ATTN: Community Reps/Dev Team: PUPs of Vanadiel DEMAND a response on Automaton A.I.!

[Psion]

I'm sorry if the title was so rude. But this is getting ridiculous.

Puppetmasters have been clamoring ever since the soulsoother and spiritreaver automaton heads came out, demanding changes to the priorities of automatons spellcasting. This isn't some preference that some pups want, it's broken. B.R.O.K.E.N. We have been demanding, pleading, bargaining, bribing, doing everything in our power to get it through to the development team, that automatons are, to put it bluntly, stupid when it comes to casting their spells.

Here's the issues:

White mage (Soulsoother):

1) Soulsoother will always cure status ailments off itself or the master with the appropriate -na spell like silena or poisona instead of curing, regardless of how close to death either is. We do not want this. If we want to truly get rid of status ailments we will use the eraser, which by the way, really shouldn't remove light maneuvers when used. Change this so that the first, very FIRST priority of the automaton, is this: CURE. Preferably it should be, if it were like gambits and it goes down the list starting from the top:

cast cure on person with most hate if they meet the cure trigger threshold (~80% HP or below with 1 light maneuver and optic fiber/damage gauge equipped)

Cast cure on party member with lowest HP if they meet the cure trigger threshold

Cast highest regen on person with most hate if their HP is above 90% and target monster is Decent challange or higher

Remove status ailments from itself/master if any are present

Remove status ailments from person with most hate if any are present and a water maneuver is up

Remove status ailments from party members if any are present and a water maneuver is up

Enfeeble the monster

There, automaton casting is fixed in regards to healing. We are sick and tired of dying because the red mage dancing weapon or whatever decides to cast silence on our PUP/WAR or whatever and our automaton decided silena is more important than a cure when we have 5 HP remaining. It's no longer cute after the first incident, and it's firaja-inducing infuriating when it happens the ten thousanth time. We can't even use stormwaker to get around it anymore, because cure IV just does not cut it at level 90 every ~20 seconds. I lose that much HP every 2 melee rounds sometimes. If the dev team is really worried about people whining over automaton AI changes however, just add in the gambit system of FF12 to automatons, and pets in general. You could even make gambits craftable and grant a boon to the crafting community too. Gambits would be the most ideal, but at least fix the broken healing automaton AI if the dev team can't implement that.

And while we're on the topic of enfeebling:

2) Enfeebling. Our automaton decides to cast silence on monsters that have MP, even if they can't actually cast anything? Come on, this was fixed for NPC fellows years ago, why can't our automatons get some love too? Fix it so our automatons only silence things that actually can cast something. This applies to stormwaker head as well, not just soulsoother.

And now, for our other pal, the wonderous black mage head. . .

Black Mage (Spiritreaver):

1) Aspir sucks. Drain sucks. We don't want it. Honestly, you should just get rid of these two spells. We got cheap automaton oils. We have Role Reversal. We got healing salves in certain battlefields, we got Deus Ex Automata. (we seriously love you for that ability by the way.) We do not need the not so helpful drain, but we are forgiving. Make it so that drain only is chosen if the automaton has 50% hp or less (75% hp or less with damage gauge), AND a dark maneuver is present. Right now if the automaton falls below this HP threshold, we cannot avoid it. That means even if the big bad NM is one blizzard V away from dying and turning a bad fight to victory... we get drain. Which normally does like 40 damage, and we don't win. In the heat of battle, we cannot avoid damage in a lot of fights, nor can our automatons, especially since we can't even deploy our automaton at spellcasting range like a black mage. Sure we can deploy, retrieve and run back... but that's still precious seconds we're in the line of fire, and our automatons will often get trashed. We already have to wait 20 seconds to cast a new spell, we don't appreciate wasting it on a spell that doesn't even help us.

2) Aspir. Same deal as drain, only worse. MP is NOT an issue for us. Aspir II sucks anyways on anything that matters. We got ways of restoring mp to make a black mage green with envy, we don't need aspir at all. Get rid of it, or at least make it require a dark maneuver as well as less than 50% MP (75% with damage gauge) to fire off.

3) Stupidcasting is another issue we have. For instance, my Oniwaka will always cast fire on flans, even if hes got more than enough magic accuracy to land blizzard instead for great damage... and even if said flan ABSORBS fire magic like one of the nyzul custards. This is bad. Automatons got a built in scanner for the black mage head, so why is it trying to heal the flan? Are our automatons in some machine/flan conspiracy against humans? Another issue is damage down from certain elements. Oniwaka casts blizzard V on ghosts in apollyon, even though they take -50% damage from ice. In fact, I think all ghosts do, yet he casts blizzard on them, instead of a much more effective fire V. Automatons need to be smarter in their casting, so that they use the highest level spell they can land with fairly good accuracy and does not take any damage cut from that element. I've even had him cast aspir on diabolos. a dark elemental spell on the king of nightmares? Come on.

Sharpshot (Ranger):

1) The main issue with sharpshot, is that for a ranger, it's pretty bad at shooting for TP. It only fires off a shot every 15 seconds or so, and its damage plummets when it's out of melee range. In other words, it's not such a sharpshot after all is it? So for it to be effective in damage, it has to melee as well, but the problem is, it doesn't like to run in and melee. In fact, it likes to stay back like a ranger, as if it has some sort of identity crisis. It would be nice for you to change it so that it runs in to melee, same as valoredge, and add a new command that makes the automaton stay in place, similar to the beastmaster ability stay. That way we can get our meleeing automaton, and if the master wants it to stay back and fire from a distance, they can use stay and deploy to make it stay put and attack from the spot it's in. (using retrieve to cancel stay.) Better yet would be to make it so that when sharpshot is rooted in place and out of melee range, it gets a major bonus to its ranged speed, firing off a shot every 3-5~ seconds, and the sweet spot of it changes to max ranged distance for the automaton, which would be around 17.5 yalms for us, the furthest distance we can deploy our auto barring the monster being really big. By the way, why can't our automaton's ranged attacks do critical hits? that's so lame.

General Automaton adjustments:

Probably one of the biggest demands other than A.I. Fixes I see now, are of course pet survivability (seriously, the armor plates, they do nothing, although thank you dev team for a new shield attachment. What we need though, is adjustments to the damage they take that DON'T require attachments. 12 slots is all we got after all) and the other issue is swapping frames/heads/attachments quickly.

Perhaps we could have something as simple as /equipa head "Valoredge", /equipa body "Valoredge", /equipa slot1 "Attuner", and so on, provided the automaton isn't activated. This would let us swap roles on the fly instead of taking up to a precious minute adapting our role to suit the party. This on the fly flexibility would go a long way to accentuating one of pups strong points, its ability to adapt to changing battle situations. We would still be limited to our 1 minute deactivate, so it's not like it's groundbreaking to change our role instantly after that.
Those are the main issues that I can recall off the top of my head that puppetmasters have been complaining about for years. This isn't just some, it's every single pup's complaint. Every time a new puppetmaster asks me for advice, and one of the questions is how to get the white mage bot to cure over poisona/silena/blindna/etc... I wince, because I have to tell them there is no way.

Community Reps, I'm begging you, from a puppetmaster who's lost his patience over this issue. Respond to our cries, respond to this thread, and communicate to the Dev team just how serious this issue is. This is the sort of problem that should have been fixed in an emergency patch after the soulsoother and spiritreaver first came out. This is a major, fun-crushing bug that is years overdue for a fixing, and is one of the last major issues pups have with the job.

While we're at it, I ask all pups to respond on any other AI glitches they can't stand, and perhaps issues in general. And if the community reps don't respond... I'm thinking perhaps we pups should all make threads requesting this just to get our point across on how much we want this fixed, since nothing else we do seems to get our message through. :/

::Edit:: fixed the accuracy issue from a distance and added attachment swap macro suggestion

[Cymmina]

It only fires off a shot every 15 seconds or so, and its accuracy and damage plummet when it's out of melee range.

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/verup/ff11us/detail/5338/detail.html


The ranged accuracy of automatons is no longer affected by distance to the target.

It would be nice if the attack penalty was removed, since that is still there and you're already giving up melee damage by having it out of range. As for firing speed, they could just update Drum Magazine to be useful... something like sacrificing melee accuracy for increased ranged attack speed. Right now it is useless because of the huge ranged accuracy penalty it gives.

