Animator's Workshop: A Puppetmaster's Guide 2.0

I usually don't have a whole lot of time to CP due to work/school, but with CP x 2 right now, I been able to get a few in.

With that said, are there any certain abilities I should prioritize? I been working on Martial arts, overdrive, and heady artifice. I'm not bandwagon pup, been my main job since 2009, just too many things to keep up with irl and here to fully pay attention to keep ahead of the game.

Also, with all 3 Auto skills combined into one, I'm going to assume Maintenence merits would be the 2nd choice now? Thanks in advance.

I can't remember the last time I used Maintenance. I went with Repair potency merits now that Automaton skills are combined, but that's just me I guess.

With 80~% -PDT and 104/tic regen when tanking, I don't use repair as often as maintenance, its why I assumed that it was a better option. :3

I did Repair Recast.
Potency is cool and all, but usually repair gonna fill auto up, or close to; but having repair more often for those aoe spams is nice.

So what augments would be good to follow with the new Herculean gear?

Mostly anything. The only thing is that it's so random it's hard to get worthwhile augments for your pet. They make good TP/WS pieces pretty easily, but I wouldn't want to use it for tanking. Not bad for pet nuking either. I felt it would be good for pet WS sets if you were so inclined, since you can get Pet: dex/str//acc/str/racc/ratk/crithit/doubleatk on it, but again it's such a pain that I just don't feel it's worth it. Not for a while anyway.

Sounds good too me, new at pup and been getting these so thought this would boost PUP up a bit.

whats ya gear lookin like while tanking?

Just curious, since I'm a returning player from a 1-2ish year break, but where does one get CP as a pup? The best I've gotten is about ~3k a kill from IT worms/rabbits in gates, but it's sort of depressing when I see I need over 2k more jp to go lol I've fully finished RoV and every other expansion / the RoE CP bonus, so I've got the max I can get from those and I have Trizek ring.
CP pts seem to not be an option, seeing as they only want blus and blms lately.

Also I was wondering, how tough are the nms in escha for Rao gear? I've got a few 119 pieces (sitting at 117 due to not being able to get head/pants to drop lol) from soloing some t1s in Zi'tah, though it seems like there's almost no accuracy gear for pup, unless it's from something like Vagary(which no one does or is interested in doing -.- ) for reforged empy pants and whatnot, so hitting anything 119+ is kind of difficult.

I'm curious if any of you have managed to solo some of the ones for Rao gear with trusts, seeing as on Siren, unless you're JP or dual/triple box, you'll never be able to do content, which is kind of off putting to a returning player :/

ItemSet 339839
Best I can get since no one seems to do content anymore. Been grinding high tier bcnms for about 2 months now, for 2-3 hours a day and have yet to see a Divinator drop :/ Been pup main since it came out and now that XI is more "casual" and "solo" friendly, I'm actually having a harder time getting things done lol Partially because all the stepping stone gear (delve etc) to help get the new gear requires 3-18 people and no one does it anymore, it's sort of difficult to get things done, especially when you're sitting at 869 acc, no food, so you can't even hit anything that's come out in the last year.

You could potentially join a manaburn as a tank, so there's that.

Having been away for most of the past month, I'm just now getting started with the November update/Reisenjima content and have barely looked at the new gear. So, what are my PUP priorities from Reisenjima?

In particular I'm interested in TP gear (master DD focus) changes. I'm guessing Herc will replace the Taeon head/hands/feet slots I still use for TP, but do Rawhide Vest and Samnuha Tights still hold up? I have the relevant Rao pieces and Ryuo feet for WS now, but anything new that blows those away?

Seems the pet tanking gear is more or less unchanged? (I did tank Oryx for my first Reisen GF mob and it was zero challenge with my current tanking set that was pretty high end for pre-Nov).


I notice that you're using some hybrid pet/master DD pieces that really aren't all that effective. Better to build two different sets: one for pet tanking (which may well get you into CP parties in a tank role), one for master DD. When you're struggling mightily with accuracy, you don't need to be gimping yourself to get pet DD stats - use a mage puppet for support and gear your master (when you're not using tanking gear and focusing on the puppet at the master's expense).

If you can get Naga gear, you should be able to get Rawhide that will be way better for the master. Drop the belt, drop the Naga gear, and focus on a master DD set with good accuracy, multiattack, etc. Oh, and try for a weapon with some acc on it. Denouements, Ohrmazd, Midnights, Nibiru, some of the UNM h2h drops. Hell, Tinhaspa B are probably still significantly better. There are a lot of options that would be improvements over Ohtas and really help your ability to do damage.

For pet tanking (where PUP really tends to shine these days), the gear is a little more limited but shouldn't be crazy hard to get a respectable set. UNM/high tier DT- earrings, Taeon pieces with pet augs, Anwig Salade, old 75cap pixie augmented H2H (name escaping me at the moment, Tru talked a lot about it in the pet tanking thread). Get at least 100JP, grind that solo if you have to. Obviously 1200 is ideal, but you can tank just fine with 100 gift and the relevant attachments (strobes, regen, flash, DT-).

