeah, i can say no way, but if its just added, thats only a 10% increase in CP gained. significant, but not massive.

And killing crabs faster would probably make up for that, unless the rest of the mages are enough to one shot crabs without.

I'm assuming you're using 3 ice maneuvers before nuking? the 75k is with 3 ice maneuvers, with only 2 it's closer to 45-48k.

I tried different combinations of maneuvers but then settled for 3x Ice as the one producing better results.

Honestly if you don't plan to go the multiple ice maneuvers way, then using Ice Maker might be reconsidered.
If one plans to use Ice Maker I think multiple ice maneuv is the way to go =/


Gonna try again solo later, I won't manage to kill fast but I should be more than able to cast a few MBs and see what happens.


Edit:
Another thing I have to consider is that my LUA might be broken and he returns me to idle/TP gear before my automaton finishes spellcasting.

With Tranq2+loudspeaker1 instead of loud4 and using light SC and Mab food I'm getting 35k-40k MBs, I did get one occasional 79k Thunder5 MB.

Trust used were Qultada, Joachim, Iroha2, Korumoru, Apururu.
Didn't notice if KoruMoru was casting frazzle or Distract.
Qultada was there mostly for the Hunter's Roll (which he was never using >.>) and Joachim for March+Madrigal.
Iroha was missing too much still. I remembered she had Regain? But appearently not, was probably thinking bout Selh'teus.

Still, it's quite a mess to manage such a setup.
You have to keep hate on you, check Iroha's TP, use maneuvers and check burden, check automaton MP (otherwise he will use Aspir).
Very very annoying.

It would be much more manageable in a PT where other people care about doing the SC, pulling and tanking and your only role is to MB, I guess.



Gonna try with Tranq3 now, no loudspeakers.

Ok situation is better with Tranq3.
With 3x Ice Maneuvers Nukes were constantly hitting for over 50k, managed another 78k and one 70k.


I think it's fair to assume PUP's issue with magic burst is an issue of Macc, at least with my setup/gear.
Using Tranq3 in place of Loudspeaker4, then Macc food, then a weapon with +20 skill should solve the issue.
If you're in a pt where a mage places at least Frazzle1 on the target, again, you should be safe.

With such a setup and Light SC, then PUP nuking should be viable.



For soloing I dunno. It is viable but it takes waaaay too much effort, it's very stressing, too many things to check and coordinate.

This may be an answer to a question I have had for a long time now about how much magic accuracy the automaton gains from additional levels. I've been looking at skills for a while and wondering if the Devs bothered to add magical accuracy to Automatons when using an ilvl animator. I noticed because I remember forever ago seeing that my Automaton would get resisted on lower tier content frequently, while even a shitty blm would rarely hit resists. I didn't really think much of it because I always kinda felt the BLM puppet sucked so whatever. But now I am wondering if the BLM is actually REALLY good, it just doesn't have any magical accuracy. I've honestly never bothered to try it, but I do have a legion of Puppetmasters to do some testing with now. We'll see what we can see.

It would be cool to ask them if Animators add Magic Accuracy for Automatons if there's another AMA.

Originally weapons didn't have "Magic Accuracy Skill" on them.
Wouldn't be surprised if, after adding that to player weapons, they didn't do the same (or something similar) to Animators to compensate for the fact that Automatons cannot equip Weapons.

I bet Animators just have a small amount of Macc, but nothing additional to the scale of "Magic Accuracy Skill" like players' weapons get.

If we are only getting the added magical accuracy from the INT that animators are providing, we're probably getting close to what JUST Lathi provides, about 20ish off before we get however much m.acc from the Animator itself. Of course, our Automaton's INT will be high enough at this point that depending on the target we might reach a point where INT goes to 1 = 0.5 MAcc, but I have no idea how much INT Apex crabs have :/ 250ish would be my guess, but again. No idea.

Think they totally unintentionally forgot to add MaccSkill to Animators when they thought about adding it to Players' weapons.

