Melody's Puppeteering Playbook - Questions on PUP

[Melody]

After a long thought, I finally said screw it to NIN. The job isn't for me, I am horrible at holding up shadows and I found myself dying a lot @ 90 off level 70 Mobs. Which discouraged my use of NIN even further. Yeah the idea of attacking 24/7 is cool due to the %Haste Gear NIN gets but it's also like pulling teeth on trying to get NIN Seals. Especially after last night's trip in Uleguerand Range fighting the bull NM for pop items. Anyways, I've dropped NIN and taken up PUP. I dropped PUP before for NIN due to the sole fact that I hated spending money on stuff that might go to waste. But looking further into PUP I found out that depending on how much you spend on PUP is how much you get out of it. I also found PUP to be more useful to me than BST which is know for its excellent Dynamis soloing. But that in turn would cause me to burn money buying up Jug Pets since my craft level is not adequate, and even then if I didn't buy the Jug Pets I'd run around all day collecting the Mats to craft them. So instead I took up PUP and so far I am loving it. Your Automaton is a carbon copy of anything you want it to really be. I also found its more useful to me than a BST since I am not burning money on Jug Pets. My friend burned 100k on Faithful Falc and Dipper, which threw up a red flag for me to not bother.


What also made PUP more worth it to me than a BST is that you don't waste money having to constantly buy "pets". Where as with PUP yes, you spend more gil on Attachments, but they're a one time payment and like I said, you get what you spend out of it. With BST on the other hand your losing money per pet if you happen to zone out, where as a PUP's Automaton will follow you and you can have it do a variety of things.


I like PUP due to the sole fact of how well you can set it up. Mine is set up as a NIN Tank. I have Shock Absorber on it along with Replicator which throws up Stoneskin and Shadows. On top of that I do believe PUP gets more shadows than an actual NIN player does. Since I've seen it lose 3 Shadows and then lose another 2, which was lost during a fight with a Tabar Beak when I was skilling it. I also can seem to wrap my head around PUP a bit more than I did my NIN or on my BST. Now any experienced PUP who replies feel free to correct me on this, but I have the Attuner attachment which increases its own attack Vs Stronger Mobs and by the Wiki's standard a good 15% that ignores defense. Now correct me if I am wrong but would 15% x 3 Fire Maneuvers equal out to 45% Defense Ignore Bonus?


As for some other questions on PUP

-How is the AF3 for this job?
-Is Turbo Charger Questable - The Wiki didn't provide me much information, it showed me there was a quest but the reward table chart confused me.
-Is Optic Fiber Questable - No information on this at all for me.
-How effective is Ranged Automaton Vs Storm and Valor. I seem to be sticking to my Storm since it pops Shadow(Skin) more often.

So if anyone could give me some advice/tips please let me know.

-Melody

[Firewind]

Yyg is the PUP expert on the forums so I would ask him.

Also Evasion gear is most valuable for soloing on NIN. All the haste in the world is going to be worthless if you don't have a good evasion set (plus it's really easy to hit the delay cap anyway without a ton of haste gear).

Also you know what I say about people not doing the research?

Turbo Charger - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
Optic Fiber - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more

All the info on getting that stuff is in the articles...

[Melody]

Thank you FW (I guess) I'll wait for Yyg to give a clean response. I always thought he used NIN. Haha, but yeah I'm terrible at NIN and I don't mind dropping tons of gil into my PUP. I've already dropped 1.2 mil into it and I plan to spend roughly 4-6 mil more. I also met a nice Puppetmaster on Sylph named Yajirobe. As for those wiki links I read those already and even looked up the quests for them and turned up dry, so I did my research this time. I'll have to look into ToAU later on today then.

[Firewind]

Well Yyg is mostly on NIN or BLM because everyone keeps making him come of those classes.

And basically it's random as to if you get those PUP items. You justr have to play the appraisal lottery with ??? Boxes and hope you get something you want.

[Melody]

Okay, I'm a bit pissed off. Does Rank 2-3 for Sand'Oria not work? I got the Mythril Sand and I am trying to trade it to Savae E Paleade like the wiki said and nothing happens =_=

[Squiggs]

The only option for why that isn't working is that you missed a step.

For PUP: the attachments are either NPC buyable (you probably have them), drops from Troll PUPs (some are cheap on the AH, others are not), drops from a ZNM, or a ToAU BC battle that Fire mentioned earlier. As far as gear, check out Yyg's recent blog post (you can get to it from Tarutaru Times Online, unless you know his website) where he goes through each piece bit by bit. That should answer most of your questions for gear.