The Naga set is not as good as most of the Rawhide set from ZiTah if you're looking to build a decent melee set, although it's not bad.

If you're able to successfully solo a bunch of ZiTah NMs you're honestly doing pretty good. Some of them are too nasty to solo for now, but about half are doable.

For weapons, aim for Denouements from the new One To Be Feared KINM. They come with a whopping +24 accuracy on top of being 119 and having other wonderful bonuses. Even with KKK, I have to switch to these some times when accuracy is too poor it becomes difficult to maintain aftermath.

I see that 1300+ is recommended accuracy for some of the highest tier content and even with max augments and some 119 Abj Gear it's almost out of reach for pup. With some luck you can get extremely high bonuses from Herculean gear and I'm starting to work on obtaining that.

Otherwise my standard melee set right now is:

Ryuo Mask (+acc/str/dex)
Asperity Necklace
SteelFlash/Bladeborn Earrings
Rawhide Body (Rank A, Str/Dex/Int)
Herculean Gloves (+acc/dex/crit)
Epona's Ring, Rajas Ring
Disperal Mantle (+15 martial arts, +500 pet tp bonus)
Windbuffet Belt +1
Samnuha Tights (capped)
Taeon Boots (+2 TA, +24 atk)

For accuracy I switch to:

Spectacles (+15 acc)
Zennaroi Earring (+12 acc)
Mars' Ring (+8 acc)
Hurch'lan Sash (+15 acc)
Naga Kyahan (+33 acc)

Yeah I'm still in the process of building a pet tanking set. I've got Anwig, the unity pet pdt- earrings and quite a few other pieces with more pet stats on it that I swap to when automaton tanking. I'm mostly using a hybrid set atm for things, because my current pet tanking set drops my acc so low I become useless, which with the timer on escha nms, trusts + automaton wouldn't be able to kill it quick enough without me on it solo. So far theres only like 3 or 4 T1s in zi'tah that I'm unable to do solo/haven't tried yet. Can't even hit the beetle lol and I got the morbol down to 20% before I missed a stun and wiped.

The problem is, from looking around at some gear, a lot of it comes from things that require 3-18 people (higher tier escha etc, like midnights. Though not sure if Tinhaspa's nm can be soloed yet? Idk) and from my experience from being back the last 2 months, no one seems to do any of those, well, NA/EU don't, from what I've seen.

While you don't really need a ton of people, it's REALLY REALLY helpful if you can get like, a couple lowman buddies for Escha stuff.

PUP having to solo by tanking with the automaton AND being the primary DD is gonna be rough on all but the easiest stuff. You'll either take a lot more damage, or you'll be really deficient in Acc.

If you can just get 1-2 friends to make a regular lowman group, you'll find you can do VERY well. I actually have a lot more success with parties of ~3-4 people than I do with the 10+ alliances I have to deal with for some LS stuff (I want to involve people, but more people does increase the difficulty a lot on most Escha stuff).

PUP is a pretty desirable lowman job, since it works exceptionally well as a tank (needing minimal support from others) with many other jobs:
- BST for a pet setup
- GEO for debuffs
- RNG for safe DD
- COR for pet buffs (more for a BST+PUP setup)
- BLM and SCH for nukes (and SCH SCs)
- other PUPs!

Do you not find that the mobs tend to die too quickly to realistically get flash or provoke back up in time for the next one? I've been jping myself, and outside of those solo your own Ru'aun parties during the chain event its been mostly soloing Raisinjimmie mobs.

Depends a lot on your group. Since flash actually makes hate now, I don't think it's all that bad. You group will have to be killing and pulling the next mob in less than 30 seconds every time. If you have really good magic bursters and EVERYTHING goes down in one volley, it could get difficult, but if your group requires two rounds of bursts(this isn't uncommon)you'll be fine.

In case my other question got a little buried in the last discussion... Which Herculean pieces are important for PUP TP or WS gear?

I'm assuming hands/feet with good augs end up as best in slot TP gear. Head I'm clueless about - Herc has kinda mediocre base stats but do augs push it ahead of, say, a good Taeon TA/Acc&Atk/whatever? At a glance I'm thinking Rawhide Vest and Samnuha Tights aren't made obsolete by this update, but please correct me if I'm mistaken!

Any other Nov update stuff that's high priority for PUP? Just now getting a chance to dig into Reisenjima after a busy last few weeks and I'm behind on the augments and post-update discoveries!

Tights still will be BiS, but Herculean body will beat Rawhide vest if you get TA+4 on it. Which is annoying, but not impossible. Only way maybe tights lose is with a crazy dark matter augment, but don't think anyone is going to go for that

I found herculean hands/feet are pretty easily an upgrade for TP. Rest not so sure. Body as stated, is a maybe. I'm still getting good mileage out of Ryuo Head for TP/WS and for WS still using Ryuo hands and Rao legs.