Yet, SMN doesn't seem to be affected by this issue. Maybe because of the higher level?
I think Automaton in theory is still level 99, just with several additional stats added to it.
From this point, an automaton is like a player.

Avatars and BST pets are probably different, they do get a bit of stats added but not much. On the other hand they have their level enhanced though, they are really 119+, not 99 with lotsa stats.
If I'm right this might be the reason why Avatars and BST pets do not suffer from this issue.

Way to solve it would be adding a fair amount (120!) of Macc to animators. With that I'm sure we would see less resists and at that point we could focus on Mab food and no tranq and ***and then stuff would land without too many resists and become hence reliable.

It's certainly possible. Loudspeakers should not be underperforming this badly vs. Tranquilizers. I am in Moh Gates right now nuking crawlers, and I'm pretty much seeing 50k as my baseline with no buffs. Because of how Malaise works, it could easily push my nukes into capped range. With Langour I am thinking Crabs or bats might be more reasonable. Bubble Curtain is a *** though, so bats are probably the better choice.

The shitty part is sucky the Automaton is solo. You REALLY want someone else making those skillchains so you can focus on the puppet. After one round of nuking I find it's easier to just deactivate and reactivate rather than dealing with the Automaton's shitty AI.

Anyway, I'm not really sure where we go from here. I'll ask on OF but I doubt I will get a reply.

It's hard to ask a question, even in the remote hypothesys they'll bother to answer.
If we ask "Do Animators grant Macc to pets?" They could answer "yes" but that would bring us nowhere.
Because we already know they do.
Wether it's the indirect macc we get from INT, or a small amount of macc (something like, dunno, 25macc?) it still wouldn't answer our doubts.

What we need to ask is something different which I can't think on how to make short.
Something like "On the october the 8th patch, a stat called Magic Accuracy Skill+ got added to all ilevel weapons. This greatly affected battle balancing for mage jobs from that point onwards. Has a similar addition been planned for Animators as well, so that automatons can benefit from it? From my tests it seems Automatons are severely lacking in the magic accuracy field, even with the right attachments equipped. This greatly hinders the potential of the Spiritreaver Automaton, making it useless."


More data:
The magic accuracy skill+ thing gets notified the first time in the post august patch JP digest HERE.
It then gets added in the October the 8th patch, but the text description for it only appears after the november the 5th patch (as you can easily read there).
I see no mention of such a similar stat being added to automatons.

Wether they forgot about it or they did it intentionally with the same old excuse "but Automatons can equip tranquilizers!!one!" I don't know, but I'm pretty confident the reason why Automatons are so lacking in the Macc field is because of that missing maccskill thing that players have but automatons do not.
Avatars and BST pets do not need it because, unlike players and automatons, their level goes above 99.
Basically automatons have the same macc a player would get without an ilevel weapon.

Happy to hear everyone is starting to have some positive results with BLM auto.

Off the current subject, I'm curious if anyone has thought to explore Drum Magazine again since the latest update?

Uh? ive used it ever since the update that removed the acc penalty from it. im amazed you HAVEN'T been using it, it's like haste for ranged attacks. o.O

Can anyone point to a good GearSwap for PUP?

What is best order to spend JP on PUP?

Speaking of gearswap, is it able to recognize automaton wsing, either by itself or with a plugin? would be nice if there's a way for it to do so, to let us swap in pet ws gear.

Thank you, Psion. I could have possibly been away from the game when this update came about as I don't recall reading about it. But I did recently attach it and noticed some incredible differences.

With the voidwatch campaign going on, is there anything from voidwatch that's important for PUP that I should go for? There's a few nice pieces that I picked up for other jobs, but I didn't see anything too crazy for PUP.

Hey guys. This is my current Master set. I am working on Kenkokens, but are their any other improvements I can make?