[Melody]

I'm going to go shoot for some of the new PUP gear in WG from the NM fight. Hopefully I get something good from it.

[Romyro]

I can help out with pup questions.

-How is the AF3 for this job?

AF3 (which I’m guessing you mean Emp) gear is pretty solid. Especially compared to AF3 for other jobs.

Head/legs/feet are all pretty easy to +1. Some of the +2s can be a little more annoying though. For instance the head+2 seals drop of the undead corpse NM guy…which takes 4 KIs to get. Then there’s feet from Durinn, who is very easy to kill. BUT you need to go though Dvalinn (one of the KI nms) whose a real pain in the ass. I swear those NMs should have been switched…
The body+1 seals drop mainly off the Tier II Titan vnm, which apparently is only camped when I try to pop him.

-Is Turbo Charger Questable - The Wiki didn't provide me much information, it showed me there was a quest but the reward table chart confused me.
-Is Optic Fiber Questable - No information on this at all for me.

I think the majority of attachments come from either Ob (zeni nm) or from the quest Targeting the Captain (ToC). Purchasable ones and the ones off trolls are more of the ‘filler’ spots (but important non the less).

The reason some are so expensive is because the more important ones come from Targeting the Captain which requires some luck on the specific attachment you want (It’s a bcnm type fight with a casket at the end). There are 2 pre-req quests to finish before you can do ToC. Once you finish the first 2, you don’t have to go back. problem is, ToC can only be done once an earth day. Oh, and I think you need a min. of 3 people to enter.

-How effective is Ranged Automaton Vs Storm and Valor. I seem to be sticking to my Storm since it pops Shadow(Skin) more often.

They should be popping shadows/Skin at the same rate. Those are coming from attachments/maneuvers and are on specific timers. Maybe other attachments you have on are slowing them down.

It all kinda depends on what you’re doing in regards to frame. I find that Valor & Rng frame die too fast on anything important (like VWnms). So I generally stick with the WHM or BLM frame. But in just typical farming for xp or seal NMs, they can do pretty well. Skilling up RNG is hard. Not sure if food would help this since it’s your puppet getting the skills and not you. it has a pretty solid WS in the upper levels, but again…look forward to hours of skilling for it. for this reason alone is why pups since the beginning have said get RNG frame first.

- - - Updated - - -

Okay, I'm a bit pissed off. Does Rank 2-3 for Sand'Oria not work? I got the Mythril Sand and I am trying to trade it to Savae E Paleade like the wiki said and nothing happens =_=

Btw, when you first traded, did you get any dialoge? even just 1 line?
I vaguely remember trading the item, getting a small bit of dialoge but the NPC not actually taking the sand from me.

It’s been a long time and I could be wrong, but that sounds familiar when I did Windy a year or so ago. I think misison 2-3 is borderline the same for all nations.

[ShepardG]

Also, they added new attachments during the 90>95 patch a way's back. I believe most of those come from grounds of valor chests?? i believe. I haven't played in almost a year now, but I think that's the trick.

Also, the wiki should have a Puppet magic skill up guide, using the curse/silence nodes in the turtles stronghold area, near the marshes. Wow....i'm rusty.

Anyway you attach like 2-3 different attachments (can't remember, have to find the guide) and then the "thing" curses you. As long as you've deployed your auto on a pugil, and then you've gotten hate on that pugil by hitting it with a staff or something (wear any generic emnity gear) your auto will spam cursna on you, and then you'll instantly be cursed again, and this will repeat itself up to like.... 300+ skill or some shit.

When I stopped playing, I was 3 attachments away from finished (including the new ones) and I had spent somewhere around 15mil on attachments. The ones that make your mage frame hit like a truck come from Targeting the Captain, and at the time, were rare as shit.

[Melody]

Thanks for the lovely feedback. Still waiting on that elusive Taru Yyg to poke his head in here and say something. My PUP is 95 at the moment. I have to begin my ToAU here soon so I can begin the process. I like my RDM PUP a lot. I was tanking 2 Dune Manticores with it. I got my AF3 +1 Hands from the uhh NM that pops on Sand Covered Fang or whatever the item is in Altepa. The party I was in sucked since everyone ignored me. But karma was a bitch and they all didn't get seals and I was getting them left and right. So I am happy about the turn about from that. I'm thinking of a fun job to play after PUP or like do on the side, since I am being told PUP is near useless in VNM since it can't stagger or tank or DD, which I am fighting tooth and nail to prove my Linkshell member wrong. Skillgannon is his name if anyone knows him.

