Couple Questions On Pup

What group 1 and 2 merits are best to go for solo/lowman play?

Do attachments like Percolator, Armor Plate, Scope, etc. require a Maneuver to be in effect for the bonuses or are they passive from equip? (I noticed Auto-Repair Kit gives +HP passively but cant tell on the others)

Shijin Spiral 5/5 or Stringing Pummel? :D

Just tinkering with Pup for funzies right now~

Melee/Ranged 5/5 for Category 1, as far as I know magic merits don't give you access to any spell you wouldn't already have when capped.
I did Role Reversal 1, Ventriloquy 1, Fine-Tuning 3, and Optimization 5. Works for me at least, but maybe not the best combination.

No matter how you work out fine-tuning or optimization, putting one merit in to role reversal and ventriloquy seems useful.

Oldewiki has a complete listing of attachments, and when you go to the individual page, it also tells you what the enhancements are for the corresponding maneuver. There are some, like percolator, that are just impossible to really know though.
Pummel>Shijin pretty much always I think, can't remember the last time I used shijin on pup.

I'm used to BST for a pet job so I thought Reactivate Timer and Repair Timer might be worthwhile.

I have all the attachments I just can't tell which ones require Maneuvers to be active except for the ones that say something like Auto-Repair Kit's "Adds Regen to Light Maneuver" but it also gives the HP Boost passively without a Maneuver active.

I ask about Shijin vs Pummel because I have far more Dex than Str
Currently sitting at Str 90+33 and Dex 107+42. I know inside Abyssea Pummel is superior by far, but don't know which one for outside since I can't parse and fail at min-max math.

Activate timer usually isn't much of an issue since pup has Deus ex on such a short recast. Repair timer may not be so bad honestly, just depends on how much damage you expect puppet to take I guess. I've definitely run in to situations where I wish had it merited, but always just stick with melee/range.
Since merits are pretty easy to get and cat1 doesn't take much, you should try out a combination and see which works best for what you're doing.

Didn't meant to link that so you could see the attachments list itself, just the individual pages tell you which attachments need a maneuver to be active and what the increase is per maneuver.

I also have far more dex than str, but I can't think of a time when shijin really did any more than pummel. The plague from shijin can be nice though, I used that more often when doing DC's in dynamis.

The ones that require maneuvers to actually be active are only the ones that have special active abilities linked to them. The Regen/Refresh attachments are the only exception to that rule as far as I can remember.

So Strobe's Provoke, Barrage Turbine's Barrage, etc.

However, more maneuvers will always increase the effect of any attachments linked to that element and should never be forgotten about.

While we may have more Dex than Str natively the reason Pummel beats Shijin is simply because it has a pretty good base crit and one of the mods, Str, helps not only the ws directly but also helps with our lack of attack and fstr, meaning it can be a lot easier to boost.

The reason we don't care about activate/repair timer is because... we're not Bsts. Bsts rely on jug pets pretty strongly and call beast/reward have long cooldowns and you have no other ways to heal your pet in the middle of battle.

PUP has not only Activate but also Deus Ex, which makes keeping the puppet out extremely easy. At that, on top of Repair we have Role Reversal(which should have 1 merit in it) and the possibility of self cures/Regen through attachments, spells, and a ws. Meaning rather than focus on abilities we don't really need to help keep our little friends out, we can focus more on helping their damage/accuracy using the skill merits.

Thanks a lot for the replies ^_^ Tinkering with Pup is turning out to be pretty fun