So You Wanna Tank On PUP?

So. Here we are. You've decided to tank on PUP. Or maybe you just clicked on this thread because it was in the recent list on FFXIAH and you're bored so you figure why not. Automatons are neat. OR you are the type of person that goes lolPUP even though it's 2015 and that totally isn't a thing anymore.

Either way. We're here and I've already spent a paragraph going on about unimportant bullshit, and you're probably wondering why I can't just write a guide like Falkirk's. By now you have noticed it's basically just a big'ol glob of text. It's because I suck at formatting for this site, and if I waste the time properly formatting this, I'm just going to get bored and never write it.

So here we go!

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Section one: Understanding the mechanics of tanking, and why it's actually important so don't skip this damn section even though it's boring and there is a lot of math!


Ahem. So as many of you already know, there is a lot of mildly complicated math at work behind FFXI. Many years ago we didn't know how most of the system functioned, so we weren't able to optimize our gear, abilities, spells ect. It's 2015. We know how damn near everything works. Mostly.


Enmity

So enmity breaks down into two categories. These are Cumulative Enmity(hereafter referred to as CE) and Volatile Enmity(hereafter referred to as VE), which combine for Total Enmity(hereafter TE).

CE goes down as you take damage, the formula for this is CE Loss = 1800 × Damage Taken ÷ Maximum HP This is important to consider, as Automaton's with optimal gear can get VERY high amounts of HP. The higher your HP, the less CE you lose from taking damage. Obviously the best way to reduce CE loss is to take less damage, however it is quite easy to cap DT. This means that Automaton HP is the second most important stat to reduce CE loss. You also lose 25CE for losing an utsusemi shadow (replicator now makes utsusemi shadows) and 80CE for being enfeebled.

VE is much easier. It decays at a rate of 60/second. Aside from hate resets, there is no other method of losing VE.

The cap for TE is 30,000. It used to be 10,000, but SE realized that at our super high level, anyone and everyone was dealing so much damage that hate was almost impossible to control, as everyone was at the TE enmity cap. To fix this, they increased the cap to 30,000. At the same time, the SIGNIFICANTLY reduced the amount of enmity generated by dealing damage. This means that tanking essentially was given new life in FFXI, and Rangers no longer needed a Relic to be invited to parites.

The calculation for enmity generated by dealing damage used to be
CE gained = Level Scaling Factor × 80 × Damage Dealt ÷ "Standard DMG" And VE was 3x that amount. As you can see from the formula, the higher the level of your target, the less enmity you generated from doing damage. This is important to remember.

The formula has been changed, but likely it's just the multiplication factor has been significantly reduced. This means two things A. Very powerful DDs can still generate large amounts of enmity if they do a lot of damage very quickly(ala Beastmaster) B. Automaton's aren't going to hold hate from dealing damage. Ideal setups for tanking are not going to be the same as ideal setups for damage dealing. While a tanking puppet can still dish out some respectable damage, it's not a viable method of holding hate.

The other thing to understand about enmity is that damage dealings is the only thing to receive a nerf in it's ability to generate enmity. The only other variable type of enmity generation is via healing, which is CE gained = HP Restored × 40/170. VE is a whopping 6x times that! This means that you can actually generate some significant amount of enmity from your automaton's cures. There are complications that arise from this, but I'll go into that later.

Aside from those two, everything else generates a fixed amount of enmity. All job abilities and spells that do not deal damage or heal generate fixed amounts of enmity. Those amounts can be zero for either category, but it is impossible for CE to drop below 1 until you die.

You've probably seen enmity+ equipment before. Ever wonder how it works? Essentially each point of enmity adds to a multiplier for the amount of enmity generated from an action. Each +1 is the same as increasing that multiplier by 0.01. Not very impressive when you break it down, but consider that Sentinel gives PLD +100 enmity. This means that everything a PLD does is generating TWICE the amount of enmity it normally would. That flash spell he was casting before for 180CE and 1280VE? It's now generating 360CE and 2560VE.

Puppetmaster get's three pieces of gear with pet: enmity on them. They are durgai leggings, domesticator's earring and rimeice earring. Strobe and Strobe II also increase enmity. Strobe increases enmity by 5/10/15/20, and Strobe II increase enmity by 10/15/20/25 This means that if you have 3x fire maneuvers up along with the +15 from gear, your automaton will have +60 enmity, with Optic Fiber this is +64 enmity. Under the effects of Overdrive with one Fire and one Light up while Optic Fiber is equipped, this becomes +78 enmity.

