String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

My initial reaction is Xiu wins out. Of course this is based on intuition and not fact at all. I'll still augment my KeKoKe regardless. Hopefully someone more intelligent than myself can fully augment both and get some testing done.

Given what the incredible boosts that AM3 + KKK's Hidden and Augment bonuses (which are multiplicative, not additive as far as I know) bring to the table for Stringing Pummel, I would argue that KKK is still the top dual melee weapon when fighting alongside your Automaton in extended fights. Fact is, the master significantly outdamages the Automaton even wearing a dual TP set as long as you get magical Haste, so a +25% boost to maton special attacks will have a much smaller impact on your overall DPS than expected.

Xiucoatl's higher base damage and WSD+15% will certainly result in pretty good Victory Smites, but they'd likely be on par with KKK's Pummels rather than stronger. Considering that one has to "sacrifice" two earring slots to cap Martial Arts as well as the TP gain being slower compared to AM3, it's very likely it would fall behind in longer fights. Of course, if you're fighting a lot of fodder like in Omen or Dyna-D, KKK will suffer a lot due to having to rebuild AM3, so there's no real contest.

Also, chads: assuming Repair potency caps at +50% like the other pet healing JAs, you should be able to cap without having to swap in Nibiru Sainti everytime, in case that makes playing/gearing easier for you.


I'm not sure what you mean by this. PUP has A+ HTH skill these days, same as MNK.

This is fair, though I'm going to have a much more difficult time augmenting mythic than I am Su5. > 0 <

Also about repair, yeah you're not wrong. Like I said, though, I don't touch many mobs myself any more so swapping into Nibiru Sainti is muuuch easier for me as I can wear my automaton HP+ gear in those slots AND not have to deal with augmenting anything with repair potency. It may be something I do in the future if I ecer decided to pick that aspect of PUP up again.

As for H2H Skill... you've got to be kidding! Like maneuver delays, is that something that was changed? I could have sworn when they were released it was something to the effect of B+ and I just always believed that and never bothered to verify.

Been that way for atleast 3 yrs now i think, likely longer

I think we started with C skill, then got bumped to B+ or B- and then SE finally decided to make life easier for us and gave us A+ for the full Acc/Atk/base damage.


Fair enough. Personally, I mostly use Repair for the Regen and debuff removal nowadays, rather than the initial heal--though I definitely stack HP+ wherever possible. But usually the Regen keeps my maton topped off for the entire duration.

All these changes certainly color my knowledge of PUP, haha. I took a long hiatus after the 2nd Abyssea expansion and only just came back maybe a year and a half ago so a lot of my knowledge is based on things I knew the be truths from back in the day. I know this is info that is easily tested/looked up but I never had much a desire/need/chance to haha. I genuinely appreciate everybody catching me up!


Samesies, otherwise I'd use a Mulsum. But, and I may be wrong here as history shows lol ><, Max HP affects the cure amount as well as the Regen potency does it not?

Repair potency +% gear only strengthens the Regen effect and is independent of a maton's max HP, whereas the initial heal of Repair is a percentage based on the Automaton's max HP and thus scales nicely if you stack HP+ gear like Rao+1 or Overbearing Ring.

I think Repair effect merits are the only thing that increase the amount of the initial heal rather the Regen effect, though I've never actually tested it since I usually stick with Repair recast. If it's actually Regen potency, I wonder if it is subject to the +50% cap or not. Would be worth testing.

After doing alot of testing which focused on maximizing Sharpshot DPS.
AGL is the superior stat for increasing Weaponskill damage. Increasing it slightly more then DEX and STR.

There are two WS equipment builds you can have when doing when Sharpshot DD.

Arcuballista/Daze build
16k-18k Arcuballista on Porxies (Fire,Fire,Light/Wind/Thunder) (Fire,Thunder,Light in OD)

Focuses on wearing TP bonus, AGL/DEX and Attack.
Empyrean Head, Hands and Legs. Pitre Tobe, Dispersal mantle and Herculean boots with AGL/DEX. This has higher Weaponskill numbers. Is great for overdrive and with corsair rolls.
Daze and Arcu have higher attack caps meaning they benefit a lot from using two Fire maneuver, with the Atunner and Tension Spring IV attachments. The damage cap for me personally seems to be 2 Fires 1 light . 3 Fire didn't seem to increase the damage.

Armor shatterer Build
10k on Porxies (Wind,Thunder,Light or Fire)

Wearing as much AGL and DEX as you can basically. TP bonus does not affect Armor Shatterer Damage. Empyrean hands and legs still good.

This set allows you use wind,light,thunder without any potential decrease in the weapon skill damage numbers. Unless you are really under attack cap of the already low attack cap that Armor Shatterer has. These maneuvers allows for much faster TP generation then the ideal arcu/daze maneuvers (Double Fire) A notable flaw with this build is that it does benefits less from corsair's Beast roll.

