Animator's Workshop: A Puppetmaster's Guide 2.0

Yeah, the third augment is the one to consider, as the first two will always be TA+2 and ATK/ACC. If you are just doing PUP, I'm fond of either CRIT DMG or STR (maybe even STR/VIT). STR/DEX is less appealing to me; it's great for TP sets but less good for WS than STR or STR/VIT. Crit damage is a very nice mix of both TP and WS usefulness, so I aim for that.

My advice is this for a returning PUP, in order of highest to lowest priority:

-TA+2 in every Taeon slot, which can be done with Leafslit +1 or even NQ
-Snowslit +2's for ATK/ACC next
-Whatever decent Dusk augment you get first
-Every other piece of new gear that you want
-Mythic
-Perfect dusk augments

Dusk sucks to cap because there's a wide range and the stones are the most expensive.

Is anyone able to macro pet ws gear in time? or is it just me?

I do it manually by anticipating my pet's ws. Can gearswap even automate that?

No unfortunately, maybe we should ask SE to add 1.25 delay like SMN? DRG healing breath suffer the same issue, it's just that our automaton WS's were always instant and we have now Pet:TP equipments (+1000TP) that we cant macro it in time without DPS loss for the master..

I want to bang out some solo CP on PUP this weekend. Where are other PUPs soloing their capacity points?

I do mine in cirdas at the spider camp in the NW cornor. ( 8 spiders 4 are for a RoE, and 4 leeches).

You can hunt harder mobs for more cp / kill but i find the overall cp / hour to be about the same solo.

I'm doing the crabs and pugils in moh gates. Never too crowded there and if so I'll ask to join. Most times people will accept. Goes pretty quick with the right trusts. I use inhibitor and I'm basically skillchaining with someone and it makes quick work of the mobs.

I've never done spider camp. But crabs and pugils, don't they have a decent accuracy requirement? I can't remember, it's been a while.

Accuracy requirement isn't too bad. Decently-augmented Taeon and sushi will work well, or well-augmented Taeon and pizza or meat is a good choice.

I've finally got some good augments. ACC/ATK+20 on 3 pieces and +18/+19 on the other two.

I'll give it a shot tonight :)

Oh, you'll be absolutely fine, then. I'd suggest grabbing a marinara pizza +1 since it lasts for 4 hours and just going to town for as long as you can. Or, if you feel your accuracy is fine without it, pick up a charred salisbury steak for massive attack and much faster killing.

I use sole sushi for every thing. I'd rather be able to keep hitting the mobs instead of a stronger W'S here and there. I've noticed when I sometimes use atk food I miss some hits on WS. I have alot of acc on taeon but the pugils will still cause me to miss sometimes if I don't use sole

I normally do Raptors/Efts/Leeches in Morimar Basement. Teleport into the stone pillar north from Bivouac #5.

Did about 10 JP per hour using 4 trusts and DD puppet. Note I do have Kenkonken and pretty well geared so results may vary, and sushi is strongly encouraged.

Normally by around CP chain #15+ I'm getting over 3500 cp kill. I've been able to solo up to chain #23.

Finally got my 100 JP gift yesterday and loving it. Kind of bored now honestly LOL. A lot less motivation to go after more JPs except as a side effect of farming for merits, sparks and accolades.

I did crabs and pugils, using meat and RDM auto. It was a fine combo, until some mongoloid started camping on top of me. I may use sole sushi next time. Since I lost 15 acc on my back from having CP bonus cape, I felt my accuracy was just a tiny bit low.

I'll probably stop after the 100 JP gift as well, or at least hit the pause button. I'm over halfway there, hope I can get it this weekend or early next week.

Anyone looked into the escha gear? One of the paths for the rawhide gear has pet acc and DA. Naga tekko has pet attack and accuracy +20. Any of this stuff seem like its worth anything?

All (most!) of the information are in the Escha thread on BG.
Granted that it's quite annoying to browse through the whole thread to look for what you're finding...

The problem with raw hhide gear is that we it caps so much lower and has fewer augment stats 2 vs 3...

raw hide Gloves
path c = pet acc/da
15 acc/3% da

taeon
25 acc/racc, 5% haste, 5% da


If you only look at pet stats, taeon has a higher potential since you get haste as well as acc and da, and the acc and da cap higher on taeon.

Here's the augments page.

And the drop list.

In all fairness, the main page hasn't been updated to include links to Escha, but they've been linked multiple times in the thread and a simple search of Escha on the wiki pulls it all up.

Beat me to it, thanks Malothar.

So if I have rawhide gloves, what's worth doing to them?

As far as I can see they would be EXCELLENT accuracy. Other paths not awesome, although str/dex is pretty good.

I saw the augments on the new Rao armor set and was wondering if it would be worth making. Path c is Pet: 100 hp, 15 acc, and -3% DT on the NQ, so HQ would probably be something like 125 hp, 20 acc, and -4% DT.

Does anyone have an ideal SP set that includes Escha gear? This was my last SP set but it needs updated:

ItemSet 334382

ATK/TA and 4/5 of my Taeon have crit dmg +3%, last piece has STR+10.

I'm still mathing mine out.

It will probably depending on what level of content you want to tackle, but it's very likely that Rawhide Body/Hands/Feet will be included, due to the greatly increased Str/Vit. I also use maxed Samhuna legs. So far the Ux Hat with +8 Str augment is unbeaten but I need to investigate the head slot more.

