String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

ofc i said that for a reaction lol. I'm bored out my mind so why not have a bit of fun. But yeah, I come across WAY too many players who claim PUP is the best and it's annoying, that's all.

The biggest mistake Rua did was including WAR as a tank in that video. There is several jobs on top of PLD, RUN and NIN that are FAR more suited for tanking than WAR. WAR cant be even considered a tank imo. It's a DD who can survive taking hate. There are several other jobs who can do the same, but have better survivability, have different ways to build hate, have AoE hate tools, have more group utility focused on tanking etc. and they weren't included.

That actually wouldn't been a mistake of Rua, if he would simply explain this with "I coudnt include them because video would be too long and I dont have enough experience with them tanking or couldnt find people with such experience", but instead he wrote "I'd like to say that I made the decisions not to include MNK/DRK/BLU for good reasons I had no chance of fitting in here given how long it already was. To fully explain why I'd have to break down how Enmity Bleed/Loss works and it'd all make perfect sense why they're not up here." which is some very vague excuse, that is rather telling me Rua is confused how enmity loss works, because all above jobs will bleed less enmity than WAR. MNK will have higher HP with same DT and you have counters and much higher meva in hybrid set, so enmity loss will be for sure lower. DRK will have less enmity loss simply by having 9000 max HP (which is a key factor in enmity loss formula). You could argue you wont be able to use Drain everywhere or it can be dispelled, but you simply wouldnt use DRK for tanking in such scenario (which is not common at all). BLU would lose less enmity, because even while having less HP, BLU can simply avoid tons of damage with blink tanking, higher DT, much higher defense, much higher meva and situational buffs like Seline coat or debuffs like stun, flash etc.

PUP is the BEST job to work on during the covid-19 pandemic - tedious/slow skill ups and a boat load of attachments to collect!

Are attachments just all the ones from the Nashmau NPC? You can only get one of each ya? They're like teaching your automaton spells that you equip similarly to BLU, ya?

You can only trade in one of each to equip, yes.

Out of all the contents that I've done, Lamia ambu is the only content that PUP tank would be useful. And thats ONLY if your main tank isn't using react.

If going for most optimal setup, RUN RUN RUN all things IMO... using anything else just slow ***down. Maybe PLD if it's main healing with geo and use 2nd DD.

If you included WAR (lol!) and NIN as tanks then PUP is an obvious inclusion. PUP tanking is far more useful than either of those, and in fact warrior tanking can mostly be substituted with any heavy DD or even dancer, lol. Warrior doesn't get any special mitigation outside of a low shield block rate. edit- hell blue mage is a better tank than warrior.


This is really stupid my dude and it's just low-tier trolling. I play both paladin and rune fencer, and play with a lot of great tanks. Still, my LS uses PUP all the time; I'd say we have at least half-dozen people who have endgame puppetmasters. It's great in Dynamis and Omen (and HTBF, and Ambuscade, and some Escha NMs). PUP isn't well suited to melee strats but it's powerful for pet or even some nuking strats, utterly breaking some mechanics similar to summoner. PUP is also a better solo job than either RUN or PLD, and at lower gear levels with less risk.

If you want to troll the PUP form please be more subtle. For instance, autos have no way to deal with Doom.

Why are people reacting to pup being ***on this pup thread? I thought this is for people that like playing pup.

@Shiraj your reaction is based on everyone having bis which is not realistic for a lot of people.

I don't understand why ppl compare themselves that are in strong groups to more casual players.

In my opinion, pup offers a lot without the need of having bis or hard to attain gear.

Not using a setup that allows max DPS output is anti-thesis of playing DDs....

I mean, if DD can't do max DPS because set-up is bad, the right solution is changing the setup, not telling DDs to hold back.

Dirge takes up 1 precious song slot in high lv content so no thanks. I'm ok with dirge for ranged setup, not melee.

/Drg isn't viable for COR and BRD since they need DW.

Honestly someone wants to play PUP in endgame I'd take a DD PUP as melee then keep RUN as tank before considering using dirge on DDs. That would probably have higher pt performance since h2h update lol

Aight so I gotta put you down here lol.
PUP is 100% not better than RUN for soloing.
PUP can barely solo Lilith on N with Overdrive. RUN can do D-VD without 1 hours.

RUN doesn't need 1 hours to solo almost any NM that is actually soloable. 6 T4s, Tumult, etc and Yakshi are not for example. *** Yakshi.

Anything PUP can solo, RUN can do it. I 100% guarantee it. Neak, easy. Sovereign Behemoth, easy. Vir'ava, easy. You name it.
But yeah, some of my posts were slight trolls just to trigger people, and I had fun.

For soloing at lower gear levels, I agree.

And about the other stuff, I know PUP can be used for other strats, but there is a very small minority who do content with pets/MB strats that aren't 1 hour burned.

Rune fencer can solo frog Ambuscade VD? Rune fencer can solo Shedu?

PUP can consistently solo better than RUN at lower gear levels. It's... a better solo job for sure, lol.

You can duo omen with DD+WHM, so it makes no difference there.

Dyna D full clear is doable with 0 PUP. Wave 2 boss is 1 min melee zerg and wave 3 is 10 min melee zerg too.

