String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

The pet only gets the acc macc (racc?) augs

*** Ouch. Cmon SE..Taeon is *** old..

Ill readjust any Augments on this gear now and keep goin on the Trust set for the time being. Thanks.

A Ranger automaton (sharpshot head/sharpshot frame) would not benefit from any pet haste or pet double attack gear, correct? Would it care about any pet stats aside from racc/ratk/stp/tp bonus?

And the old wiki indicates Barrage Turbine has a 3 minute cooldown but I've also found mentions of that potentially being changed when it was updated from consuming maneuvers to adding burden. Would anyone happen to know? I'm inclined to think the cooldown isn't worth the attachment slot if it's that long.

if you mean it's only doing ranged attacks then it's all STP/ratk/racc, but usually you're better off keeping it in melee range where DA/Haste/etc usually applies since even at its lowest ranged attack rate itll fall behind just normal swinging.

BT cooldown hasnt changed afaik, you just wont lose all your maneuvers now so typically not worth the slot, though I havent done a pure ranged SS build to say what that setup looks like but still think there's probably better uses for the slot.

Yeah I was thinking of trying full ranged at first but left it valoredge head/sharpshot body initially. Just trying to find a setup for soloing in Limbus that wasn't so restrictive on gear for the PUP / had more freedom for damage attachments. Going heavy on ranged was alright, it felt like the ranged auto damage contributed meaningfully and there were some decent arcuballistas but the TP gain was indeed pretty poor without much haste/DA.

Its admittedly maybe the least intrusive "hybrid" for phys dmg, could rep turbo chargers with drum magazine/repeater(11 second ranged delay with 35% double shot), run 2x wind 1 fire and either just have it spam shatterer or load an inhib and have it occasionally close with whatever. Dont need pet haste or pet dt, can use mpaca gloves/duty body to boost ranged/ws dmg without hampering you much at all.

Not sure its going to keep pace with even a melee frame with basic turbo chargers and no gear haste, but its something?

Suppose a theoretical attachment setup for pure ranged would be something like

sharp head/body
truesights
drum magazine
repeater
attuner
inhibitorII
flame holder
magniplug II
tension Spring III
Target Marker
Stabilizer V(though both can be played with depending on where acc sits)
OF 1/2

Completely squishy and can probably drop 1 or both thunder attachments for a ARK or AP, but think that about maximizes what the ranged puppet could contribute. Could possibly drop the OFs too depending on maneuvers selected you may not get as much out of those as you would in a melee setup, least in this setup i think its only boosting inhibII/TSIII/Stabilizer

For optic fibers bg states:
So my understanding has been that using a light manuever wouldnt further boost an attachement such as the stabilizer (acc/racc bonus) unless a lightning manuever is on. But using /checkparam <pet>, I can watch my acc (or attack w/ tension spring) increase with each light maneuver even though no other manuevers are on. This added bonus is removed when I remove the stabilizer.
So is my understanding wrong or is bg not correct (anymore).

not sure if im reading it wrong or its just worded poorly but OF always increases the otency of the listed attachments based on the light maneuvers used so long as the attachment has a base effect already and doesnt need a maneuver to be active so for say stabilizer IVs +30 acc, youll get 33 with 0 thunder/light with OFI, 36 with 0 thunder 1 light, or 48 with 1 thunder 1 light

Was thinking equalizer didnt have a base effect but seems even it does so OF should indirectly boost all attachments depending on how many light maneuvers are being used then, even if their associated element maneuver isnt being used

Ok that makes sense based off what I'm seeing and what would have made the most sense to begin with. I just can't read that sentence from bg any other way than what I described above.

What are the uses cases for the newer +4 JSE gear as well as Limbus gear? Are they worth going after for PUP?

limbus sets basically BiS for much of masters TP (after augments). The AF/relic +4 follow along with much of the other sets, if it was good at +3 its a little better at +4, so relic body, the relic legs/boots for puppet mab

I'm working on augmenting a Duty Cyclas primarily for dancer and haven't tried it nor done any math but my guess is that the +% pet damage on it would probably also be better than the STP/Atk on relic body for overdrive at least.

Looking for some guidance here as I'm relatively new to puppetmaster. I've been attempting to solo Ngai V0 and I'm getting blindsided by a 4500 dmg Protolithic Puncture.