Eraser is pretty terrible, but it wouldn't be so bad if it removed only Light Maneuvers instead of *all* Maneuvers. But of course, not removing any Maneuvers would be better.

It would be nice if they added attachments that specifically altered the AI, so you can choose how they behave. Something like Inhibitor, but not tied to a stat gain like Store TP. Something that would force them to use their best WS, for example, so you can stack maneuvers without making him use a crappy WS. Something that disables casting status removal or enfeebling spells on the casting frames.

Autos are still more fragile than other pets. What happened to the update to Valoredge that would make him durable enough to tank? Right now, he can't even tank an even match. Meanwhile BST jug pets can tank no problem.

And most importantly, make maneuvers last longer! It's terrible eating up 2 seconds of delay to put up maneuvers as they expire so quickly. With Haste and double Marches, the damage the master loses by refreshing maneuvers is nearly as much as the automaton gains from having the maneuvers up. Three minutes might be enough, five would be better.

[Niyariko]

Although I don't agree with SE, but I bet their response to us would be "Its working as intended". :eek:

There are a lot of potential to this job if SE can really put some effort into it, sit back, and take a look at the logic and battle mechanics of our automatons. Is obviously not working as intended. :mad:

[Karbuncle]

i agree with just about all aspects of the OP.

[TimeMage]

Total agreement with Psion and Cymmina.

[Dauntless]

Don't play pup, but I've seen the stupid A.I. at work. I agree with this.

[Mercilessturtle]

And most importantly, make maneuvers last longer!

Especially this. Keeping up 3 maneuvers is 6 seconds of JA delay per minute. That is a full 10% of our engaged time eaten up just to try to give our automatons a stat boost that isn't even as good as what a player gets from gear. It is a huge penalty and seems designed to encourage pups to ignore their automaton and play as gimp monks. Make maneuvers last 5 minutes, and adjust "consumes maneuvers" attachments to have their benefit be worth the lost maneuvers. Right now only ice maker is worth it.

Another thing that would be nice is some kind of JA to transfer buffs to your automaton, like empathy for drgs. Pup falls way behind when you have support jobs in the party because automatons damage stays the same, while everyone else's goes up from all the buffs.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

i agree with just about all aspects of the OP.I'll just agree with Karby as I quit reading half way through the second paragraph.

[Karbuncle]

Especially this. Keeping up 3 maneuvers is 6 seconds of JA delay per minute. That is a full 10% of our engaged time eaten up

I made an entire thread on that in PUP forums! where were you >:O

Oh wait, job Forums! No one goes there :3

[hakrev]

The dev team doesn't read english forums, so someone needs to translate this and put it up in the jp forums for them to even reply to it. I agree wholeheartedly with everything stated here. It's not even slightly amusing to die because auto decides to poisona instead of cure when I'm @ 5hp >.>. Although I've found rng frame to be pretty darn impressive in dishing out damage, i'm not even capped on my rng skills yet and it's surpassing my maxed out (in gear/atma/skill/attachments) magic attack frame. Although keeping hate off of it when it's blasting away can be a pain. The thing that you didn't mention though was the annoying link between fire maneuver and arcubalista, I despise this so much, it's impossible to operate at pique performance when I'm hindered by sloppy programming.

Frankly I'm not going to discourage giving us new attachments like they have been, but the problem is not going to be solved by attachments, we only have so many slots to put attachments into anyways (don't even get me started on the redundancy of the quests involved for getting the attachments). It's time to rework this job, everyone knows this. Pup need love, LOTS of love and I really wish they would read this thread. Even people that despise the pup job know that it's broken and support fixing it over the jobs they play. I'm all for the gambit idea too, makes sense to be able to program your puppet-robot's AI.

[Zaeon]

I completely agree with the OP, and Cymmina.

These are fixes that have been long-since needed and, begged for(especially the automaton A.I.). The maneuvers I can deal with, although I wouldn't complain about a longer duration, the A.I. fix is needed first and foremost, followed by the automaton's survivability. Really hoping to see a reply to this thread from the CT.

P.S. @Hakrev, the CT, can and have communicated requests/issues to the devs, and forward us the response.

[Seriha]

*braces for PUP rage*

While I'm for better AI, I can't help but feel the means for Automatons to basically maintain infinite MP on a 1m timer deserves a looking into as a balance point. The secondary benefit of this is also prevalent when it comes to nuking, where BLMs and such eventually need to toe the enmity line while Automatons just have to go bye-bye for a few seconds if their HP is full. Just feel like some relation to MP should be considered, where if they deactivated at 50%, Activate has a 30s cooldown if their HP was otherwise full. 45s at 25%, 15s at 75%, and so on. And assuming healing AI is improved, PUPs will gain a considerable boost on mobs they can actually melee/evasion tank since Cure V/VIs could never run out, a benefit WHMs don't exactly have outside of Abyssea.

[Keyln]

So...uh...what would it take for a dev response on this one?

Lighting an automaton on fire?
Staring contest between us and the moogle?
Puppetmaster revolt?

[xbobx]

Although I agree with most that has been said here, my other beef is with new attachments. It was great when the first batch came out and we could get them easy by getting them with IS points. Then this next batch either farm for 400 hours doing brown chests or have to farm zeni and do Ob over and over again. Really?
They talked about changes to job in manifestos. My issue is while every other job levels into their Job abilities and traits we have to jump through stupid hoops for our automation Ja's. We should have to spend 50+ hours to get them or pay stupid amounts of gil. I don't see new blms spells insanely hard to get like the pup attachments.
Put new attachments on Npc, and add them to gold chests. That way we can buy them for say 50k or from Ah after a week or so when people put them up on ah.
But this is stupid we have to go through so much compared to other jobs to get our new abilities.

[xbobx]

And fyi, in case they answer to this, lol ya right. They cannot say it is working as intended because 4-5 years about the AI was brought up to the developers at one of the conferences and they admitted it wasn't working as intended, this was after they treated pups like they were stupid and made it sound like we didn't put on damage gauge.

the damage gauge says prioritizes cures. You know what prioritizes means? the attachment in itself says it puts cures as top priority. The damage gauge has been broken since day one. It isn't even an AI thing its a broken attachment.

And we know that things have been ignored for long times, they just noticed that Attuner didn't work on melee ws.

[Psion]

*braces for PUP rage*

While I'm for better AI, I can't help but feel the means for Automatons to basically maintain infinite MP on a 1m timer deserves a looking into as a balance point. The secondary benefit of this is also prevalent when it comes to nuking, where BLMs and such eventually need to toe the enmity line while Automatons just have to go bye-bye for a few seconds if their HP is full. Just feel like some relation to MP should be considered, where if they deactivated at 50%, Activate has a 30s cooldown if their HP was otherwise full. 45s at 25%, 15s at 75%, and so on. And assuming healing AI is improved, PUPs will gain a considerable boost on mobs they can actually melee/evasion tank since Cure V/VIs could never run out, a benefit WHMs don't exactly have outside of Abyssea.

You forgot the other part of the equation, that blm can spam nukes as needed and pick their spells, while pup is held to a 20ish second recast timer on nukes. (and more realistically, its around 2 nukes a minute on average.) And again with healing, the cures have a 18ish second recast. Believe me, that recast might seem short, but when your on the wrong side of an angry NM that timer can seem like an eternity and entirely too long at times. There is no need to adjust it, as a top notch pup is pretty much on par with a top notch blm. It just happens that the pup will excel a bit better at sustained fights where enmity and mp start to become an issue, while in fast hard fights where damage has to be dealt out quickly a blm will easily outstrip an automaton.

And besides, who runs out of mp these days, inside or outside of abyssea? XP

[Cyranda]

*braces for PUP rage*

While I'm for better AI, I can't help but feel the means for Automatons to basically maintain infinite MP on a 1m timer deserves a looking into as a balance point. The secondary benefit of this is also prevalent when it comes to nuking, where BLMs and such eventually need to toe the enmity line while Automatons just have to go bye-bye for a few seconds if their HP is full. Just feel like some relation to MP should be considered, where if they deactivated at 50%, Activate has a 30s cooldown if their HP was otherwise full. 45s at 25%, 15s at 75%, and so on. And assuming healing AI is improved, PUPs will gain a considerable boost on mobs they can actually melee/evasion tank since Cure V/VIs could never run out, a benefit WHMs don't exactly have outside of Abyssea.