If /whm, you could also supplement those two abilties with a Master Flash > Ventriloquy.

That's actually how I generally pull my targets. Flash > Ventriloquy. Let's your group immediately move on to the next target without having to wait on the pull. Between role reversal, ventriloquy, flash, self cures, ect. PUP makes a pretty good puller if they are tanking.

Thanks to Nitrous, AutoControl can now hide maneuver timers (because they didn't display when they went over 1minute duration)!

//autocontrol mt is the toggle for it. :)

As far as headwear goes... do you guys really think Ryuo is that good for PUP? It's not terrible, but doesn't look like BiS either over items that aren't really harder to obtain.

For PUP TP, I don't think it beats a good Taeon Chapeau (e.g. Acc/Atk+20, TA+2%, STR/DEX+7). Not a very significant Acc/DEX difference, so we're really comparing Taeon TA+2% and Crit+2% versus Ryuo STR+8 Stp+6 - very easy call in favor of Taeon if you ask me. I wish I could ditch my Taeon hat, perfect Dampening Tam killed it for all my other jobs... but of course PUP can't wear that so I keep the Taeon around solely for PUP.

And if we're talking WS, I'd choose Rao over Ryuo there - significant STR advantage and Crit Rate+3% is better for Pummel/Smite, even if you lose a little acc (though Rao does still have a decent amount of Acc).

Stat comparison:
TP:
Taeon: STR+23 DEX+30 Acc+30 TA+2% Crit+2%
Ryuo (path A r15): STR+31 DEX+27 Acc+35 Store TP+6

WS:
Rao (path B r15): STR+40 DEX+29 Acc+19 Atk+15 Crit+3%
Ryuo (path A r15): STR+31 DEX+27 Acc+35 Store TP+6

Herculean Helm doesn't have great base stats to start from (no acc, multiattack, crit), and I admittedly am not fully aware of augment possibilities. But it would need pretty good augs to replace Taeon TP or Rao WS.

Just wondering if the attachments for VE on the original post are currently accurate. I am leveling pup now and looking for a good set of attachments for VE while leveling. Also, should i be calling VE for tanking during the leveling process or because of the long recast on activate and the limitation to healing the pup is it not realistic?

Honestly, ignore your puppet while leveling. You have to deactivate and reactivate him every time you level up, so until you get to 70+ it doesn't really seem worth it to bother calling him. The problem is that his skills will be so underlevel at this point that he will be useless. His only particular use would be tanking, because skill doesn't matter for that. The problem there is keeping the *** healthy. If you want to use your puppet like this, I'd suggest...

Valoredge/Valoredge
Strobe 1+2
Auto repair kit IV
Armor Plate IV
Armor Plate
Turbo Charger
Turbo Charger II
Target Marker(assuming you are fighting T+)
Whatever else you want.

At the time I didn't have Rao head yet, I just got one last night and it is a great upgrade for WS.

For TP, I still prefer Ryuo. More acc, store TP, better fStr. I use KKKs so the loss of 2% TA isn't really an issue with AM3.

Currently I have had decent luck with Herculean augments.

Hands got +29 acc/atk on top of the base stats (incl 2% TA)
Boots for +3% TA, +21 acc/atk on top of the base stats (incl 2% TA)

Both blow away Taeon.

I use KKK too, and I still think TA+2% and Crit+2% is easily better than a very minor 2~3 acc (3 additional DEX x 0.75 on Taeon makes it closer than just comparing the pure Acc stat) and Store TP+6 (nice, but not as big a deal on a H2H job as some melees). Even though AM3 reduces the value of multi-attack gear, it certainly doesn't render TA useless - still an awesome stat even when you have OA2-3x up...

If you have Ryuo and don't want to make Taeon, it's a reasonable option to let you avoid dealing with RNG... but I'll still go with a well-augmented Taeon with both choices available. Ryuo head is a more NIN-oriented piece in my eyes.

Also, it still annoys me that PUP is the one "light DD" job that isn't on Dampening Tam...


Oh yeah, Herc hands/boots are definitely amazing pieces for PUP that with decent augments will easily replace Taeon. The other slots, less so without near perfect augs (versus Taeon Chapeau, Rawhide Vest, and Samnuha Tights). If you're prioritizing Herculean gear, you're certainly getting more bang for your buck focusing first on the hands/feet.

Any advice on doing Vagary and Sinister Reign on PUP?
With SR our small LS have an option to go PLD tank and PUP DD or PUP tank and SCH DD. Which would be more optimal? For Vagary seems like there are tons of mobs and i'm not sure tanking is the way to go.

For SR you can take the puppet to tank. It's not any better or worse than any other tank in there, imho.

For vagary, the best thing your PUP can do is go into the mog house and change to a job that is good for vagary. Aside from tanking Perf/Plouton, PUP is pretty worthless in Vagary. It's not specifically PUP that is bad, so much as any single target melee isn't great for Vagary. You can make it work, but it isn't worth the effort.