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Section Two: How to generate enmity on PUP.

So now that you know all that shit about enmity, you're probably wondering why any of it is important. So you can understand the best way to generate enmity with your automaton.

With Strobe equipped, Automaton's will use the job ability Provoke on a 30 second recast.Provoke generates 1CE and 1800VE Remember how VE decays over time? Players get a 30 second recast. 30*60=1800. This means that the amount of enmity with no enmity gear generated by provoke effectively goes to ZERO after 30 seconds.

So what does this mean? Provoke sucks for holding hate. While there are situations where you can manage to hold hate with the mixture of provoke+damage+shield bash(Unable to verify how much enmity is generated by shield bash as it's impossible to trigger as the automaton's first action, might be based on damage, or might be static like PLD which would make it 1CE 900VE), they aren't going to come up all that often. Against serious DDs or a cure happy WHM, you're going to need alternative methods of holding hate. Against targets over level 135 that do not perform hate resets, you can effectively tank without the need of anything other than provoke due to the very small amount of enmity generated by damage.

Soulsoother+Harlequin frame
This setup is mostly used when magic damage is the primary concern.
Shell V and Protect V are two substantial boons to this frame's ability to mitigate damage. For actually generating enmity, we gain two things. Enfeebles, which generate small amounts of of VE(slow is 320 for example) and 1CE and cures. The amount of enmity generated by cures can be pretty significant. The trouble is that automaton's will only cure when someone's HP is below a certain threshold. This threshold is is 30% naturally. By equipping Damage Gauge, this changes to 50%/70%/80%/90%. With Optic Fiber, this becomes 50%/80%/90%/90%. Ideally you want to be using Optic Fiber, Damage Gauge and Vivi Valve. But you are still left with the problem of, how do you lower your hp safely to force your Automaton to cure?

Cure Cheating is an old Paladin trick where you equip armor that lowers your maximum HP, then armor that increases so that you can continually cure yourself to generate enmity. The exact same thing works for PUP.

By equipping armor that lowers your maximum HP, then equipping max HP sets, you can easily and continuously trigger your Automaton's cure threshold. Armor that converts HP>MP also works well for this. PUP get's a crap ton of high HP gear, so you can drop your HP a very significant amount, giving your automaton more HP to refill, thus generating more enmity. You can easily get over the 600 mark.

As an example, if we cure for 600HP, we are generating 141CE and 847VE with NO +enmity. Since we will ideally be using Fire x2 and lightx1, with our +15enmity from gear, that same cure now generates 221CE and 1328VE This is in addition to Provoke, which with this setup will generate 2826VE, meaning that our VE is never going to decay faster than we can generate it. This means that everything after Provoke becomes additive. The longer the fight, the better our Automaton can hold hate using this method.

ItemSet 338085
This is an example of an HP- set.

ItemSet 338086
This is an example of what a curecheat set might look like. Notice that you want to keep your enmity+ gear in the same set. Reason being is that if you swap sets, you aren't getting the extra hp cured anyway and you might miss timing. It's easier to just include your enmity gear in the set.

That example set will give your Automaton 1287 hp to cure, which using our firex2 lightx1 setup, will generate 475CE and 2851VE. This more than you get from Provoke.

There are downsides to this. Namely, automaton's cast slow as shit. It's easy for them to get interrupted, which can be quite annoying. Luckily for us, The naga samue set exists, which under path C will give us +15 automaton fastcast and +20% automaton cure potency, making it the best set ever for cure cheating. That being said, we will want to use Durgai Leggings for the enmity UNLESS we are using Gearswap, in which case you can start casting in full Naga, then swap to Durgai. Not everyone uses Gearswap though, so this is mostly for the hardcore players. If you ARE using Gearswap, you want to use pitre churidars +1 in your precast, then swap to Naga for the cure potency.

The other downside is that there is a universal timer of 31 seconds naturally, and can be reduced to 29 seconds with Mana Booster Equipped with no Ice Maneuvers.


Valor Edge

Valor Edge is what people think of when they think of Automaton Tanking. He has a sword and board, and that's what tanking is all about! Yeah! Paladins!

He isn't a Paladin though, he is a Warrior with a Sword and, presumably as a cruel joke, a shield. He has Shield Bash, but it's an anomaly, ignore it. He cannot cast any spells(Even though the Valor Edge head knows up to Cure IV) and has nothing that makes him special. Cannibal Blade might be neat if it didn't require Dark Maneuvers to trigger, which you are never going to use. He does have the highest HP of any of your frames, which means that he will have the lowest CE loss, presuming you can generate it.