I don't think you've yet identified any advantages that Spiritreaver automatons have over Black Mages that would require a "balance" adjustment. The automaton already has enough significant disadvantages under a Black Mage that "balance" is not the word you're looking for. Even if the AI were fixed such that the automaton wouldn't cast Drain and Aspir unless the PUP specifically wanted it to, the spell casting timer, casting speed, stationary deployment distance, inability to select the spell to be cast, lack of defensive spells and fragility of the automaton more than "balance" its ability to get its MP back through the use of deactivate/activate.

With regard to White Mages, even if automaton AI were fixed, the spell casting timer is extraordinarily long, and overload is an issue when trying to cure using activate/deactivate. Additionally, monsters that Puppetmasters can evasion tank that don't also use AOE that can damage the puppet and prevent it from using Deactivate/Activate to get MP back are few and far between. Nevermind the fact that a White Mage won't spam Cure VI on you when you're at 70-80% hp. Also keep in mind that Puppetmasters might be *designed* to heal themselves while evasion tanking to some degree and White Mages not, similar to Dancers (though obviously not as well).

Unless you can identify some serious cases (not the random, one off instance where WHM automaton healing is better than an actual WHM, or the same about the BLM automaton and BLM), you're worried about situations that don't happen or simply don't matter.

[Cyranda]

You forgot the other part of the equation, that blm can spam nukes as needed and pick their spells, while pup is held to a 20ish second recast timer on nukes. (and more realistically, its around 2 nukes a minute on average.) And again with healing, the cures have a 18ish second recast. Believe me, that recast might seem short, but when your on the wrong side of an angry NM that timer can seem like an eternity and entirely too long at times. There is no need to adjust it, as a top notch pup is pretty much on par with a top notch blm. It just happens that the pup will excel a bit better at sustained fights where enmity and mp start to become an issue, while in fast hard fights where damage has to be dealt out quickly a blm will easily outstrip an automaton.

And besides, who runs out of mp these days, inside or outside of abyssea? XP

And let's not forget that Black Mages have enmity douse and other defensive spells available depending on their subjobs that puppets do not. Also, for an automaton nuke to be effective, there has to be at least 30 seconds between casts to refresh ice maneuvers, and unless you have enough gear to effectively eliminate overload, PUP has to wait a while to begin the cycle anyway.

Even in sustained fights, Black Mages have the capability to get MP back quickly enough through abilities like Refresh, which puppets cannot cast on themselves (they can use dark maneuvers and mana batteries, but then they have dark maneuvers up and can't nuke (at high HP, they'll Absorb-INT instead), and if they do, it's for a tiny amount because they're using dark maneuvers instead of ice maneuvers), and through resting with HMP gear, which puppets also do not have access to.

[Seriha]

If it were just the puppet, sure, but with PUPs themselves getting their H2H bumped up along with much better gear and WS compared to their launch, they're still a factor alongside the Automaton. How close to two party members can the PUP and Auto get, with the mentioned quirk, before they're too much? As that's the issue your start facing when the AI isn't so much a series of choices to make and more like delayed commands.

Regardless, MP is not infinite inside or outside of Abyssea, despite an upped longevity in the former thanks to Atma and temps. Running out of MP just using Blizzard IV and V is not difficult, and it's not unheard of to go a stretch of time without temps if soloing. For more prolonged encounters with others, however, the enmity issue is still very real, even with Enmity Douse and its prohibitively long timer.

I know nobody likes nerfs, but it's something that bears consideration as the job tends to avoid a lot of scrutiny on its finer points due to past beliefs, status, and cost/difficulty in bringing up to speed.

[Cyranda]

If it were just the puppet, sure, but with PUPs themselves getting their H2H bumped up along with much better gear and WS compared to their launch, they're still a factor alongside the Automaton. How close to two party members can the PUP and Auto get, with the mentioned quirk, before they're too much? As that's the issue your start facing when the AI isn't so much a series of choices to make and more like delayed commands.

If a Puppetmaster is nuking with its BLM automaton, it's not in melee range fighting. If it were, it'd risk the automaton getting hit and not being able to use its "infinite MP." If the PUP were in a situation where it could have the automaton at its side while meleeing without risk of death, it would be using Sharpshot (unless the monster were extremely melee resistant, but then the PUP fighting wouldn't be a bonus). You don't see melee jobs complaining that a puppetmaster can just deactivate sharpshot when it might get hate. There is no problem here.


Regardless, MP is not infinite inside or outside of Abyssea, despite an upped longevity in the former thanks to Atma and temps. Running out of MP just using Blizzard IV and V is not difficult, and it's not unheard of to go a stretch of time without temps if soloing. For more prolonged encounters with others, however, the enmity issue is still very real, even with Enmity Douse and its prohibitively long timer.

This might matter if automatons should suddenly have elemental celerity or a short recast timer, also didn't have to worry about overload, could deploy out of AoE range and had other Black Mage tricks, including a subjob. In prolonged encounters where Black Mages would run out of MP, they can rest and or be refreshed, get MP back, etc. Square has also mentioned that they are working on other jobs maintaining enmity.


I know nobody likes nerfs, but it's something that bears consideration as the job tends to avoid a lot of scrutiny on its finer points due to past beliefs, status, and cost/difficulty in bringing up to speed.

It avoids scrutiny? By what standard? Are PUPs suddenly taking over as the most popular job, performing feats that dazzle all the other jobs, putting BLMs to shame, out-healing WHMs and making others cry? It has not yet happened in the history of the job, and a few AI fixes won't make that happen.


I know nobody likes nerfs

Validated nerfs are fine. Preemptive nerfing over something that hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen is ridiculous. Nerfing a job because someone doesn't like the "idea of infinite MP" when said infinite mp not only does not over-power a job, but barely brings it inline with other jobs in certainly roles (if that), is even worse.

[xbobx]

keep in mind in abyessa to make blm puppet competitive you have to sacrifice melee dmg a lot with atma.

[Mercilessturtle]

If it were just the puppet, sure, but with PUPs themselves getting their H2H bumped up along with much better gear and WS compared to their launch, they're still a factor alongside the Automaton. How close to two party members can the PUP and Auto get, with the mentioned quirk, before they're too much?

Pup isn't remotely close to two party members. We're not even competitive with one party member in many situations, that's the problem. BST has an A- in axe, access to virtually all of the heavy DD gear in the game (they can wear pretty much everything WAR can) and has very strong selection of jug pets now. Do you think BST needs to be nerfed because they got good pets?

People vastly overestimate the amount of damage an automaton does because they only look at their weaponskill damage. Their overall damage is not impressive at all, they attack very slowly and weaponskills are really far apart. It was already pointed out, but it is worth mentioning again: it is often counter productive to even bother using any maneuvers at all because automaton damage is so low, and the JA delay eats into the masters damage. That is not a good situation for a job that is supposedly focused on their pet. And really, how are we puppetMASTERs if we have virtually no control over our automatons due to the terrible AI?

[Lushipur]

water man. to trigger -na spell OR let damaga gauge really prioritize cure over -na;
dark man. to trigger drain and aspir;
no need to fight over spaghetti code, just two really easy IF / END-IF XD

and please consider where to put the next attachment....no other job need to some random farm to get the new toys....a war get a new ja just levelling not by killing 5 years old NM that nobody cares anymore
yes, mage need to find the new spells but the amount of ppl playing blm/whm/rdm is far greater than pup so the AH is soon flooded by scroll and the price will eventually drops. this is unrealistic for a job in 20th position on the census.

[xbobx]

Those mage spells are in gold chests, chest people readily farm and you can control the pop of. Brown chests in gov that many people don't do , and brown chests are rare, then you have to guess it right to open it, then you have to hope it is in chest. I bet it is less then 1 percent chance to get.

[Alhanelem]

ATTN: Community Reps / Dev Team

Please ignore this thread, or at all the DEMANDing people in it.

We don't demand anything. We REQUEST that NPC/pet A.I. adjustments be considered.


ATTN: Community Reps / Dev Team
Putting this in your topic title does NOT get you more staff attention, so PLEASE stop it.


keep in mind in abyessa to make blm puppet competitive you have to sacrifice melee dmg a lot with atma. That's why, when in abyssea, you only use it when you need the magic damage and meleeing is dangerous/risky.

