String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

yeah I remember that update addressing pet eva/meva. I'll continue to try and get some decent rolls but pet meva seems to be the santajesusbaby of the snoworb rolls. 2/99 meva rolls +5 and +10 lol to get 20+ on 5 pieces probably gonna take a lot of stones and alot of time.

I believe there is a campaign where augments are "better", too. I've definitely capped out on some augs quickly then. ( I think it was a RDM skirmish cape with Enhancing Skill+10/Duration+10. )

Yeah, Pet Meva is indeed a rare one. I ended up getting +22 or better on all my pieces (only one capped at 25) and called it a day, because my success rate getting meva to come up was pretty dire.

+2 stones didn't seem cost effective enough for me (at least when I did it, and supply can be an issue) since it's still quite rare to get pet Meva at all when using them. But I got lots of Snoworb +1s from a bunch of mules using red mog pells or login points, which was sufficient to get high enough meva to satisfy me. You might also have friends with more red pells than they know what to do with, who could be willing to toss some +1 orbs your way (I personally am always glad to help my friends with supply... if they're willing to suffer through getting the augments XD)

Feel about the same, all of my good rolls have been +1's and everytime i got a stack of +2's i regretted not just selling them to buy 2-3 stacks of +1's but this was before they became 99 stacks and came from trove

Pet +1 adds a bunch of Meva based on testing. Wasn't it 50?

A brokenly good amount, but thats unrelated to whether gear augments are functioning properly and of course the more you stack the better so you want ALL the meva

are tanking sets on the first page updated?

TT and Bruisers

ty

I managed to get 5/5 taeon with Pet meva 20+ and DT 4%. Not sure what would be an ideal scenario or mob to fight. Initially I went into Sortie just because why not, Ghatjot is easy to get to and just magic damage. Initial visual results didn't give me any indicator that MEVA was reduced. Damage stayed within the same ranges as the DT set without meva which seems promising initially anyways.

If anyone would like to suggest something better please let me know. I only opted for Ghatjot out of convenience. I'll continue to mess around with it for the time being.

I was curious about this as well so I just tested and it gives the accuracy bonus, not the damage bonus.

Any good tips on getting GS to work well with pup WSes?

Best i could do is make a pet ws set and swap it in before it hits 1k, once the puppet ws' itll swap back to whatever your engage/idle is.

Aint great since theres various reasons a pet wont ws immediately, but its the only one i found to be the most reliable

There’s a master of puppets lua out there that tries to predict and swap in sets based on TP of pet and your TP and it kind of works but I had a ton of trouble trying to customize it to my liking.

It honestly isn't even worth trying. You can keep most or all of the high value puppet WS gear like pet lvl and pet TP bonus on in your own TP set (definitely all if you aren't meleeing with the puppet and just idling in pet gear) and the remaining pieces provide so little of a damage increase that swapping for any period of time might even be a damage loss. If you're hell bent on it or a majority of your damage is from the puppet (this should never happen outside of puppet only fights or OD on a high level NM w/ no buffs for the master) then you can somewhat predict and control puppet WSs with skillchain attachments. Otherwise, locking yourself into full pet gear for several seconds and hoping the puppet pops a WS is almost assuredly costing you more dmg than you're gaining.

is 5/5 taeon with Pet meva 20+ and DT 4%
better for tanking v25 magical NMs? or its not worth it?
I use Rao Armor Set now.
ty

Nothing else you can really put in those slots, though the pet level+1 items give more meva if you can take the DT hit on boots

earring and feet, and change one of the attachment to dt?

For soloing: I'm wondering if there's any value in trying to get the pet to tank in the bruiser set while the master TPs in their own hybrid set. Something that starts like this: ItemSet 395547

I've noticed with no pet enmity, the pet's aggro is very unstable, but I might be able to adapt by changing the bruiser attachments around for skillchains and playing with setting up for Ventriloquy.

That said, with the amount of compromises here, is it better to just go all in on having a durable Sharpshot as a partner and rely on tanking myself?

It depends on what you are fighting and if you have access to trusts. In general, yes, your valoredge puppet will take less damage than you and is easier to keep healthy. If you have trusts and you are never in danger of dying, you may as well use sharpshot frame for more damage. (Until you have kenkonken).

