String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

Every A3 NM will take no damage from all weapon types other than the one that is effective against it.

That mechanic is only present at v25, though, right? Could just RP farm on v24 instead and barely lose anything. Assuming the Automaton can do enough damage to hit the threshold.

Combined the Refresh and Regen set for resting so that you can amplify both HP and MP regen when resting!

-- Resting sets
sets.resting =
{main="Denouements",
range="Animator P +1",
ammo="Automat. Oil +3",
head="Pitre Taj +3",
neck="Bathy Choker +1",
ear1="Burana Earring",
ear2="Infused Earring",
body="Vrikodara Jupon",
hands="Rao Kote +1",
ring1="Chirich Ring +1",
ring2="Stikini Ring +1",
back=gear.Repair_Back,
waist="Fucho-no-Obi",
legs="Assid. Pants +1",
feet="Rao Sune-Ate +1"}

Lacking a Karagoz Earring +2, would sroda earring be a decent exchange for master howling fist to pick up the extra 7 DA or not worthwhile?

Moonshade/augmented Schere is already superior to Karagoz+2 for Howling Fist, anyway. There's no multiattack on Karagoz+2 and HF doesn't scale well without VIT.

I was looking at combo'ing Schere sroda with godhands for tp > 2.2k because of godhands and Mpaca head, shoot for ws lower with moonshade or would sroda be acceptable in over tp situations like that?

This is the correct answer I guess.

Then again Arebati and Xevioso are susceptible to Piercing damage so the automaton WSs would still do full damage. Problem is that you would have to rely on ranged attacks only to gain TP.

So I guess Drum Magazine / Repeater (and Barrage Turbine?) in place of Turbo Charger.
Then Heat Capacitors and Othas for slightly more TP.
And Sharp head instead of Valor.


Not sure this would work though. Honestly without the TP gain speed from melee attacks you wouldn't exactly see a spam of WSs and without that bye bye damage.

On V20 I was easily making >10% damage with the 3,5mins of Overdrive btw, for comparison.

I thought v24 would be 99% immunity to everything whereas v25 is full immunity, so melee should still be optimal tp gain, unless you've seen something different?

Sorry I've been unwillingly confusing in my previous post.
I meant to say that doing what Aerix suggested is the "right" answer.
I.e. going on V24 for a minimal loss of RP. In that scenario you would be able to use the same exact setup that I personally used for V20s and it worked like a charm for those.

Then I started wondering: would there be a potential setup for V25, considering that Automaton Ranged Attacks and WS are piercing damage, hence the "right" type of damage for Arebati and Xevioso?

I tried to think about a few things you could swap, like the attachments I mentioned and different head. But I'm ultimately very skeptic on this setup because I doubt you would manage to deal 5% damage with TP gain just from regain, Fire Maneuvers and Ranged attacks.
I don't know though, was sorta inquiring what others think about it.

A full-on ranged SS/SS setup for ranged attacks with proper buffs could probably do enough damage to Arebati and Xevioso within the time limit. However, you'd have to sacrifice almost all survivability, so the Automaton would likely die early into the fight.


Yeah, if you're looking for an earring combo in case you have excess TP, then Sroda/Schere would make the most sense.

In any case, with HF's fTP scaling you definitely can't go wrong WSing at higher TP. Aiming for around the 2k+TP Bonus mark should mathematically yield the most damage, unless I missed something. But I'd probably rather opt to fire my WS macro a bit too early than too late so as not to waste Moonshade's potential, though.

How come? Please elaborate further so we can get on the same page.
You're losing 3 earth capacity and gaining 1 wind and 2 water.

This is the setup you suggested for the previous approach of Valorhead/Sharpbody
And this is the setup Skald suggested
Both work pretty nice. There's also this setup that I used (Sharphead/Sharpbody) that worked pretty fine on V20 but inferior to the previous two provided by Aerix and Skald
Total capacity of frames
Let's take the setup Aerix suggested but with a few modificationsThis would leave us with ranged attacks every 5 seconds. A >65% doubleshoot rate (unclear if Optic Fibers work on that, I couldn't find any detailed tested, that could easily bring us to 100% double shoot, supposing there's no cap) and ~113 Store TP.
All the while you get a silly 10 regain from Othas.

Would that be enough TP generation? Ehr... no, I think it would still take at least 2 ranged attacks to gain enough TP for a WS, right? And that would kill Inhibitor AI, making him shoot always the same WS, but in that case it would be every ~10 seconds so the WS wall wouldn't be an issue I guess lol

II thought about using Barrage Turbine and Heat Capacitors, but they have an internal cooldown of 2 mins, don't they? Making them ultimately a waste of attachment slot I'm afraid.

At V20 these mobs have ~3,2m HP, so they gotta have at least 4m at V25, let's say 4,5.
5% damage in 3,5 mins would mean 225k damage, let's say 250k to assume worst case scenario.
My automaton WS on V20 spiked as high as 25k, but here damage is gonna be lower because no Truesight, no Magniplug and higher defense/stats from the mob.
Assuming a scenario of 1 WS every 10 seconds, we get at least 21 WS during Overdrive.
This means t hat if you can get an avg WS damage of 12k per WS, it might just be enough to deal 5% damage during Overdrive.


I can't deny I'd be very curious to test this out but realistically I don't see this happening without a COR for... uhm... Beast Roll and Companion's Roll I guess?

Oh I forgot to mention an important part.
On V20 I found out that my accuracy with my average pet gear was more than enough without any stabilizer even on V20 Xevioso.
But on V25 I asusme you're gonna need more acc.
Will the Automaton have enough acc during Overdrive?

I don't know of course but I think with food it's gonna be enough, given how you can adjust some gear, for instance you won't need pet haste gear (given how we're not interested in melee attack speed) and in those slots you can maybe compensate with more acc? Maybe?