[Karbuncle]

No offense but commenting in every thread with "[attn]" or "[dev]" tags on it and saying it doesn't help is infinitely more annoying than people actually putting it in their thread title.

For clarification, I hate it when people put "TO DEVS" and stuff in the title as well, But my silent hatred is enough.

Either way, I'm not 100% on Rep personalities, but I think they can understand we're not actually ready to throw pitchforks. Maybe Demand is a strong word, But We'd definitely like something.

all i really want from my Puppet is Longer Maneuvers :(

[Alhanelem]

No offense but commenting in every thread with "[attn]" or "[dev]" tags on it and saying it doesn't help is infinitely more annoying than people actually putting it in their thread title.I will keep saying it until it stops. I'm sick of attention *****s.

The community team reads everything. They don't need flashing signs to point them to threads that the person posting thinks are more important than anyone else's threads.

[Karbuncle]

I'm aware of that, I'm only commenting on how its equally annoying to hear you complain about it. (Especially when its obvious they wont stop :|)

Just trying to save you from wasting your energy :\

[Alhanelem]

I guess what actually bothered me more in this case is someone thinking they represent the entire PUP community making rude demands.

[Seha]

They don't need flashing signs to point them to threads that the person posting thinks are more important than anyone else's threads.
Pot calling the kettle black.

Please ignore this thread, or at all the DEMANDing people in it.

[Alhanelem]

This isn't pot calling the kettle black. My second statement does not in any way clash with the first.

"Please" is a request. "We DEMAND" is a demand. SE should not listen to demands. They should only listen to thoughtful, constructive suggestions.

[Karbuncle]

IGNORE ME.....

[Alhanelem]

Uh, he was quoting me, not you. But it's still not pot calling the kettle black. speaking out against [To the DEVS] is not a pot calling the kettle black.

[Karbuncle]

Yes. I know, I read it wrong, Don't ask me why but i swore he quoted me Calling you annoying as if me saying you were annoying was annoying and that i was being hypocritical. Don't worry. I read it and changed it >___>

I"M TIRED LEAVE ME BE ;;

Edit: Also srsly i cannot edit quick enough GO VIEW OTHER TOPICS D:

[Alhanelem]

>.>

superfluous text.

[xbobx]

I see nothing wrong with the demand. Whey they admit it is not working as intended, and said they would look into it and ignore it for another 4 years, I think demand is fine. Not need to be polite to people that lied to you.

[Alhanelem]

Whey they admit it is not working as intendedWhere did they admit this?

And regardless of whether you think it's right to demand or not, it's presumptuous to assume that one can consider himself to represent the entire PUP community.

[Cyranda]

Where did they admit this?

And regardless of whether you think it's right to demand or not, it's presumptuous to assume that one can consider himself to represent the entire PUP community.

The developers aren't stupid children. They know a single person doesn't represent the community, and so does the vast majority of other people. All that calling the person out is doing is derailing the thread which, I think, is quite a bit more destructive than someone being presumptuous, since it buries any useful information that someone might end up reading draws attention away from any valid points that may have come after.

You of all people should know that, having administered the forums of another site. Please quit making the problem worse.

[Alhanelem]

My position elsewhere isn't required to dictate my behavior here, and you are derailing this topic just as much by reacting to me as I am by reacting to someone else. I do not hold you to any special standard because you had X job somewhere else.

As a PUP myself, I resent being implied to be a part of a group that has the opinions of the original poster. I want them to do whatever they can to improve PUP, of course. but I'm not going to act like every/most/many PUPs share my views in the matter.

[Mercilessturtle]

it's presumptuous to assume that one can consider himself to represent the entire PUP community.

That's why all these people are replying to show their support. You don't need to come into every single thread screaming "look at me! please pay attention to me! I am so important, stop talking without my approval!". Nobody cares about your opinion on how people word their topics, and if you want to complain about it go make a "people aren't posting following my rules" thread instead of spamming the whole forum with it.

[Seha]

My position elsewhere isn't required to dictate my behavior here, and you are derailing this topic just as much by reacting to me as I am by reacting to someone else. I do not hold you to any special standard because you had X job somewhere else.

As a PUP myself, I resent being implied to be a part of a group that has the opinions of the original poster. I want them to do whatever they can to improve PUP, of course. but I'm not going to act like every/most/many PUPs share my views in the matter.
Well hello special snowflake, cause you're actually the only one I've ever seen who's happy with the Soulsoother's AI. If you're not, then don't complain cause you agree with the rest. If you only disagree with a part of a post, then quote and explain your reasons. But just coming here sayin that everyone should ignore this thread is just a lame attempt at attention seeking.

[Alhanelem]

"look at me! please pay attention to me! I am so important, stop talking without my approval!"I'm not posting here to get attention, unlike the original poster. Nowhere did I ever say, suggest, or imply that someone needed my approval to talk.


Nobody cares about your opinion on how people word their topicsNobody cares about your opinion of me either, but you still post about it. Excuse me for feeling that this forum would be more pleasant if people posted their threads normally instead of all trying to get the dev's attention.


cause you're actually the only one I've ever seen who's happy with the Soulsoother's AI.I'm not "happy" with the soulsoother AI. You can now stop calling names in an effort to make yourself look better. I'm not saying that everyone in this thread should be ignored. My only intention was to convey that we the PUP community aren't issuing some kind of ultimatum. I request changes, not demand them.

That's all I have left to say, in an effort to prove my intentions.

[Seha]

I'm not "happy" with the soulsoother AI. You can now stop calling names in an effort to make yourself look better.I didn't think special snowflake was offending, I thought it was just a way to say being different.

Explain what you agree with and what you disagree with, cause you haven't been constructive at all. Just sayin "ignore this thread and everyone who posts in it" isn't going to improve the development of the job.

[Alhanelem]

I've already posted some thoughts on this subject in the PUP forum, which I imagine is where this thread will eventually be moved.

But on other areas...


The main issue with sharpshot, is that for a ranger, it's pretty bad at shooting for TP.That's why you allow it to go to melee range to get TP. It might feel silly, I suppose- but what if it did TP much better than it does now at range? Then TPing at melee range would be even more powerful- way too powerful, because Sharpshot does not have the ranged sweet spot system (Unless I'm sorely mistaken, but I've never seen a difference in its damage based on range)

Sharpshot's ranged attack is extremely high, having it shoot significantly faster would be pretty imbalanced, and lower ranged attack would weaken its weaponskills. HOWEVER, the barrage turbine needs to be adjusted to give full TP for each shot, and it should have a shorter cooldown.

[Seha]

Thanks, that's a constructive post.

[Mercilessturtle]

That's why you allow it to go to melee range to get TP. It might feel silly, I suppose- but what if it did TP much better than it does now at range? Then TPing at melee range would be even more powerful- way too powerful, because Sharpshot does not have the ranged sweet spot system (Unless I'm sorely mistaken, but I've never seen a difference in its damage based on range)

This was addressed in the first two posts, did you bother to read the OP or just skipped that part so you could jump straight to crying for attention? The whole point is that we already have a melee frame, having to have the ranged frame be in melee range defeats the purpose of having a ranged frame. Notice how both suggestions involved a way to make the trade off of sacrificing melee damage to gain ranged attack speed.

And yes, automatons suffer the ranged damage penalty, and their sweet spot is melee range. It is easy to see it, go shoot some worms from melee range and from 10+ away. No, automatons don't have "extremely high" ranged attack, their attack is calculated the same as anything else.

[Alhanelem]

This was addressed in the first two posts, did you bother to readYes, I did, or I would not have posted it. For the last time, I'm not crying for attention. Why else would I make a constructive, sensical post (Whether it's correct or not)? It's beyond my ability to comprehend why I'm being accused of being the attention seeker when the title of this topic is "ATTN: Community Reps/Dev Team: PUPs of Vanadiel DEMAND..."



And yes, automatons suffer the ranged damage penalty, and their sweet spot is melee range. It is easy to see it, go shoot some worms from melee range and from 10+ away.I did this, and couldn't see a difference significant enough to overcome the random variance in attack damage. Even if you're right, that's all the more reason for it to be at melee range.