Finally an issue I have is that I tried so many times to get more then 10 AGL on herculean boots augments. Yet i don't seem to get more then 10?
I have basically finished my Arcu/Daze set. Working on the AGL/DEX set for Armor Shatterer, Perhaps a hybrid set Herculean TP/WS is ideal for AS (suggested by chads.) Su5 is at 22% so far.

Editted- To make it clear I don't want fellow PUPs trying to roll for AGL only. AGL,DEX,STR all increase weaponskill damage of pet. It's just that i have seen pet's upper ws threshold increase slightly more with AGL. On Porxies I've seen 18ks Arcu with AGL but only 17ks with DEX. AGL is the rarest herculean stat, not worth the trouble to be honest.

Thanks for testing, but keep in mind even with Armor Shatterer you can't necessarily skip Fire Maneuvers on higher-end content. Porxies are VT mobs and you have vorseals, so it's much easier to cap.

Without Overdrive or COR/Idris support, even Shatterer will have some damage variance in Dyna-D/Omen/Ambu/Geas Fete.

Yes that's true. If your AS attack isn't capping then do
Fire + Wind + Light or Thunder.

I tried making a set a long time ago to 1. To do some ws testing since it added to base dmg but wasn't wsc or fstr dependent. 2. To try to make sets for dmg

And yeah long story short I don't think I ever got higher than 10 after thousands of stones while regularly got higher for dex

Should the wiki page be edited to reflect that? I feel like if you've both used thousands of stones and never saw more that +10 it may be worth to update it.

I have an unaugmented/trash augs set of Herc I'm about to drop some Taupe stones on and get some more science going myself.

It truly is an exciting time to be a PUP right now. It blows my mind that we are still discovering new things about the potential of the job.

Another question for anyone who knows better--I know Bone Crusher is tops for taking out undead but is Chimera Ripper actually VEs best WS? I had been running around with my new dps/tank hybrid set the other day using Attuner, Tension Spring II/IV, and Coiler I/II. I tried F/T/L and Bone Crusher was leveling out at around 8k whereas with F/F/L Chimera Ripper was hitting 12k. I know those aren't ideal maneuvers (well I do F/F/L sometimes while tanking for enmity) but I had always assumed Bone Crusher was VEs strongest WS. This was mostly surprising as my hybrid gear was geared towards double atk. Chimera Ripper doesn't even get (much?) benefit from double attack.

This may be common knowledge or maybe my eye balling was inaccurate (I was killing Eschan Z'dei after all) but I never see anyone talking about Chimera Ripper. Could be nice information to have for situations where your VE tank is free to DPS.

I would test myself but I'm not the best... tester? Science was my worst subject. I'm more of a Lit. guy.

It is, its basically VE's version of Arcu, highest potential dmg on its own but lacks any really good SC elements to exploit, Crusher is great when you have built a solid Vit/DA with the standard acc/atk, and goes even more when you can ride mythic AM, without those its just kind of okay, bonus points if you can manage flame holder with it and can close a light.

I'm actually hoping it's a bug so I submitted a long time. Same how after thousands I've yet to see any macc anytime I got mab over 15 but have seen low mabs when getting macc higher than 15 plenty. Think they are deep deep into the accepted section. Kind of gave up reported stuff to SE since they accept and ignore

As far as the others should be pretty easy to math out (assuming the numbers SE gave us are anywhere near correct and a little bit of leg work to fill in some gaps) but yeah your eyeballing fits my experience except when you get multi attacks really high, OD (which of course is partly because of that) or getting some flame holders in (which is also often easiest during OD).

BC also has the advantage getting as much out of gear so keeping something on like some etc dt gear in situations where swapping too much out might kill the auto is nice. Or just ending Light skillchains.

Chimera Ripper is great. I was doing around 9k with it last night in Ambu-D agaisnt Regent using the arcu/daze set fire fire light. In comparison Arcu does around 13K to the Regent.

Bonecrusher for me seems to be quite inconsistent against non-blunt weak elite mobs. It is multi hit and pet's ws accuracy isn't flawless. Though it is alot better during during Overdrive especially against Belphegor (22-30k). Bone crusher needs its own set that uses attack and double atk. Does not out damage Chimera Ripper outside of Overdrive.

There are some posts and the wiki guide that like to hype up a vit set for Bonecrusher but don't post any numbers about how much it does once you have this set on non blunt weak targets (ideally both elite and normal mobs.)