[Romyro]

I’m not saying Yygs input isn’t important…but not sure if he’s gonna have much more to add. Shep (iirc) and I both exclusively played pup for a long time and know the job pretty well. I leveled it a long time ago (way before level cap increase and abyssea). I used it all the time back in the 75 days in our pet shell as it worked wonderfully with Bsts and Smns. I also used it to solo a lot of NMs way back when. Now a days I use it mainly for Amber farming though.

Anyway, I would suggest most importantly though to start working on either Nyzul Isle progress (at least floor 70+) to get Stringing Pummel or start working on Vereth for victory smite. None of the other WS quite compare. Smite is probably on the same level damage wise as pummel, but with an aftermath effect.

As for VW…I wouldn’t say it’s useless…but its not great. The massive AoE damage they all do destroys the puppets pretty quickly.
You have good h2h skills but your not going to beat out a decent Mnk
You have a good blm nuker but you’re not going to beat out a blm. They have more spells and can fire them off much faster.
You're Whm frame will only keep you alive...at best.

It can do decent/respectable damage but at the end of the day it’s a filler spot in VW…just like Bst.

[Melody]

Well people were making comparisons to BST compared to PUP and I defended PUP pretty strongly.

BST Pros
-Can Solo
-Off Hand Tank
-Off Hand DD
-Can kite very well
-Pets do good damage
-Can Solo NM's and VNM's

Cons
-Not many parties
-Pets cost money over time which adds up along with pet food
-Pets die/dissapear on zoning and forces you to buy more at higher prices
-Has a limited selection of pets
-Pets have a set TP amount/can't be modified to change


PUP Pros
-Can solo
-Automaton is versatile and can be changed on the fly
-AF3 looks neat :D Clown! Honk!
-Skilling up is easier with RDM Automaton due to buffs
-Don't really need to be in a party/PL's to support you
-Can set up self-skillchains with proper Attachments
-One time payments on parts
-Can set up your Automaton to spam weaponskills and carbon copy NIN/WAR/RNG/RDM/BLM/WHM/SAM


-Cons
-Automaton is fragile
-Expensive job, usually up into the millions
-Like BST, buying Oil adds up over time
-Parts are hard to come by and rare
-Not many parties
-Decent farm rate
-Automaton dies, your stuck as a weak MNK
-Cooldown for Activate is annoying at times

[Yygdrasil]

I’m not saying Yygs input isn’t important…but not sure if he’s gonna have much more to add. Shep (iirc) and I both exclusively played pup for a long time and know the job pretty well. I leveled it a long time ago (way before level cap increase and abyssea). I used it all the time back in the 75 days in our pet shell as it worked wonderfully with Bsts and Smns. I also used it to solo a lot of NMs way back when. Now a days I use it mainly for Amber farming though.

Not sure what firewind was talking about when he called me the forum's PUP expert. I have the job at 99 and have 90% of the attachments as well as a full set of AF3 with most of them +2.

What being said, my Automaton Magic skill is 320, Melee is ~130 and Ranged is a measly 7. I'm far from being an expert. Shep and Romy are likely your best outlets of information and experience on the job.

All I can say is... enjoy hours of seemingly endless skillups just to be sub-par. 7-8 million on attachments is on the low end. I know of at least 4 that you'll need to have to be even 1/2 way decent and they each cost almost 2 million each.

AF3 gear is awesome, but a healthy mixing of AF3 and the Upgraded +2 Relic gear is the way to go. Sprinkle in the +1 pireces from the AF1 set for situational macros and you're in business.

Make sure you build a macro for all of your Manuvers that swaps in your Overload Neck Piece and then swaps it right back out. Because so help me... if you're meleeing in that damn neck piece, you aught to be slapped.

Try to farm a set of Marotte Claws from Abyssic Cluster in Mis. Coast... or a set of Burattinaios from Ogopogo in Uleg Range. Those will be your 2 best options for Weapons until you start working on something empyrian.

Grab a Kragoz Mantle off the AH if there is one. It'll help you with melee frame accuracy.

And here is a nice display of all the AF1,2 and 3 gear. Mix and match based on the frame you're using. Make sure to create gear swapping macros to make the best use of the right pieces as the situation calls for it.