No, automatons don't have "extremely high" ranged attackSo why does the automaton's ranged attacks out damage anyone else's ranged attacks on a shot to shot basis? The only other thing it could be is the DMG: rating of its attack.

If you have sceintific testing to prove what you're saying, I'll happily accept it. But my personal experiences disagree with what you're saying.

[Cream_Soda]

Putting this in your topic title does NOT get you more staff attention, so PLEASE stop it.
lol, again?

backseat modding, yay

[Psion]

I'm just amused he thought I superficially claimed I was speaking for everyone. I have been a poster on alla, bluegartr, KI, ffxiclopedia, and now here for years, and played the job and lurked on pup forums ever since pup got its first pupdate after it came out. One of the biggest demands I have seen, in threads popping up everywhere, is the same complaint about the A.I., with not a single person disagreeing, with pups repeatedly demanding for years in dev Q and As for them to fix it, first starting with asking if they planned to adjust it, then mentioning the problem, then mentioning the problem more. When I say pups of vanadiel DEMAND a response, I mean it. Note that I didn't even say ALL pups of vanadiel, just pups. I even asked other pups to give their input on this thread.

I remember reading something in a story once, about how when people give an accusing opinion of other people, it's actually a trait that they themselves have. If they claim others are lazy, then they often are lazy themselves. If they claim others are attention whoring... well...

All I'm saying is I did not make this post flippantly, but instead am trying to continue the majority of pups continued pleas for the A.I. to be fixed.

[Alhanelem]

lol, again?

backseat modding, yay
Trolling, yay

I'm not backseat modding. There is no rule violation to moderate.


That's 100% false. I certainly care.So why are you so interested in someone else's opinion of me?

//admittedly took the troll bait.

[Cream_Soda]

Nobody cares about your opinion of me either, but you still post about it.
That's 100% false. I certainly care.

[Alhanelem]

I'm just amused he thought I superficially claimed I was speaking for everyone. I have been a poster on alla, bluegartr, KI, ffxiclopedia, and now here for years, and played the job and lurked on pup forums ever since pup got its first pupdate after it came out. One of the biggest demands I have seen, in threads popping up everywhere, is the same complaint about the A.I., with not a single person disagreeing, with pups repeatedly demanding for years in dev Q and As for them to fix it, first starting with asking if they planned to adjust it, then mentioning the problem, then mentioning the problem more. When I say pups of vanadiel DEMAND a response, I mean it. Note that I didn't even say ALL pups of vanadiel, just pups. I even asked other pups to give their input on this thread.

I remember reading something in a story once, about how when people give an accusing opinion of other people, it's actually a trait that they themselves have. If they claim others are lazy, then they often are lazy themselves. If they claim others are attention whoring... well...

All I'm saying is I did not make this post flippantly, but instead am trying to continue the majority of pups continued pleas for the A.I. to be fixed.
I appriciate the candid response. However, I still disagree with treating it as a demand, as it sort of implies a threat. Are you going to quit if they don't change the AI (and specifically quit for that reason)?

A polite request is generally much more effective, that's all. I would very much like for changes to be made. However, because I'm able to get by without changes, I don't consider it to be so immediately essential that I feel it's necessary to make it a demand and not a request.

I also agree with the point of your little story.

[Mercilessturtle]

Your *tenth* post in this thread was the first one that was a "a constructive, sensical post". The first nine were not about the topic of the thread, but rather about you. You aren't being accused of anything, you keep spamming the entire forum with "stop posting in ways that I do not approve of" as though your approval is something that matters. That is purely to get attention.

Ten shots from each distance is all it takes to see the obvious drop in damage. I'll leave it up to you to figure out why you can't see it. Yes, this is all the more reason to keep sharpshot in melee range. You seem to have forgotten already that the very problem being discussed is that you have to keep sharpshot in melee range. "Keep him in melee range" is not a solution to "we have to keep him in melee range". We need a way to keep him *out* of melee range, because he dies very easily to aoes in melee range. There is no reason to have a ranged frame if it can not attack effectively at range.

[Glamdring]

OP, I'm with you on the soulsoother on every point. Face it, if you were in a pt with a whm THAT stupid you'd be in a party looking for a replacement to your main healer, why should your pup get treated better for its stupidity?

Spiritreaver, sorry, but not on board with you there, except on 3. I don't mind blm pup draining and aspiring when it feels the need. I can't comment on the need for a dark manuver because I always have 1 up for the refresh. They do however need to drain commensurate with your pup's magic skill and as near as I can tell they don't. Now the stupidcasting, this I agree with wholeheartedly. What the hell is the built-in scanner (or the attachment) FOR if not to detect and respond to the prey's weaknesses? as I recall that's even in the descriptive text.

You left out Stormwalker, my favorite frame/head. It's a rdm, let it cast rdm spells! Seriously, we and it are level 90, but it stopped learning spells at 72. If rdm had stopped learning spells at 72 they really WOULD have a bitch with SE. This is why I have issues with the Disruptor; Dispel is a rdm spell, Stormwalker is a rdm, it should simply have the spell without costing us a valuable attachment slot.

You also left out Harley, but since SE did too I'll just let that one go. I'm not even sure what job it's supposed to be!

Valoredge-ok, this thing is advertised as a pseudotank, and although they advertise it as a sorta-pld I have yet to see it cure itself, buff itself or use a white magic nuke so I'm going to call it a warrior tank. Too bad it can't hold hate, eh? So, as you can guess I have issues with the barrier module. The thing's had a shield built into it from day one; finally after about 5 years it gets to use it? What the hell.

Sharpshot, sorry not really on board with much here. Your "elite" players scream if you deploy it at a distance because you're not satisfying the almighty DPS that they worship like some mindless thuggee in a cult, but it's a ranger and I use it as such. I like the firing speed, too. Unlike those who worship DPS, I worship Hate control, Survival and Success of the fight. Speaking as a level 90 thief who SATA-DE onto nukers and mages that consistently pull hate (you want mob hate so much, here you go...), it's nice to see a substitute for 1 of those jobs that puts up decent #s without taking hate from the tank, and even then I still need the stealth screen. Considering the little bastard's non-existant durability (seems even squishier than the job it emulates) I like to keep hate off it.

I also don't like the idea of being forced to use attachments to modify the AI to what it should have been in the 1st place. Just fix the AI. I understand that they've added Disruptor and barrier module, so getting those put in native is obviously not going to happen now, fine. Seriously though, the reason it was "lolpup" for all these years IS the stupidity of the native AI. Although abyssea has allowed the few dedicated pups out there to demonstrate that pup IS a legitimate pet job with some powerful weapons to bring to the table, I'm still generally asked "what else have you got?" when I seek a party, and more often than not asked to come on the bst (despite not having the -pdt set), brd, thf or dnc.

Just fix the damn AI, it's not that hard...

[Psion]

I appriciate the candid response. However, I still disagree with treating it as a demand, as it sort of implies a threat. Are you going to quit if they don't change the AI (and specifically quit for that reason)?

A polite request is generally much more effective, that's all. I would very much like for changes to be made. However, because I'm able to get by without changes, I don't consider it to be so immediately essential that I feel it's necessary to make it a demand and not a request.

I also agree with the point of your little story.

I realize a polite request is more effective... generally. I think after what? 3, 4 years now? of polite requests, it's time to realize politeness is getting us nowhere. We need to start demanding change. (politely.) And yes, it is a threat. We might not have much power, since it is their game and their company... But we can at least do what we can, clamor louder and louder till they listen or blacklist us off the forums. I seriously doubt they would do that to everyone demanding changes, however, as we our their customers and we aren't exactly making an unreasonable demand.

And you might not feel it immediately essential... well, guess what, with how long the bug has been here, it's long past time you can claim that it can be put off because it isn't needed. It was needed YEARS ago. YEARS. We've waited far too long as it is.

