String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

I like refresh if youre spamming up in arms. It makes for zero down time pup/blm warps

This time around I managed to see low Quenching Hammer damage aside from one apparent anomaly, but still not sure what conditions cause Quenching Hammer to be consistently high (maybe relative positioning of affected targets + buffs active? Autos don't have buffs with VE/VE though)

Locked equipment slots and increased MDT from -28% to -39% for this last attempt, but used Light/Fire/Water instead of Light/Fire/Wind.

331 Quenching Hammer damage would be expected to be around 485 without Mana Jammer IV (1.466x going from 136 MDB to 61 MDB), to compare with situations where Mana Jammer IV isn't used at all


For the consecutive Waterga IVs before Overdrive, 120/365 = .3287, which is consistent with Steam Jacket reducing damage by ~67.5% (Optic Fiber I/II under 1 light maneuver corresponding to +50% increase in effect, so -45% damage with Steam Jacket under 1 water maneuver increased to -67.5%)

For the Quenching Hammer damage prior to Overdrive, 198/331 = .598 (indicating Analyzer -40% took effect). Then 198 damage was further cut to 151 under Overdrive. MDB prior to Overdrive was 136 and increased to 201 under Overdrive. 1 - 151/198 = .237, which is close to the expected damage reduction of .217 (discrepancy can be due to rounding +/- dSTAT changes during Overdrive).

For consecutive Waterga IVs during Overdrive, 2/239 = .00837, which is consistent with Steam Jacket functionally reducing damage to 0 (-80% with 3 maneuvers + 75% increase from Optic Fiber I/II under Overdrive).

Again still not sure why Quenching Hammer damage was lower (Mana Jammer IV + Overdrive and using Water Maneuver instead of Wind Maneuver is not enough to bring damage down from the 1600s to 151)

I see sporadic big spikes in Quenching Hammer damage as well. Most of them hit for ~220 on my current setup but it will sometimes hit for 1800. I'd just been assuming it was the difference between a successful and failed resistance check.

Regarding Inhibitor behavior I'd seen people mention it causes a delay and at first I thought that meant it was associated with some kind of increased decisionmaking delay inherent to the puppet. But observing a Valoredge frame attacking a single target on it's own I think I now understand what's happening / what people meant.

Using Light/Fire/Water maneuvers the VE frame will start with Bone Crusher. It will then prioritize making the only skillchain it can which is Distortion by using String Shredder. But then it cannot create any other skillchain - so I think the Inhibitor forces it to wait until the window has closed before it starts again with a Bone Crusher.

Probably not really an issue normally but in this frog ambuscade with overdrive active I've seen my puppet have up to ~2k TP before Bone Crusher goes off (which sometimes ends up being wiped out by Hammer) but it never seems to affect the follow-up String Shredder. So I think the delay is not so much the puppet being 'slow' but rather it's just not allowed to interrupt skillchains when equipped with an Inhibitor. Just thought that was neat and made what I observed make a lot more sense lol.

Folks might be interested in what Shudax is up to re: the h2h prime and heady artifice for mighty strikes.

I had no idea that Sharpshot Head on Valoredge Body uses Mighty Strikes. Cool!

Well it has no crossbow to EES, so it has to default to MS

Overdrive + Mighty Strikes I would assume.

Yeah realized after I typed VE would get invincible, harle gets the MS

The reason SS is better than harle is 2 extra light 1 extra fire, that's what I meant to say, not VE

At 10:55 where Quenching Hammer is used, Mao (automaton) takes only 414 damage with neither Mana Jammer IV nor Analyzer (used fire/light/wind maneuvers), so there is no need for either attachment if you somehow avoid increasing QH damage on the auto (only Brygid used to force Quenching Hammer here, not rolls)

Equipment and attachments used in the final part of the video (9:40) with Sharpshot Head/Valoredge Frame

Varga Purnikawa
Animator P +1
Taeon Chapeau (pet: attack/DA/damage taken)
Nyame Mail Path D (substituted for Pitre Tobe +3)
Pitre Dastanas +3
Nyame Flanchard Path D (substituted for Taeon Tights)
Taeon Boots (pet: attack/haste/damage taken)