As mentioned before, he can use provoke and shield bash to generate enmity, but both are on such a long recast that they aren't great for holding hate for very long. While Barrier Module can reduce the recast for Shield Bash, they require Earth Maneuvers to be effective, which we almost never want to use if we can help it. When you are first starting out, you might need one to cap PDT on your automaton, but after you get some decent gear and the 100jp gift, you can cap DT without having to use Earth Maneuvers. With lots of repair potency, you can drop a Light Maneuver in place of earth, but you will find this is less reliable against something that deals large amounts of magic damage, which is most things in end game.

So how the hell do we generate enmity with this thing? Our tools suck and it's everything we can do to just break even on VE. There is a solution, however. It's very dangerous at first, but once you get it down you will find that your Automaton can hold hate against a hoard of Mythic Beastmasters(Including Falkirk) WITH Geomancers and Corsairs buffing them.

The answer is /blu.

Some of you already know exactly what I am talking about the moment I said /blu. Paladins and Rune Fencers have been using /blu to generate enmity for as long as anyone can remember(not that long actually). Two spells in particular are of interest to us. Blank Gaze, which generates 320CE and 320VE, and Jettetura which generates 180CE and 1020. "But Tru, these generate enmity on the master!" Yes, they do. Luckily we have a certain merit job ability called Ventriloquy who's effect is enhanced by pitre churidars. With 5/5 merits and Pitre Churidars, Ventriloquy will not only swap the enmity you have with the enmity your pet has, it's will also boost the enmity you just gave him by 50% and reduce the amount you received by 50%. Do you see where I am going with this yet?

ItemSet 338066
This is the enmity set I currently use. I'll include a list of alternatives in the actual PUP guide, but for now you can go off of this. There are better pieces in some slots, but I deemed them either not worth the effort to upgrade or too annoying to get. Having a Scholar around to give you Animus Augeo gives you an extra +20 enmity.


ItemSet 338067
This is my fastcast set. Each piece of Taeon can get up to 5% fast cast on it. Again, there are some better pieces out there for some of these slots, and I will include alternatives in the actual guide, but this serves me just fine. With this set and a Haste 2, you can cast Blank Gaze faster than the animation locks and universal delay will allow.

So the idea is that you want to get all the defensive buffs you can, then build a DT set.

ItemSet 338070
This set will cap PDT and give you 44%mdt-, so literally any kind of shell and you will be capped. Throw Cocoon, Protect V(hopefully), Stoneskin(Metallic body helps if you do not have stoneskin from a proper mage) and Phalanx, and suddenly your Puppetmaster isn't quite so squishy anymore. We should get hit once at most, so aside from Tank busters, we should be able to survive.

The idea is that you want to generate more enmity than your Automaton currently has, then use Ventriloquy to transfer all that enmity over to your pet with a very healthy 50% bonus. So how much enmity are we talking? Weeeeeelllllllll.........

Blank Gaze is 320CE and 320VE. With our enmity set and Animus Augeo, we have +96 enmity. This means that Blank Gaze is giving us 705CE and 705VE. And we can cast this about every 4 seconds. So in 30 seconds we can generate 4935CE and 4935VE
If we don't have hate at this point(pretty rare) we just keep casting until we DO get hate. Keep in mind that your VE is going to decay by 1800 every 30 seconds. So by the end of those 7 casts, we actually have about 3135VE. As soon as we get hate, we need to use Jettatura. The reason for this is that I have lost hate from a single hit AS I WAS USING VENTRILOQUY, which results in YOU getting that 50% bonus Enmity. Which Sucks. Jettatura with our enmity set and Animus Augeo will generate 352CE and 1999VE.
If we use Ventriloquy immediate after Jettatura and 7 casts of Blank Gaze, we just dumped 7930CE and 7521VE(this number accounts for the loss of VE leading up to this point) for 15451TE

And we did it in about 32 seconds.

Obviously this method has it's share of downsides. Namely, we are actively trying to take hate away from our pet. This means it is inherently dangerous. The other downside is that we are going to be blinking through gear so much that our DT gear for our Automaton(assuming he has hate) isn't going to be mitigating much damage during the build up. VE is so goddamn stout that this hasn't ever caused a problem for me though.