If every alliance has unlimited pt slot then sure there will be space for PUP. But they take away slots for a RUN so I don't see a reason. Adding 1 PUP tank in an Dyna alliance means 1 less RUN gets invite for gambit rayke boosting magical WS, thus lowers DPS.

I just don't see the point really.

Sure, PUP is a nice job for people that can't do optimal setups. But if everyone agrees with that why are you guys getting mad about Shirajs comments? He was right, just expressing it in a more trollish way.

DRK BLU are both better tank than WAR IMO.

I mean I'll give you the ambuscade one. But Shedu yes.

I think the problem was including NIN and WAR. Once you include situational tanks, it's understandable why players want to know why PUP is commented on by the video maker as useless.

I couldn't care less if anyone in the comments there or here says it is worthless. But if you say you're doing an unbiased guide and gathered others to speak on their jobs in detail, it comes off bias when you remove a situational tank that players do commonly use.

Not gonna defend PUP like it replaces a RUN. My gripe is including some situational tanks but not others. Better to not include them at all or rephrase the video as these are my top picks for tanks jobs.

IMO PUP is still the better solo job due to (much) lower skill requirement. I don't know many hardcore RUN soloer but most new player with PUP geared can solo decently.

However it was a tank discussion and my opinion is that in most optimal setup it's hard to use a PUP tank without performance decrease.

For me I don't care what job is better, sounds childish to me.

If you wanna boast about rune, go on a rune thread.

Nobody is "boasting" about RUN for no reason. Rua asked community opinion on PUP as a tank, other people simply respond about what they think.

Then PUP players getting mad for no reason.... despite nobody told PUP players to gtfo and stop playing.

This is really embarrassing.

So any fight that lasts like 2 minutes or less (Kouryou/WoC/HELM zergs) would be all warriors and support, or summoners. Rune fencer is a big dps loss for melee zerg on these fights. All Dynamis runs would be CORs and RNGs and su5 RDMs, with 2 RUNs for Rayke. Ambu, eh it depends on the month, but it would almost-always be either SMNburn, heavy DDs, ranged, or PUPburn.

This game is ancient and a lot of us, myself included, have been playing since the very beginning. Who cares about always doing "optimal setups" for content that we have to grind dozens or hundreds of times? This excludes many jobs that players enjoy playing, including PUP as well as all light DDs. I have a lot of "optimal setup" jobs but, leading groups for content, it's much more engaging to switch up and use different strats so that players feel engaged and don't burn out.

And just to add, the easiest way to clear Dyna wave 3, if you don't care about drops, is to use PUP to do all fetters, just speed your way to w3 boss, and kill with magical strat. That was how my LS did our first wave 3s, it's the easiest strat, and you cannot do it without puppetmaster.

true mate, maybe a troll allergy of ppl

I never said you can't play jobs that you like. I only said it's not optimal in current content as a tank.

The problem with skipping fetter is that it's less RP and drops for everyone.

We can generally clear entire wave 3 and all the fetter with a melee setup and still have 1 hr left. In fact we would spend 30 min farming RP in wave 1 and 2 then proceed with wave 3 because there so much time left.

I see no reason to sack fetters, nor sacrifice a RUN tank slot for another PUP tank.

I don't mind someone wanting to play PUP in Dyna D at all, but I would put him on melee DD slot instead of tank slot. Since h2h update the job should have competitive DPS to SB Cor now no? Even that would be a better choice than taking up the precious tank slots.

Honestly we take mid tier DD to Dyna D all the time and still got plenty of time left. Really there's no issue using a melee DD PUP. But double RUN as tank is just too good to change. Even a DD PUP is a better "fit" than tank PUP in Dyna D IMO.

You’re simply incorrect. A top tier dd with one less song will do more damage. The pup also takes less damage than the RUN and almost plays itself. I’m not saying pup is a better tank than run because it’s not, but it can open up different strategies for those with a few brain cells.

I enjoy taking on content with as little players as possible as a challenge and is one of my favourite aspects of the game. Thinking a dd job doing full dd at all times is the only way they’re useful is daft for any strategist worth their salt. Honestly not sure why people who only ever try cookie-cutter set ups even still play.

This sentence makes absolutely 0 sense. A COR or DD with TP bonus build will need 2 March 2 madrigals in higher lv content to reach max DPS. There is no such thing as "top tier DD" if they are forced to use accuracy sets. "Top tier DD" doest just magically generate DPS without buffs, they can reduce damage loss with less buffs if they are using accuracy sets, but it's still DPS loss.


Irrelevant with a healer and battuta.

Aiming for max performance IS strategy....and entertainment.

with just trusts? seriously? i'll believe it when i see the youtube video...

I wouldnt waste your breath its Afania its either super optimal or dont do the content.

It makes no sense to you who cant comprehend why dropping a song that offers 85 acc if needed or 200 attack if not needed is not easily made up by the multiple dd tools you get from a dd job. If you really think ensuring top dps is the best strategy for everything you have missed the point I was making entirely.


Exactly, you are bringing a healer. With the pup you have one less person/character as it doesnt need healing, opening up low man options as suggested.

What a boring existence lol

They deleted PUP in the last update I think

Yes with trusts. And it's not hard... use same trust setup you use to solo Omen bosses and GG. Lux runes pretty much make her harmless and panaceas.