Shulmanu Collar
Isa Belt
Visucius's Mantle (Pet haste/attack/accuracy/magic damage taken)
Enmerkar Earring
Karagoz Earring +2
Cath Palug Ring
Fickblix's Ring (substituted for Varar Ring +1)

Attuner
Magniplug
Magniplug II
Flame Holder

Speedloader II
Inhibitor II
Coiler II
Turbo Charger II

Auto-Repair Kit IV
Optic Fiber
Optic Fiber II
Inhibitor (substituted for Mana Jammer IV)

For a budget PUP (focusing on automaton dmg):

How does Sakpata's (R0) compare to Pitre Fists (R20 Path C)?

It doesnt. Sakpatas is an alright nuke swap i think but path c is best for anything ws related

Opinions on the Limbus "Duty" gear for PUP?

Better mpaca in some areas, better hybrid with pet too with the dmg+/da+ while keeping solid master stats

A little frustrating to me, at a glance it doesn't look like it gets really good until you get to the 3rd and 4th augments (STP and TA). For the base stats, DA/Subtle Blow/DT is an... interesting combination:
- It's worse master damage and TP gain than Mpaca's mix of TA/Crit, and Mpaca gives similar pet acc.
- Malignance will be better for TP gain with all that STP (and overall DPS with higher WS frequency), and gets more DT- and Meva. No pet stats on Malignance though, FWIW.
- DA isn't the best stat if you're using Kenkonken and Mythic AM3, which definitely favors Store TP (Malignance) more, or at least TA (Mpaca) over DA.

Maybe the more interesting thing to me is each piece having a unique pet stat, but even those are a little frustrating:

Head - pet crit rate+8%? Unique, but don't think I'd really use this for pet DPS (TP phase) over something like Taeon or Anwig. Karagoz for pet WS if you're swapping gear for pet WS.
Body - Pet damage dealt +8% is neat. But you're not using that over Pitre body for TP (Pet STP+15, better acc, a lot more pet atk) or probably even Taeon for pet TP phase, so it's relegated to only a pet WS piece - and that requires 3rd party tool usage at a level I'm personally uncomfortable with and a large portion of the playerbase doesn't use.
Hands - Pet subtle blow +8? Meh.
Legs - Pet DA+8%? That's a pretty nice one for all automaton DD purposes, TP and a lot of WS. Probably a full-time piece for pet-only DPS situations, provided you don't need to use the slot for DT- or something.
Feet - Pet lv+1 is cool. Getting it in the same slot that we already have the same thing from Mpaca (with more base pet acc and better master base stats) is less cool.

Now, if people get these pieces up to R25-30 to take advantage of the later augments of master STP and TA, that makes it look a lot more appealing from a master POV. But that's gonna be a LOT of grind.

Legit laughed out loud

Why? AFAIK, normal Gearswap doesn't properly handle swapping Pet WS gear in, so you're gonna have to use tools beyond that (which were still kinda janky last I checked, but I admit I'm not super current on that knowledge since it has been a while since I looked at it). I don't want to do that, and I'm sure a lot of other players don't automate to that level either.

Are any of the sets especially good at base outside of some minor utility bits on some pieces? Unfortunately it seemed like a lot of these don't really shine until you spend the multiple weeks to get their good augments. Suppose the BRD/NIN/WAR set is nice for BRD just due to lack of other options potentially

As for body, I just see it as a means of upping the puppets dmg without hurting the master all too much, sadly the puppets largely supplementary even on lower content unless its a solely pet-based fight, so keeping the masters TP gain high while giving the puppet some boost is about all you can ask for from these guys(cant even get pet haste outta these people wth).

There are no tools to do that. The gear needs to be equipped before the automaton does the WS since, unlike avatars, there is no window of time to respond to the packets. Gearswap is all you need for that, you just need to swap the gear when TP is near 1k

Would need to run the numbers, but eyeballing it I'd expect Mpaca (and probably Malignance too) is still better overall master+puppet DPS. Does the 8% pet damage boost outweigh the better master-focused stats on other gear? Given the normal master/puppet DPS split, I'm inclined to think not.