And glamdring, i respectfully disagree with your disagreement on sharpshot. A ranged shot every 15-20 seconds or so is pretty terrible, even more so when your way outside the sweet spot for damage. It's not so bad on too weaks, because your so high above them you do like 600 damage to level 10 mobs anyways, but against an IT the damage drops severely. If I saw a ranger doing shots for 100 damage 3-4 times a minute, with the occasional slugshot for 1.5k or so every... 2 minutes? I'd kick him and get one that wasn't so stingy with his arrows. That only averages out to several hundred damage a minute, and I think everyone can agree even a dragoons wyvern beats that out easily from melee hits alone. Now, of course, our sharpshot can also melee fairly well and in doing so builds tp quite nicely that way, and barrage turban helps a little these days, but it's still nowhere near worthwhile to fire from range like a ranger. That's why I'm suggesting a stance or stay command that makes it so he stops meleeing, changes his sweetspot to around 17 yalms, and starts firing at a speed that is approximate to a rangers. I'm not sure if it should be 3-4 seconds, but 5 or so sounds about right for the damage he does in the sweet spot.

But what then of drum magazine? Perhaps under this new stance it might lower the delay less than if he was meleeing, perhaps a second per maneuver. That might sound overpowered, but have you seen the ranged accuracy penalty on that thing? It's like 15%. It's so ridiculous it causes me to whiff an armor piercer on tiny mandragora every several weaponskills or so. I still don't consider that attachment worth it unless i'm one shot farming things.

[Alhanelem]

I love how (the same few) people are "like"ing the posts bashing me and not themselves saying anything constructive or useful.

I'm not the one guilty of all the negative things going on in here, but I take all the crap for it anyway.


And you might not feel it immediately essential... well, guess what, with how long the bug has been here, it's long past time you can claim that it can be put off because it isn't needed. It was needed YEARS ago. YEARS. We've waited far too long as it is. I don't disagree, but we've made do without it for all those years and done just fine for ourselves, climbing out of the LOL hole and doing well for ourselves. To me, it's "I would really like this", but not "I absolutely have to have this or I'm quitting the game."

Believe me, other than what was done with the topic title, I'm on board with the suggestion. My entry into the thread was not intended to minimize your suggestion in any way. It was only meant in an informative mannner. I apologize for the rude manner in saying so, I've just gotten really frustrated at seeing things like [To the Devs] and such so much lately.

[Cream_Soda]

So why are you so interested in someone else's opinion of me?
Entertainment value

[Mercilessturtle]

Just fix the damn AI, it's not that hard...

I'll ignore all the "I want my automaton to be terrible" stuff for obvious reasons, but this part isn't actually as simple as you make it sound. "Fixing" the AI would be nice, but not everyone has the same definition of "fixed". In theory changing heads is supposed to alter the AI, but the changes it makes aren't terribly helpful.

Making the AI adjustable to the situation would be ideal, and using attachments is one way to do that. The problem is just that we end up running out of room for attachments. Maybe adding a 3rd slot to go with head/body would be best, have head/body/AI. And then you can put stuff like "lower (or raise) the priority of enfeebling spells" or "lower (or raise) the priority of status removal spells" in the AI slot without using up attachment space on it. You could do psion's "make it stay at a distance and shoot faster" mode using an AI slot that way too instead of a JA.

[Alhanelem]

Psion: The delay on sharpshot's ranged attacks is clearly for balance reasons. reworking it to have a higher attack rate would likely mean a nerf to the damage of the hits themselves and the weaponskills too.

Basically, Sharpshots metagame clashes with the norm. But I'm not sure how to solve that without it seeming like an across the board nerf.


I'll ignore all the "I want my automaton to be terrible" stuff for obvious reasonsNobody wants their automaton to be terrible- I don't see any statements like that to ignore. If you're suggesting I said or implied that, I didn't.

[Psion]

I love how (the same few) people are "like"ing the posts bashing me and not themselves saying anything constructive or useful.

I'm not the one guilty of all the negative things going on in here, but I take all the crap for it anyway.

I don't disagree, but we've made do without it for all those years and done just fine for ourselves, climbing out of the LOL hole and doing well for ourselves. To me, it's "I would really like this", but not "I absolutely have to have this or I'm quitting the game."

Believe me, other than what was done with the topic title, I'm on board with the suggestion. My entry into the thread was not intended to minimize your suggestion in any way. It was only meant in an informative mannner. I apologize for the rude manner in saying so, I've just gotten really frustrated at seeing things like [To the Devs] and such so much lately.

Quitting? who said we would quit the game? We're not quitting, we're rioting. (politely.) And out of the LOL hole? Hardly. I shouted for advice on a ws choice for stringing pummel just yesterday, and got several lolpups, a pups are ho....bos (ill let you guess the actual word), and a couple telling me to change to another job. I only got one tell from someone who didn't know themselves but suggested one of the choices. I still get told regularly by people to change to a useful job. Have we gained some measure of respect? yes, but the fact remains we are nowhere near out of the hole yet.

And you might have gotten just fine without the A.I. fix all these years, but many of us sure haven't. I know I gave up soloing on pup entirely after skeleton number 230 got a killshot by spamming enfeebles on me, easy prey cockatrice got the killshot on me by spamming silence, petrify, and poison, goobues get the best of me with paralyze > paralyze > beatdown.. the list goes on and on. When you're forced to use role reversal > repair, deactivate activate for an emergency magic spell reset, ventriloquy sacrifice your auto and you STILL die... to something that's easy prey and you could've won easily had your white mage not been retarded... you kind of get tired of soloing.

And you can't tell me to fight other mobs either, because at the times I fought these I had no other option, whether it was magian trials, a quest item, or something else.

And you seem to not be getting the point. There's no reason to nerf the damage of the shots. NO reason. A several second delay and no ability to use melee hits is balanced for its high ranged damage and accuracy. I've seen dark knights hit for harder and at half that speed.

[Mercilessturtle]

See where is says "Originally Posted by Glamdring" in a quote? That means I am quoting Glamdring. Read his post, he wants sharpshot to stay terrible so it doesn't pull hate (how do I shot deactivate?).

And again, you are ignoring the very focus of the "make ranged attacks faster" issue. Making him shoot faster would only be an issue if he were still meleeing at the same time. The request is that we have a way to shoot *instead* of meleeing. This shouldn't be so hard to understand.

[Seha]

Imho, the AI fix to Soulsoother is a given.

On the drain/aspir debate, I don't think they should be removed, they have their place. Dark trigger? Maybe, if not, casting them at a lower % would be better in my opinion.

On the sharpshot thing, I don't know honestly, I'll keep reading for now.

Valoredge looks fine to me.

Stormwaker...it's basically just a low level automaton like Harlequin to forget when you get at high level, meh.

[Vagrua]

That's why all these people are replying to show their support.

You can also show your support by just liking the op post (to those that don't like posting much). I've noticed topics with 50+ likes on op post get more replies from devs than ones with 50+ posts. I would really like a response to these issues mentioned.

[Alhanelem]

And out of the LOL holeOn a performance level? yes we are. That doesn't mean that immature people will stop being immature.


I know I gave up soloing on pup entirely after skeleton number 230 got a killshot by spamming enfeebles on me, easy prey cockatrice got the killshot on me by spamming silence, petrify, and poison, goobues get the best of me with paralyze > paralyze > beatdown. These are situations that can all be avoided without an AI fix. An AI fix just makes these situations easier to deal with. You can 1) not fight monsters that frequently inflict -na removable status effects, or 2) bring status cure items with you. Neither being ideal of course, but just saying. (An easy prey cockatrice shouldn't even be bringing you close to death, silence or not, however...)


There's no reason to nerf the damage of the shots. NO reason.So you're saying that a PUP meleeing and doing WS, together with an automaton meleeing, shooting at the speed of a ranger for as much or more damage as a ranger and getting TP as fast as one and using strong wepon skills wouldn't be overpowered?

If they decrease the cooldown on ranged attacks to just weapon delay, sharpshot will be ridiculously, incredibly strong. I do not see anything like this happening without some sort of damage compromise.


I've noticed topics with 50+ likes on op post get more replies from devs than ones with 50+ posts.Getting lots of likes does not mean you'll get a staff response. How many people "liked" the idea of upgrading the title screen (before the dev posted in it)? But they responded to that... It definitely does help to see what people are interested in. Just saying just because people click the like button, it doesn't mean you'll get a response. (This being said, I liked the post anyway :) )

[Vagrua]

Getting lots of likes does not mean you'll get a staff response. How many people "liked" the idea of upgrading the title screen (before the dev posted in it)? But they responded to that... It definitely does help to see what people are interested in. Just saying just because people click the like button, it doesn't mean you'll get a response. (This being said, I liked the post anyway :) )

I'm not necessarily saying that you need 50+ likes to get a response from them. I'm saying that most topics I've seen replied in the past have many likes.