Light testing on Porxies using the appropriate equipment sets
Chimera Ripper-9.2k (fire,Fire,Light)
Bone Crusher-7k , OD- 13.5k (Fire,Light,Wind)

Even in OD which is +100 Vit Bone Crusher hits just 13.5k on non blunt weak foes. Damage was a large range outside of OD for bone-crusher because of misses and double attack procs (4-10k).

If you can use it to close skillchains Thunder really ups it's dmg/consistency especially during OD where you are hitting 100% DA rates without need for DA gear. Unless you riding KKK AM3 then makes less of a difference

During OD bone crusher is very consistent yes. Outside of OD it is very inconsistent. Especially compared to chimera ripper.
It may superior for Kenkoken users like you said. I don't have that weapon personally.

It can still be outside of OD with thunder and good pet DA set

I wasn't uaing Kenkonken as I normally would so that makes sense as to why the numbers were low.

Back to shiraz's findings--Since +15 AGI seems to be unobtainable in Herc gear, which would be better--+15 STR or +15 DEX (for Armor Shatter)? DEX is the WS mod but does it also increase RA damage like AGI and STR? And are we talking 4/5 Herc being better (maintaining Karagoz Guanti +1)? Like should I still wear Pitre Tobe +3 or is Herc Body going to do better assuming +15 preferred stat and a nice chunk of Acc/Atk?

I'm very curious because it almost seems like you could get away with you TP set also being your WS set assuming you planned on Armor Shatter spam. Would be nice to not have to swap out sets and swap back every few seconds, potentially missing some due to server lag or TP spikes. Something like 4/5 or 3/5 (2/5 with Pitre Taj +3?? Are we even worried about that much Atk?) and the regular TP accessories which happen to also often enough are the best WS pieces too.

So Here's some testing agi and dex effects on base dmg and the odd way ws dmg doesn't increase as much as it should with that and the ftp numbers they gave us. Also how Daze 100% dex mod is blatantly wrong.

As far as str it should still just be normal fstr2 stuff adding to base dmg... it certainly used to in the past and iirc that was part of what was used for mob vit testing sometimes...

tl;dr some assumptions here but with an increase by 1 of the each stat should increase ranged weapon skill base dmg approximately by following amounts: agi ~ .76, dex ~ .91 str ~ .5.
Note that that's assuming uncapped fstr, not counting small effects of str on ratt, not counting effects on racc from agi, and doesn't account for possibly changes in ratios based on automaton skill (really old testing on it seemed to indicate ratios of stat to base dmg changed with skill for some reason)

What’s it looking like? Is Xiu > KKK?

Quick question do we need to be tping in mache +1 x1/2 to cap delay reduction after magic/gear haste?

depends on your weapon delay. xiu for example will need ~10 martial arts to cap delay where godhands needs ~18

ItemSet 362766

This is my set ATM, just switched earrings over from Brutal + Dedition to double mache

Herc head STR8 acc 16 att 3 TA 2
Hands TA 4 acc 3 att 11
Feet AGI10 acc 40 att 37 TA 3
back DEX DA acc/att

edit: just noticed 13 MA on both earrings so i guess brutal in place of second one

As most things it depends entirely on what you're doing. If you were only ever going to get one I would say overall Xiucoatl is best. Otherwise, Kenkonken is debatably better than You in situations where you are TPing with your automaton. There's no word out on that yet AFAIK but Xiucoatl is still very strong in this scenario as well regardless if Kenkonken is better or not. It's base damage is beaten only by Godhands, it has VERY pet relevant stats, it's +15% WSD to all WS, and most importantly (IMO) you don't have to have access to wave 3 clears to upgrade it (I don't think Kenkonken could even compare if you weren't augmenting it).

Xiucoatl potentially is not better than Kenkonken in most situations but it is overall more beneficial as well has being objectively more cheap and easy to obtain and augment.

How do you figure that? According to my calculations, you need 20-21 MA including PUP's natural MA and JP/gifts to fully cap with Xiucoatl under max gear/magic Haste.

(480 + 121) * 0.2 = 120.2 minimum delay

(x + 121) * (1 - 0.6875) = 120.2, x = 263.64

320 - 263.64 = 56.36 from gear, gifts, and JP. PUP gets 40 from JP and another 5 from a gift, so 11.36

(320 + 121 - 40 - 5 - 11) * (1 - 0.6875) = 120.3125

Ah, I see where I went wrong with my math; I forgot to divide the total gear/magic Haste by 1024 to get 0.3125. Thanks for writing that out.

Means KKK overcaps even worse than I previously assumed.

With the WSD "feature" being "fixed" I believe (augmented) Kenkonken is objectively better than Xiucoatl for hybrid melee. Xiucoatl might compare with unaugment? Just a guess.

what's the optimal Stringing Pummel set looks like? and what's the hybrid set to fight along your puppet for strong AoE mobs?