I get light, fire, and water maneuvars activated, I face pull in 50% DT gear and deploy the automaton under five yalms, then stand back > 20 to get out of range.

My EQ is the following at ML24:
Ohtas augmented
Animator P+1
Automaton Oil +3
Full Taeon pet Acc20-25, DT -4%, DA 5%
Pitre tobe +1 for Overdrive
Shulmanu Collar
Domesticator's Earring
Karagoz Earring
Cath Palug Ring
Varar Ring
Visucius's mantle Pet haste +10%
Klousap Sash +1

Valor head/frame
Inhibitor
Inhibitor II
Attuner
Armor Plate IV
Mana Jammer IV
Magniplug
Magniplug II
Auto-repair kit IV
Turbocharger
Turbocharger II
Optic Fiber
Optic Fiber II

Help clue me in to what I'm missing here. My damage was lower then I expected, but before I can really troubleshoot that I figure I need to survive that attack first. It's cost me three runs already so not trying to go back in without a better understanding.

Attempting to skill up automaton magic and I am quite confused at how it is behaving lol. My gear is basically just +pet level/haste/magic accuracy stuff. Attachments are Optic1, Optic2, Percolator, Tactical Processor and an assortment of Tranquilizers/Mana Tanks/MP conservation stuff. Everything done has been with the auto engaged with a Marjami Lair Reive and a mix of light/dark/water/ice maneuvers to experiment.

The auto started at about 14 skill and I tried Soulsoother Head + Stormwaker Frame. I could get it to cast only Dia or only Bio once every 60 seconds. I figured maybe that's normal because it has no other spells to choose from. I let it sit for a while, it got skill up to ~30 and still never used any other spells. I was activating Water Maneuvers periodically for Percolator but never saw Poison.

I decided to try Spiritreaver Head + Stormwaker Frame. I could get it to cast elemental magic about every 23 seconds. And twice shortly after summoning it I did see it successfully cast Bio-Slow-Bio-Bio-Slow and Bio-Blind-Bio-Bio-Blind in ~10 second intervals before seemingly giving up and just going back to using Bio every 60 seconds.

It's now at skill 45 and I tried out Soulsoother again. Still can't get it to do anything but Dia/Bio every 60 seconds although it will Protectra on activate and if I cancel Protect it seems to do it every 20 seconds. So I suppose I could setup something to auto cancel Protect and triple the number of spells it casts per minute lol.

Am I doing something wrong or misunderstanding something? I didn't expect it to Dia every 4 seconds but I thought it might at least cycle through other enfeebles or something lol.

I personally never had much luck with the frames skilling on reives consistently, they either wouldnt register enfeebs as worth casting or they'd burn their MP out on nukes. Instead just opted to holding quadvs in beaudeux next to the afflictor so the puppet spammed cursna, similarly you can do this with a uraginite in adoulin and just have it spam poisona on trusts. Though having it spam pro/shell on you could also work

Thanks, I've seen mention that they won't cast spells that are expected to be resisted or after they have been consistently resisted so that certainly could explain it. For the moment I've just gone with Soulsoother head and I setup a little gearswap code to automatically cancel Protect anytime I receive it lol. So for now it's just Dia + Protectra which has actually been going fine, up to ~150 without much effort. Just feels very silly. Although higher ranks of Protectra will probably become too expensive so I'll probably try out Poisona/Cursna later.

However some good news is that I was using Jubilee and only saw .1 to .5 over the course of ~100 skill ups yesterday. Now today after the patch I've seen .6, .8 and ".10" which appears to actually be 1.0 so that's quite nice.

So the jubilee ring works for automaton skillups?

Looks like it. I'm pretty sure they specifically said it would in some post/interview when it was first released. Don't know if it has or has not been working for automaton melee/ranged but it seems to have only just taken effect for magic as of the latest patch.

Was randomly thinking at work, has anyone taken pup on a full DD Sortie run? Kind of curious how the combined DPS is.

The puppet isn't doing any dmg to speak about. Pup with prime h2h does pretty well dmg wise. Was not impressed with mythic pup dmg output personally (my own char).

Some others have had some (?) success with mage puppet and bursts, no experience with it myself.