The other major downside is that for this to work really well, we need support. I have access to a 1200JP RDM and a 1200 SCH at all times for events, so my support is literally the best I can get. You might not have this luxury. You can make it work fine with just a RDM or just a SCH though, but both really help. You need SOME sort of refresh that isn't gear based, and noone wants to carry around Yagudo drinks in 2015.

This method is how I hold hate against Mythic Beastmasters with Geomancer and Corsair support. And our Corsairs always roll 11s. It's the only method I have found outside of 2hring that works at all for such extreme tanking needs.

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Section Three: I'm still not done yet.

So after you generate this large amount of enmity, you want to make sure that your DT is capped on your automaton. You'd imagine I would include my pet DT set, but I'm not going to. Okay fine, I will.

ItemSet 338073
I would use Rao body, but Vir'ava is stingy with that Grove seal and we all hate fighting Vir'ava. We insist on using pet jobs only(besides support), so the fight is tricky. Also, I don't have that stupid Shepard's Chain. I've killed that damn bird more times than I can count and it's never dropped. Kinda irrelevant though as pdt is overcapped anyway at 1200JP. Mdt isn't, but it's never been a problem for me.

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Section 4: Overdrive, AKA the three minute Automaton Zerg.

Overdrive. Puppetmaster's first 1hr ability. The tooltip says that it "Augments the fighting ability of your automaton to it's maximum level." What does that even mean? How many times have you activated Overdrive and been like, "Dis ability sux". I mean, it's good. But as far as one hours go, it seems kinda lackluster. It gives some bonus to Attack, Accuracy, Ranged attack, Ranged accuracy, Damage Taken, Evasion and gives 25% magic haste for three minutes. With pitre tobe equiped, you get 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

Actually just that is super awesome. Seriously, can you imagine if a melee job got that? It would be awesome. But they don't. PUP get's it.

But to be honest, that's really not the best part. The best part about Overdrive is how it affects maneuvers.

While under the affects of Overdrive, a single maneuver grants the same potency of three. Any additional maneuvers will only give a stat bonus, so don't go thinking that you can get 9 times the effect by using three of the same manuever. You can't. What it does mean is that you can get the full effect of three different types of attachments at the same time.

So what does this mean? Well, for starters, you don't want to use Overdrive with your regular Automaton setup. So you people understand what I am implying here, you want to deactivate your automaton and reconfigure it specifically for using overdrive based on your situation. Are you solo? Are your asshat party memebers constantly using weapon skills? Do you need ranged damage? Could whatever you are fighting actually kill you? These are all things to take into consideration when building your automaton up for Overdrive.

So as I mentioned, you are going to want to swap Automatons out in battle, or swap them out after Overdrive ends. How do we do this? Well, you COULD do it manually... But to hell with that. You're using Windower aren't you? Download a little something called Autocontrol. Autocontrol allows you to set up Automaton configurations and recall them using windower commands. It's like having gearsets for your Automaton, basically. It takes about seven seconds for Autocontrol to switch out Automatons.

If you want to see some really awesome shit while solo, equip Inhibitor 1+2, Attuner, Target Marker, Coiler 1+2, Turbo Charger 1+2, Optic Fiber and the strongest Auto Repair Kit you can find. After that, just whatever dynamos, armor plates and tensions springs you can fit. Don't waste this on Fodder. Depending on the strength of your Automaton, go find something you can reasonably fight. A High teir mission battlefield without wonky damage mechanics would be ideal. Try VE or E or even N if your gear is good. Put up Fire/Thunder/Light, throw your Automaton at it and equip your Automaton focus DD gear. Gear haste is far more important than anything else. Consider swapping into pet ws gear when your Automaton's TP goes above 1000. You'll have time, because his TP is going to be well above 1k before he chains his next weaponskill. Make sure you maintain those Maneuvers. Go try it. I'll still be here when you finish.

Did you try it? Cool as hell, wasn't it? I've shown this to a lot of people who had no idea PUP could do that. Now I'll explain what just happened. I'm sure most of you already know what was happening, but I'm going to break it down anyway.

So for our fire attachments we have Inhibitor 1+2 and Attuner. With 3x fire maneuvers, out little Automaton gains three things. Inhibitor will make your Auomaton scan the target to see if it is possible to skillchain, if it is he will perform whatever WS he has that will skillchain. This includes anything he does himself. So long as noone has over 900TP, he will just use whatever weaponskill his maneuvers tell him to. Inhibitors are also going to give him 90 stp. If you are using pitre tobe +1, you Automaton has 103 stp. Attuner is a neat little device that allows your Automaton to ignore defense. With 3 fire maneuvers, he is ignoring 45% of his target's defense.