Small adjustment would be to keep Epona's Ring over spiral for Stringing Pummel.

I'll post some sets when I'm more comfortable with my findings.

You also have KKK which changes things, I'm working on mine but was looking for a pre-KKK set at the moment. I got Kemas Earring over Brutal with KKK (AM3 up). As far as Epona's, isn't it devalued a little bit by 1) AM3 and 2) SP being 6 hits already?

Well, this is what I think I am using right now:

ItemSet 337038

I am still finishing WOTG for my moonshade.

Augments:
Ux Hat - +8 STR
Rawhide Vest A - +7 STR/INT +10 DEX
Rawhide Gloves C - +15 ACC +15 PET ACC
Rawhide Boots C - +10 STR +15 ATK +5 STP
Samnuha Tights - +10 STR +10 DEX +3 TA +3 DA

I haven't finished checking out with spreadsheets yet but most of the Rawhide already scored higher than my augmented taeon so I don't feel bad replacing them for WS. Some even win for TP.

As for Eponas on WS, you really want every WS to include 8 hits to get the maximum damage, which is one triple attack proc, or two double attack procs. With KKK, my Stringing Pummel on Escha Fodder hovers around 7000 damage with all 8 hits.

Ehh... it's like an inferior version of a well augmented DT Taeon (which can get the same pet DT, Acc/Racc up to +25, and whatever you use from Leaf slot (DA+5%, Regen+3, etc.).

Besides Taeon being better (and much likely substantially easier/cheaper than getting a Neo-abjuration +1), a couple other major reasons pet-augmented Rao is less than stellar:

1) Taeon DT gear is also quite useful for BST if you ever plan to play that. PUP is the only pet job on Rao, so it's a more job specific piece.

2) PUP honestly doesn't need DT- gear that badly anyway. Especially with the new attachments (higher tier auto-repair kit and armor plate, etc.), reduced Repair timer (which I've now merited 5/5 to make even lower), and stronger Repair potency, it's becoming less and less likely you'll ever really NEED to maximize DT if you're tanking things with PUP. Survival is simply not the issue (keeping hate if you have any decent DDs is honestly a much bigger deal).

If you have to sacrifice capped equipment haste (for automatons) in favor of DT, that's a pretty significant sacrifice. To me, hard to justify dropping the haste given how damn hard it is to kill the puppet even without stacking DT anywhere we could. Though for more defensive-minded fights, there are nice pieces like Anwig DT-10%/Haste+5% where you don't have to choose, and slots like earrings/rings where you can fit more DT without giving up haste pieces that you'd need to hit cap.

Automaton Haste Discussion
What's more important to me for automatons - even when tanking - is capping pet haste, which has separate caps for gear ~25% (precisely, 256/1024) and magical haste ~44% (448/1024), same as players. See: http://bit.ly/1TtIS43

Attachment/maneuver haste (Turbo Chargers) is MAGIC haste, and the effect stacks completely with capped gear haste. Even with capped magic AND gear haste, puppets can't reach the 80% delay reduction cap - no additional sources of haste like players who get Dual Wield or JA haste (Hasso, Haste Samba, etc.)

This was changed in the February 2014 update (see: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/39771-dev1175-Puppetmaster-Job-Adjustments?p=490803#post490803), shortly after the Turbo Charger II was introduced in the January 2014 update. Prior to the change, Turbo Charger and automaton haste from gear were both categorized as equipment haste. Once Turbo Charger II came along, they made the change (not that in the old pre TCII world we even had enough pet haste gear for it to be practical to even cap gear haste).

Turbo Chargers give the following values of magical haste (with 0/1/2/3 wind maneuvers up), and TC1 and TC2 stack.
Turbo Charger: 5%/15%/20%/25%
Turbo Charger II: 7%/17%/28%/44% (values approximate)
Optic Fiber: increases the above values by 10%/20%/25%/30% depending on # of light maneuvers (bonus added after calculating final Turbo Charger+Wind maneuver base magical haste total).

So, if you have BOTH Turbo Chargers equipped, 2 Wind maneuvers caps your magical haste (with only TC2, need 3x Wind) and even 1 Wind is roughly equivalent to Haste II for players. If using Optic Fiber and tanking with a Light maneuver up (likely due to the massive regen on ARKs), 1 Wind and 1 Light is getting awfully close to cap at ~38.4%. So it's extremely potent.

I don't think Rawhide Gloves C will beat Taeon with 20ACC/ATK and 2 TA/3% Crit Dmg OR 10 STR unless you need every last point of ACC? The rest of your set looks good. I should probably swap Ux'kaj Cap back into my low-acc set, with Taeon or Whirlpool for hi-acc.

I need to work on getting Escha body and feet for sure, though. Those are killer SP pieces!

I don't actually know much about pup. I just have alchemy, and a friend has woodworking, and was wondering if we should try and make the set.

I guess I thought that if you tank with a puppet you would still engage on the master, so a set with both acc and pet: acc as well as DT would be good for it.

However starting to get the feel that the only way a piece from it would be good for pup is if one of them has pet haste in the D augment.

Ah, in that case the TL;DR version: not really, Taeon is better even for the specific use that Rao would fill. Though if you're just trying to make money off bad PUPs who don't know what they're doing, those aren't in terribly short supply...

Thanks for giving me an excuse to put all the pet haste stuff down in a post though, it's something I've been thinking about the past few days anyhow :)