I can tell you one thing. I tried Overdrive on V25 Gigelorum with setup that was destroying V20 Gogmagog (like up to 30k+ Bone Crushers if I recall correctly). With Grape Daifuku and ML 26 and AM3 from Kenkonken.

I got two spikes on Bone Crushers on Gig to 14k and 11k, but majority was 4-7k. Im not saying it will be the same at V25, but you might be surprised by your WS numbers going really low, unless maybe same WS wall works for automaton WS and it was walling itself by using Bone crusher only.

That's pretty much what I was getting at. You'd need a COR to pull off enough damage and even then you'd likely need an extra person to actually tank Xevioso because the Automaton won't be able to. At that point it'd make more sense just to have the PUP tank while a RNG or COR shoots.

In any case, the setup for v25 would have to use SS/SS (lowest RA timer) with Drum Magazine/Repeater/Truesights and all the gear that adds Special attack damage or WS damage for the maton. And then go all in on Ranged Attack white damage and supplement TP speed via Companion's Roll.

It would be significantly simpler to just use the v20 setup on v24 instead where you can still get TP via melee damage.

Anybody knows if Disruptor/Regulator (or anything else?) work reliably on dispelling Henwen's Zealous Snort on V25?

Hurray. MEVA increase for automatons. 15 years after it was needed!

The question I have is will this break how automatons currently scale with meva equipment? Might make stacking it disgusting.

They have less meva than a rock so it's not going to matter lol.

+1 meva per iLvl "look we're doing stuff aren't we great"

"we understand things and stuff and +20 meva is potentially game breaking so we need to monitor the situation for 2 more years to see if we were right or not"

The main issue with PUP endgame I feel is that Square Enix keeps adding enemies that either can't be skill chained at all, or can't be WS during certain times. Automatons just don't work when that is the case. Sure PUP could Raging Fist on Bumba next to all the Savage Bladers, but as soon as the pet skillchains the fight is over.

Still, I'm glad to see any work being done on the pet jobs. But M.eva and crit damage weren't really what we need.

I mean, that's a valid complaint. But. Also not.

Yeah, sometimes you can't use a job for this or that. Sometimes you can't use a blm cause the mob is immune or absorbs magic. Sometimes you can't use a buffer because of mechanics. Not everything needs to be universally useful.

The issues are much larger and over arching the entire system of pets in general. Specific instances are so far removed from the point where it matters. Imagine if the only issue with pup was it couldn't be used because of skillchains. Pups would be ecstatic.

That's like no issue at all. You can force automaton to use Bone Crusher only, which is fragmentation and one of the best automaton WS anyway. Bone crusher is fragmentation, so wont skillchain with Savage and other Frag WSs.

Im getting interesting results with Bone crusher after update.
Solo on Lucus Colibri, with Dia III and Sylvie Frailty and AM3 from Kenkonken, Bone Crusher is doing 11-19k (ML26), which seems much higher than before. Now with Overdrive I was getting between 24-39k (with one spike to 47k) which doesn't seems much different than before.

Even more interesting with bogea Frailty from Idris Geo. Regular Bone crushers were doing 15-24k with one spike to 28958



Now Overdrive was still 24-39k.
It's like Overdrive is using old pdif cap still, while nonOverdrive is using new.

EDIT: Posted at OF as potential bug

If they fix it, we can expect 48-76k Overdrive Bone Crushers with rare spikes to 92k ( 99k for people with bis gear like Nyame D I guess ;) ) :D I'm happy with massive upgrade to nonOverdrive tho :O

any change to Ranged values?

Tbh I dont use ranger automaton at all, so I have no idea what the damage was before update.

Armor Shatter is doing 16k on Colibri with capped attack and 38k with Overdrive, with Xiu rank 11 and Neo animator R24. Magniplug 1+2, Flame Holder and Optic 1+2

nonOD 3000TP Daze 29k
nonOD 3000TP Arcuballista 34k
nonOD Armor Shatter 16k
OD Armor Shatter 38k
I will try another OD for Daze and Arcu in 12 min
OD 3000TP Daze 69k
OD 3000TP Arcu 80k

Had you logged any concrete numbers prior to update?

While the wording in patch notes can easily be misunderstood:

What was noted in Matsui's announcing february update was pretty clear specifying critical damage:

I only just quickly threw around some string shredders and I can't eyeball a notable difference.

Its pretty clear looking at all pet jobs, that the change was to critical hit pdif cap, which was most likely raised from 4 to 8. However critical hit pdif cap for pets is the same as for non critical hits, so the buff applies also for non critical hits and WSs, not only for things like String Shredder.

My regular non OD Bone Crushers before update were definitely way lower. 10k+ was a spike, not minimum and definitely I haven't seen anything above 20k before.

Im kinda confused right now.
24-39k OD Bone Crushers seems like with old pdif cap
80k 3000TP OD Acruballsita, even with piercing bonus on colibri seems like its with 8.0 pdif right?

So new pdif is not working for Overdrive with melee WS but working with ranged WS? Spaghetti code all over again.

Admittedly it's been a while since I did any valor DD focused things but with dia and frailty those non-od 11-20k bonecrushers don't sound too far off from what I would have guessed normal tbh.

That's really interesting though, if it was actually intentional to raise both non and crit pdif in tandem it's such a weird way for them to undersell a pet adjustment.

I guess we need Aerix. He has probably much better memory to avg numbers on PUP before update.

I'm going to test on Lilith E later today, I was capping out with full pup dd gear 30-35k bone crusher and 1207 melee hits during odrive with cor rolls frailty and dia2. Hoping that it's not broken and that just requires sizable buffs, I've gotta get some sleep but I'll post later today if Aerix doesn't beat me to it.