ItemSet 344391

1. Keep reforging all of the Herculean until you get a minimum of +3/+4 TA on each piece. It can take a long time. Ideally each piece will still have some Acc/Atk on it as well, though often less. This is best done using Fern stones I believe. Dual wield, crit and even WS damage are all pretty worthless.

2. Start working on other sets such as a WS set and high ACC set. These will probably involve Ryuo, Rao, additional Herculeans and other escha drops. Definitely Abnoba Kaftan, maybe Sayadio's Kaftan for accuracy.

3. Get at least one but probably two Ambuscade capes for pup. One is for general TP (+20 acc/atk for master, +20 acc/atk for pet and either pet regen or pet haste). The other is for WS (+20 STR, +20 acc/atk, +10 crit)

4. I have no data on if Mache Earrings are worth using or not. My instinct tells me they are good for a WS set for Shijin Spiral but not that good for TP. In the long run, the best is normally Telos+Brutal but there are some other combinations. The old delve earrings (Steelflash and Bladeborn) lasted a LONG time for me until I finally got Telos. Cessance looks pretty good too.

5. If you get the above, the Hurch Sash is only good in an acc or pet set. Get Windbuffet+1 for general use.

I get that everyone has their own play style, but I see zero reason to have a high accuracy master set for PUP anymore. You need less than 1200 accuracy for the Apex targets you are likely to fight with PUP, and you really shouldn't even be meleeing the majority of content anymore anyway. For the content where you do melee, you just don't need that much accuracy. I'd trade less accuracy for more TA, personally.

I guess same question for Unity Concord now that I think about it. I'm already working on the Handler's Earring(s), but anything else?

The only two things from VW I can think of that are still useful for PUP are Anhur Robe(10% Fast cast) and Heka's Kalasiris(15% Cure potency).

As far as unity goes, Handler's Earrings are the only things I can think of as far as actually Puppetry goes, but Regal Pumps are a good FC piece, Loricate Torque +1 is BIS for DT set... And that's all I can think of.

- Gear your character to at least 1150 accuracy with food/Ionis buff, 1200 preferred. Before you get the major +acc gifts this probably means using augmented Ohtas, which are more than fine for Apex targets. Make sure the puppet has about the same +acc as you do and eat either Shiromochi or Akamochi depending on how much +acc you and the puppet need to bridge the gap. Also make sure your puppet has as close to the haste gear cap as you can - augmented Ohtas, the 8% sash and the Ambuscade cape will cap you easily.

- I like the Valor head/Sharpshot body for JPing because full RNG requires me to pay attention to distance and I don't like paying attention. At 100JP you should have 8 fire 8 earth 7 light 4 ice 8 thunder 4 dark 9 wind 5 water available, and this loadout should fit that:

Optic Fiber
Optic Fiber II
Auto-Repair Kit III
Coiler II
Inhibitor
Inhibitor II
Speedloader II
Turbo Charger
Turbo Charger II
Repeater
and 2 open slots, choose from Stabilizer IV, Speedloader I, Tension Spring I, Armor Plate IV, Scope I.

- Go fight Apex crawlers. My preferred Trusts were Apururu, August (can use Amchuchu if you don't have him,) Ulmia, Joachim, Shantotto II (don't fight Apex mobs without this one.) Open chains with Pummel or Smite and the automaton will close them (sometimes Shantotto or the tank will close instead, this is fine.) Smite -> Shatterer -> Smite is a nice 3-step chain that lets Shantotto double burst. Use a Fire/Wind/Light maneuver rotation and use Cooldown every once in awhile just in case burden becomes an issue - but it shouldn't.

- If you don't have ShanTwoto or one of the two top tank trusts (though I hear Gessho can also work in a pinch) I would go to either the area in Dho basement from Foret where you fight worms, crabs, flies and efts or Reisen #5 and kill mosquitoes and beetles. Both should give decent kill speeds.

With Evasion change they did last month 1130ish will cap Acc on Apex Crabs seeing how Crawlers are even lower level, 1100ish should cap you on them.