As for enmity, schere earring is a good option for the master unless you need your mp.

does anyone have the most common overdrive skillchain sequences for valoredge and sharpshot handy, including which maneuvers? right now i'm using ffxicalc to see possibilities but goal is to not trigger certain elements for things like sortie.

I believe no matter what amount of pet enmity you have on/available, you will eventually pull hate from the puppet. It can bounce around and benefit the automaton a little better during Overdrive when Bone Crusher is involved and closing a SC, but I don't believe hate has the same effect with other WS. Knockout can be pretty strong too and that's an incredibly niche build.

I say just be wise and calculated about your approach to melee. Be ready to do things like Provoke > Ventriloquy, put on a -DT or counter set. You might be surprised how well PUP can counter with +45 in gear.

Ventriloquy is alas not like the BST JA. Enmity gets swapped. At higher merits and with the relic piece it gets better but you still can't really count on that to mantain hate perfectly where you want it, imho. I mean it surely helps but it's not enough. Please allow me to elaborate.

In my experience to make so the pet is durable and can tank reliably you have to make small sacrifices in his damage because of attachments/setups and you further need to gimp master's damage by equipping a certain amount of pieces which will reduce your dps and make the pet's damage/enmity more reliable.

At that point the enmity management starts becoming okaysh but at that point the overall DPS of you+pet is reduced so much that you have to start asking yourself: is it worth it?

To me, it wasn't worth it.
What worked best for me was counting on master+pet multistep SCs to obliterate enemies thanks to that.
You might want to equip a few pet enhancing equipment so that the pet has capped haste (or close to that) and good enough stats so that his TP gain are in line to the point of never being out of TP when the time is right.
In the other master slots equip stuff focusing on the master DPS stats and as much DT as possible, then have a RDM (Haste2 and Dia3) a BRD (march), a COR (chaos roll) and a WHM trusts and enjoy your solo stuff.
If you notice there's a lot of healing required, Monberaux might be the best because he doesn't run out of mp.
Second best choices would probably be Apururu or Yoran-Oran, and Ygnas probably close after them (he can occasionally aggro surrounding enemies though and that could be annoying).

so I always thought pup and gearswap were enemies, but learned that for the casters you can still swap in time for cures, nukes and enfeebles. considering locking those swaps for when i'm engaged, can't be any worse than being caught in a JA or WS set with little defense, right?

fun playstyle regardless, pretty sure this beats out sharpshot skillchains.

There's a specific packet for Automaton casting actions, so you can automate gearswap just fine for spellcasting, unlike WSs.

From my experience the main limit of the mage automaton lies in the awful AI which doesn't make it worth it (and rather much more annoying to handle).

To each his own though. Try it and measure DPS and CP/EP per hour and tell us if you manage to make it perform better!

doing cp/ep would be rough on the ice maneuvers too, was thinking of trying sortie A/E bosses next though.

amplifier AI seems good enough to catch most burst windows which is all I care about, doesn't matter what else it does between those.

here's another to show the dmg is consistent on ep mobs. I don't have any Odyssey gear nor a Sortie earring, so lots of room for improvement.



the swap I'm a little concerned about though is healing, will have to see if Naga gear cure potency augments outweigh lesser defensive stats when taking lots of damage.

figured out how to make a toggle for locking/unlocking gear during pet casting, pup enjoyment just went up 100%

Gotta love PUP's ability to solo all of the level cap content for Vana'Bout too.

Finishing up PUP AF armor now and its so nice that with BLM Automaton you can solo all the Omen card objectives.



It's a wonky job, but bless this mess.

very nice, what's your attachment loadout?

Stormwaker Frame/Spiritreaver Head
Loudspeaker IV
Ice Maker
Amplifier 1+2
Optic Fiber 1+2
Arcanoclutch
Manachanneler 1+2
Mana Tank 3+4
Mana Conserver

I used mana channelers to hit 15k non MB but I can't find how much it increases recast time. It was very noticeable though, I'll have to play with it some more.

very first nuke Marvin cast tonight on Ghatjot was water V. RIP. It wasn't like other spells were on cooldown or that I did a skillchain it would burst off of either. I don't have scanner equipped, would that make any difference?

I'm no career pup, but if the puppet logic is to be assumed, it picked the element with the lowest resistance, and in the case of mobs that absorb elements, thats their lowest resistance.

Its the same thing with Wyvern's choosing Hydro Breath as their breath of choice, however those NM's dont get raged from that move.