[Alhanelem]

I suppose that's true. Just a reminder that correlation does not imply causation. :)

[Mercilessturtle]

If they decrease the cooldown on ranged attacks to just weapon delay, sharpshot will be ridiculously, incredibly strong. I do not see anything like this happening without some sort of damage compromise.

The damage compromise is not getting to melee at all. This was pointed out in the first post, the second post, and then several times directly to you since you keep ignoring it. The request is not "make sharpshot shoot faster". It is "give us a mode where sharpshot shoots faster but can't melee".

[Alhanelem]

The damage compromise is not getting to melee at all. If you're in melee range, you still make melee swings. These swings are getting you TP, they were never about good damage. Disabling melee swings with a mode does not go far enough to solve the problem- you're just losing a little bit of damage and some TP. It's not enough. At least, I don't see it being enough.

[Karbuncle]

I think its more than Enough.

Reducing its Ranged timer from say, 20 to 12 or 10, and in turn remove its ability to use Melee attacks seems like a fair balance.

RNGs, Unlike Sharpshooter, Get access to WS like Jisnhu's which wrecks our frame, and abilities like Snapshot, Rapid Shot, The new Critical hit-ranged buff (something like 40%?), Velocity Shot or w/e that new RNG ability is, etc etc.

I just think It'd take more than reducing Their ranged delay and removing their ability to melee to be as strong as a RNG.

Edit: Furthemore, most RNGs can get a comfortable 5-hit build for their bows, where as an Automaton Frame gets TP based on a delay of 360. The RNG frame is far weaker than you make it out to be. Its slow to get TP, its slow to shoot, and its melee attacks are weak. buffing one field and removing another (Reduce range delay, remove melee) would be a decent balance, and not break it.

[Psion]

On a performance level? yes we are. That doesn't mean that immature people will stop being immature.

These are situations that can all be avoided without an AI fix. An AI fix just makes these situations easier to deal with. You can 1) not fight monsters that frequently inflict -na removable status effects, or 2) bring status cure items with you. Neither being ideal of course, but just saying. (An easy prey cockatrice shouldn't even be bringing you close to death, silence or not, however...)


You are purposely being dense just to piss people off, aren't you?

Can these situations be avoided by bringing status cure items and/or avoiding those mob types? Yes, they could... if you don't mind giving up magian trials, FoV pages, certain fights, otherwise soloable mobs, and more, or if you don't mind paying a miniature fortune on echo drops, eye drops, antidotes, remedies to remove paralyze (which WILL always get paralyzed and used up without removing it... thanks for never changing that, as well, dev team! /sarcasm) and so on. I dunno about you, but I'd rather they just fix what should have been fixed a long time ago and save the headaches, and be able to participate in content everyone else can seemingly participate in with no trouble.

And believe it on the EP cockatrices killing me. Does it happen often? no, but it happens, and that shouldn't happen at all, especially not with signet boost. Yet it does, because all it takes is one cockatrice being a bastard sword and deciding to spam enfeeble moves at the last 25% of HP and you can't always kill it quickly because your using a horrible magian weapon that has +5 damage. -_-;

And please do not tell me to store tp and use ws at last 25%. That's exactly what I did, and a combination of low damage, unlucky whiffs, and no crits resulted in doing 8% of its HP removed, and a petrify status for my efforts, followed by ANOTHER petrify the instant my auto stonad, then it decided to attack my automaton and silence it while I was stoned, and then it slowly beat me down to death over the course of a minute, all because my automaton wouldn't cure me at all while I was stoned.

::edit:: lol, just noticed the tags for this thread. <_<;

[Alhanelem]

You are purposely being dense just to piss people off, aren't you?You're puprposely being offensive just to provoke me, aren't you?

1) I'm not being dense
2) I'm not trying to piss people off.

Read the part where I said "not ideal."

I killed EP cockatrice in Cape T to get crests for the limit breaks when they came out. I never once died because of silence (Largely because I used Valoredge instead and used role reversal, cannibal blade and repair to keep HP up), and I (and anyone else) can kill the cockatrice in abyssea no problem as well. There are ways around these difficulties.

Yes, solving the AI problem is the best solution. In the mean time, there are plenty of ways around the problem.

[Psion]

You're puprposely being offensive just to provoke me, aren't you?

1) I'm not being dense
2) I'm not trying to piss people off.

Read the part where I said "not ideal."

I killed EP cockatrice in Cape T to get crests for the limit breaks when they came out. I never once died because of silence (Largely because I used Valoredge instead and used role reversal, cannibal blade and repair to keep HP up), and I (and anyone else) can kill the cockatrice in abyssea no problem as well. There are ways around these difficulties.

Yes, solving the AI problem is the best solution. In the mean time, there are plenty of ways around the problem.

Pot calling the kettle black much? Weren't you getting in a huff because you thought I was trying to speak for everyone earlier? And look at you now.

I'm not saying that there isn't ways around the difficulties of the A.I... normally. But most of the time using a different frame will not cut it and your forced to use meds just to stay alive, and even then often die if it's something like paralyze and you get unlucky with the random number generator. And the whole point of this thread is that there shouldn't be a in the mean time any more. I'm pretty sure most of us realize ways around it, but sometimes you gotta throw your hands in the air and say it isn't worth the hassle, and give up.

I can't even believe that as pup I can break bones no problem yet because they have a tp move that does blind, and mages always have ice spikes up and enfeeble me, that quite often they're the ones soloing me if they're too high a level or I get a link that I can't shake off. I cower at skeletons and I find that quite insulting to my pride as a hand-to-hand user.

[Alhanelem]

Pot calling the kettle black much?Pot is not calling the kettle black.

And look at you now. I don't see a problem here. All I see is me being attacked on a personal level, and multiple people banding together with the attacker in the form of post likes.


I cower at skeletons There's no reason to cower at skeletons, you should be stomping them. Using a different frame should cut it.

What part of I agree with an AI change aren't you seeing? Just because I'm pointing out alternate ways of dealing with a problem doesn't mean that I don't agree a problem exists.

[Alhanelem]

Let's make one thing absolutely clear: I apologized for the way I went about ciritizing the topic title, and pointed out that I agree with some of what is being proposed. So why are you still slinging mud and making fun of me? Why are we still arguing over me and not discussing the topic?

[Psion]

Let's make one thing absolutely clear: I apologized for the way I went about ciritizing the topic title, and pointed out that I agree with some of what is being proposed. So why are you still slinging mud and making fun of me? Why are we still arguing over me and not discussing the topic?

Because people love a good scapegoat to bash? Because we're bored? Because we hate Yukes? I dunno, you ask me <_<

Anyways, I do agree with getting back on topic. Namely, our chosen method of attack if the community reps don't respond soon. I personally nominate finding their addresses and emailing crying automaton dolls holding a sign saying "Fix me".

[Alhanelem]

Betting they fired the A.I. programmer. :p

All they need to really do is put status heals on a certain maneuver priority (I'm thinking water or wind) so that you can still get them when you actually want them and not when you don't. Other maneuvers might be better (I sometimes use water with the condenser) but one of those makes the most sense.

[xbobx]

You watch, they will ignore this topic and reply to some dumb post asking about the ability to put bumper stickers on their chocobo.

[chubrocka]

BLAH BLAH BLAH children. Stop whining and get back on topic. All of us as Puppetmasters Know what is wrong with the job, We all play it to our own liking though. So to have some basic changes would be something we have deserved for many years. Im not going to bash SE for what little thay have given. Im HAPPY to have it, but I/we play our autos and chars different. So to get back on track and NOT have a novel to read, can we use "simple words" and such for the hope that the DEV team reads this (that is the goal isnt it) and can help us with some basic issues. A SMARTER AUTO WHEN WE USE IT.

[Horadrim]

I'm all for the gambit idea too, makes sense to be able to program your puppet-robot's AI.

I've been saying that since the job came out...

Attachments should have been criteria for actions the automaton could take. You should have started off with basic "crappy" ones that make the automaton act like an idiot (i.e. like it does now) and then upgraded until you could make them function as a capable member of the party...

Maneuvers just detract of the PUP himself too much, decreasing your damage of time for faux gains that never quite add up.

[Panthera]

I agree with everything the OP has said.