So for Thunder we have Coiler 1+2 and Target Marker. Target marker with 3 Thunder maneuvers up will make your automaton ignore 45% of your target's evasion. Vir'ava is the only thing in the game that this doesn't seem to cap my automaton's acccuracy on. I suspect it just doesn't work on her, or she has weird evasion mechanics. Coiler 1 will give you 30% double attack with 3 Thunder manuevers, Coiler 2 is about 40% with 3 thunder. Coiler 2 hasn't been extensively tested, so that number might be different, but it isn't much different.

So why light? Obviously for that sweet regen on Auto Repair kits! Oh, and Optic fiber I guess. Nothing too special, just enhances all your other attachments by 40%...

Yeah. You read that right. Optic Fiber is taking all those amazing numbers you are getting from you other attachments and boosting them by forty freakin percent. Inhibitors were giving 90stp before, now they are giving you 126 stp before gear. It's quite difficult to test attuner and target marker, but if they work as I suspect they do, they are going up to ignoring 63% of your target's evasion and defense. Coilers? Those are now giving you 98% double attack.

"But Tru", you say,"what about haste?". Turbo Charger 1+2 actually have passive effects that give 5% and 7% haste, respectively. They're also magic based haste, which means they cap at 43.75%. They are ALSO being enhanced by Optic Fiber, which means instead of the 12% haste they give normally, they now give 16.8 haste. The thing here is that Overdrive itself will give you 25% magic haste, so when you add the two together you are already at 41.8% haste, 1.95 haste from the cap. So do you trade nearly 100% double attack and capped accuracy or do you trade 126stp and 63% of your target's defense ignored? No. You don't.

There is a caveat to this. If whatever you are fighting is immune to everything other than ranged attacks, or has a shitton of shadows that only ranged attacks seem to go through(Muyingwa), use SS/SS and Drum Magazine and Repeater, and replace Thunder with Wind. Othewise, there isn't any reason to not use thunder.

You can also do some neat shit using a mage frame when you have someone making skillchains for you, but Automaton nuking against extemely high level targets seems to not work so good, so I haven't used it nearly as much. Depending on your gear, you can actually have the Automaton magic burst his own skillchains using Amplifier. Due to the lack of control you have with the Automaton while he is doing this, it's a bit more niche.

If you are in a party and have a reliable skillchain partner, keep the Amplifiers and make insanely powerful skillchains over and over. In fact, with a good partner you can skillchain endlessly by having them guide your Automaton to what WS you want them to use.

Any important note about Overdrive is that it only grants the effect of three to activated maneuvers. Attachments that consume maneuvers for an effect are not boost by overdrive, and thus are not ideal to use for Overdrive.
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I *THINK* everything I posted here is correct. That being said, I've been wrong before and I can be wrong again. I'm not totally certain about the enmity values on Strobe II as I did the testing some time ago and I can't find my notes on it. That being said, I recall them being around that.

I left out some things as it has taken me a few hours to write up this much, but I will add them as time goes on. I said I would get this done today so I'd like to go ahead and publish.

Also, these are just methods of tanking/overdrive I have been using. PUP is so damn customizable that I am sure someone out there has something better or can figure out something I haven't. That's why I love this job so much. I don't think anything in FFXI has ever given me as much joy as delving into PUP and tinkering with it. So if you hate PUP or the idea of PUP tanking, take it somewhere else. It's a very niche job that not a lot of people play or care about. It's not about comparing how good PUP is at tanking to a PLD or RUN or whatever, it's about playing PUP because it's the job we want to play, and finding ways to make it useful.

Edit: I am purposefully vague about some details as there is a fairly substantial difference Between new PUP, 100JP PUP and 1200JP PUP. If I got overly specific about what I do, it might not be viable for new PUPs or possibly even 100JP PUPs(I use Soulsoother+VE alot for the one extra point of light to use optic fiber, but it's not viable for less than 1200jp PUP). So I tried to just put in the ideas and math so that people can use that information to work out what they can personally do. Not everyone's FFXI is created equally.

Edit: Now that I had added the overdrive section, I think I am just going to keep adding to this until it's a more total guide. I think trying to write everything all at once kinda overwhelmed me, but like this I can keep adding pieces to it. I'll make a post in the thread letting people know when the OP is updated from now on. I'm currently working on maneuvers, so maybe I'll have those up soon.