Sadly, I just never really find many situations where it makes a lot of sense to do a hybrid master/pet DD setup. Part of that's just the nature of master buffs not helping the pet, and vice versa.

Maybe doing some master+pet SCs on like, Apex mobs for exemplar farming? That's about the best practical use case I can think of for a TP set that you might care about both master and pet. But even then, gimping the master's DPS to give more to the pet doesn't seem worth it - 8% more pet damage added to the 10-20% of DPS coming from the puppet is less consequential, especially considering it's fairly likely that you don't both have equal buffs.


Yeah I haven't looked super closely at all of the sets, but that's the one that stuck out to me as the most interesting. Maybe some WAR empy/crit build pieces in there too, was my brief initial thought (cause thanks to Login Campaign I'm finally building an Ukon lol).

https://github.com/atperry7/pup_gearswap for example.


You don't even need GS for that kind of manual swap, can just use a normal old macro with an in-game equipset or standard Windower gear set.

Similar to manually swapping in pet enmity+ gear before a voke/flash, which I do via a normal macro. But voke/flash are a lot more predictable on their timers, so it's easier to manage than getting WS gear in at the right time. Yeah, it's also possible to manually switch to pet WS gear by monitoring current Pet TP, but it's a lot less consistent and very easy to mistime.

From what im looking at it already does what some PUP luas were doing, if pet TP = # swap to pet ws set. Which is still funky due to puppet sometimes delaying its' WS leaving you sitting there like a potato

Okay I'm obviously derailing this too much but you can use prerender to check the pets TP and automatically swap. This is just using gearswap

This. Regardless of trying to swap at a defined pet TP level via GS, or even watching it with your own eyes and attempting to manually swap prior to WS, the puppet is just too inconsistent at going promptly when it has TP. So you'll end up sitting around like a dummy in your pet WS set for an uncomfortable amount of time.

It's frustrating enough that I generally ignore gearing specifically for pet WS, with really the only exception I've ever made being for empy head for the TP Bonus - either try to manually swap that in and hope for the best, or if Overdrive is up it's not that crazy to fulltime it for an acceptable hit to TP gain in exchange for such a significant addition to WS damage.

I guess pet damage + on the new body could also fall into that category. Then again, just staying in Pitre body or whatever and getting some extra TP overflow and faster TP generation (and way more pet attack/r.attack) is also plenty viable.

I thought maybe someone had further improved the more automated pet-specific add-on tools since last I checked, but appears that does not seem to be the case. I really hadn't been keeping that close of tabs on it though, so was admittedly a little out of the loop on that particular question.

Assuming R30 upgrades, aren't the best use cases for the set just significant Taeon/Dark Matter upgrades with the multi attack + sTP? Basically combining the two sets.

I'm probably going to build out the set and run some tests but itll take me many moons to get it to the "R" threshold where it starts to out stat the Dark Matte/Taeon pieces

I don't see it beating the necessary pieces for sTP/multi attack/etc for Master TP. I agree maybe it'll be useful for Mythic exemplar point soloing or something but at the current prices, that's a big premium for a niche of PUP content.

if you mean purely for pet then no, taeon is still the better overall set aside from if you wanted the boosted acc. pet DT/DA is gonna be better overall than the smattering of stuff this set gives, maybe among them the legs/feet are decent for 8 DA/lvl+1. Likewise for the more glassy stp herc

This is basically a master TP set with a small bit of pet boost on the side.

The pet needs more than this gear can offer to fix what is wrong with PUP lol

Maybe next update :P

Could go on a whole rant about how sad a state pet jobs are in atm not just pup, but yeah as it stands the pet is just a minor support atm in terms of normal dps, helping you sc, or just giving a high priority def down, or MBing off your self sc(honestly feel this works better these days vs making a hybrid set, though depends on mob as h2h sc is limited)

Least it can tank occasionally and OD is still kinda fun~

Super tanking/OD is really the only thing we have to offer group content right now, sadly.

I agree, I've been doing MB setups more and more these days.