Longer lasting maneuvers!

Should we be able to manually cancel out maneuvers as well? Sometimes we throw up a maneuver to trigger an auto JA, and after that, the maneuver has really out-lived its usefulness.

[Olor]

Not a PUP (yet) but I have heard these concerns over and over and I support the changes that are being asked for here.

[xbobx]

Well I guess it is safe to say now that the developers and forum guys have ignored this thread and ignored this pup issue once again.

/clap

[Niyariko]

... waiting for official reply ...

[Alhanelem]

I don't think that will help.

//but that doesn't mean we aren't all waiting for it... =\

[Seha]

Maybe they're still discussing about it. It's likely that we'll get an answer seeing as how strongly people are asking for it.

[Psion]

Yeah, they do tend to answer in spurts every few days or so.

...But that doesn't mean I'm not sharpening my pitchfork in case they don't answer soon, at least to let us know they're talking with the dev team!

[Olor]

Am I the only person who feels like SE is afraid to let pet jobs shine? I have to say that pet jobs (BST, SMN, PUP) are the only ones who have never had "their day in the sun."

bst, pup and smn have always been left to languish as generally "crap tier" jobs - maybe occasionally rising to mid-tier but not really. I don't see the big deal in making them on par with other jobs, but it seems like SE is afraid of letting us get too good.

I mean, I know we ARE good - especially when we team up in pet parties, but we just haven't been given a chance to shine at anything. And when we do shine (Burts/100% pet -pdt) - SE nerfs us.

[Vagrua]

I mean, I know we ARE good - especially when we team up in pet parties, but we just haven't been given a chance to shine at anything. And when we do shine (Burts/100% pet -pdt) - SE nerfs us.

People go complaining about these jobs being over powerful is the reason...everyone used to say lolpup/lolbst, but when they actually got something that makes them not so much lol, then people wanted them to be lol'd again and complained. They could have made burts at least 5 tp a tick...10/1 is just a crazy nerf.

It's the same for how they are careful about updating RDM since it was/is too over powered.

Maybe they're afraid to make the automatons ungimp because pups would be able to solo more efficiently or maybe the creator of the AI doesn't see anything wrong with it.

They didn't really release any information about changing the AI any. Just "Adding an ability that restores an automaton's HP" and attachments/abilities. With SMN and BST you can control just about everything the pet does besides standard attacks. With the automaton, you have the AI that makes most the decisions by being influenced by maneuvers, but not exactly everything you want it to do. They should either make the AI more customizable/influenced with attachments or just change how it uses spells in priority to cures>all; nukes>all as well as lowering the Ranged delay on the Sharpshot automaton as said before.

[Anima]

lolpup

btw, this thread has the funniest tags I'v seen so far

[Dawezy]

/signed

Though I like the Drain~Aspir where is it... just needs to use it smarterer. ┐(´ー｀)┌

[Malamasala]

Well I guess it is safe to say now that the developers and forum guys have ignored this thread and ignored this pup issue once again.

/clap

I'm still confused why they don't have rules like:

"Answer one topic per job a week"

Would make it feel like SE cared about all of us, and didn't just favor a handful of jobs and ignore the others.

[Malamasala]

[Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines (http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=20&la=1).]

Doesn't work. The moderator only deletes your post, it doesn't mean the community representatives even touched the thread. Big difference between moderators and community representatives.

But it is quite fun that the following line exists in the forum rules:


Posting content that criticises either Square Enix staff or specific individuals.

Basically, you are not allowed to complain. Praising and general neutral questions only.

[brayen]

(didnt go through all the reponses)

i agree with the fixes for the mage frame AI, a simple fix like water maneuver triggering a na spell instead of cure first would be better(dark or w/e for drains and aspire). I mean i have NO control over my automation at all when it comes to these things lol. not to mention i cant say what to nuke for my blm frame, but thats not as important of an issue.

One addition i might of missed or was not mentioned is extended maneuvers. It is our biggest draw back when trying to contribute damage as it delays our own damage significantly AND really cramps up my hand if i play pup for a bit too long(inversely could add a hasso/seigan effect where one extends them and maintains normal effects and one shortens duration but improves effect....anyways, i dun wanna spitball ideas here!)

I would gladly lose half the upcoming attachments if these two minor fixes could be addressed, hell i can even overlook our paper armor for these fixes (provided i get the direct cure that they mentioned >.>)

[Darkwizardzin]

Basically, you are not allowed to complain. Praising and general neutral questions only.

.......being not allowed to be a jerk to the staff does not mean your not allowed to disagree with the content that square enix posts.

You know its posting crap like this and being rude in general to SE that more likly than not is going to insure that SE is not even gonna say anything to this thread.

[Seriha]

Maybe they're afraid to make the automatons ungimp because pups would be able to solo more efficiently or maybe the creator of the AI doesn't see anything wrong with it.

It's mainly a problem I hinted on earlier. How close to a second player should a pet get before it's too much? As is, there's very little penalty to the player for letting a pet die (Usually just waiting a short bit on a timer, BST having a small gil expense if using jugs). PUP, BST, and DRG can be a strong physical presence without their pet around, so it's not like they're completely useless without.

Things like the pet invulnerabilities were dumb even if they were useful or gave "a time to shine" as it were. Ultimately, it's a juggling act between what the player and pet can do, to which if people want the pet to do more, the player needs to do less. However, seeing how the early days of PUP reflected that and certainly hurt its popularity through poor gear and perhaps an incomplete implementation, perhaps too much focus has been given to both aspects that, while many might not realize the potential now, still doesn't mean it's not there. The moment a pet can completely replace a party member, however, is when things go too far. That's probably the biggest issue plaguing AI tweaks. At what point do things shift from partially inspired choices to outright delayed, conditional commands?

[Malamasala]

.......being not allowed to be a jerk to the staff does not mean your not allowed to disagree with the content that square enix posts.

You know its posting crap like this and being rude in general to SE that more likly than not is going to insure that SE is not even gonna say anything to this thread.

Being rude comes with being ignored a decade. The cure is to stop ignoring me. And it isn't even on a personal level, if they stop ignoring Summoner threads, I'd be happy.

Just imagine yourself trying to order a pizza 10 years and the pizza clerk refuses to reply to you. I'm sure you'd be at least a little ticked off.

I still don't understand how hard it can be to be a community representative? If I had the job, I'd be working my ass off to make people happier, instead of attempt to annoy as many people as possible by randomly replying to only a few threads.

[Mercilessturtle]

It's mainly a problem I hinted on earlier. How close to a second player should a pet get before it's too much?

And it is not a problem at all. Again, a pup + automaton is still nowhere even close to competitive with as single normal job in most situations. Making the automaton slightly better than "totally worthless" isn't going to make pup overpowered, it might drag us up out of the depths of "one of the worst jobs in the game" to being just "below average". Go level pup and use it before making absurd claims about how close to two players it is.

[Seha]

Again, a pup + automaton is still nowhere even close to competitive with as single normal job in most situations. Making the automaton slightly better than "totally worthless" isn't going to make pup overpowered, it might drag us up out of the depths of "one of the worst jobs in the game" to being just "below average".
Maybe you're bad at pup? Leaving proc usefulness aside pup is nowhere near being the worst dd.

[TimeMage]

I could say my PUP does nowhere the damage of my WAR... And I would be totally wrong. Hit for hit, WS for WS, the WAR wins, clearly. But damn it, we have our automatons! When Sancho is churning 2k+ Armor Piercers around, skillchaining with my 2k+ Stringing Pummels and weakening the mob defenses in the process (as well as adding its own constant damage during the TP phase), I know i'm a damn good DD as PUP.

Seriha is right. Increasing too much the pet's power would cause imbalances. However, I don't think we're near that point, at all. Our pets, right now, as DDs makes us competitive with the best, as soloers makes us survivors with fear of strong AoEs and status effects (the latter should not be an issue, but... You know, stupid AI), and as nukers, our pets can dish out great hateless nukes at the price of slow nukes.

We're fine, and not overpowered. But there's some VERY glaring issues, listed in Psion's first post, that should be addressed.

[Darkwizardzin]

Being rude comes with being ignored a decade. The cure is to stop ignoring me. And it isn't even on a personal level, if they stop ignoring Summoner threads, I'd be happy.

Just imagine yourself trying to order a pizza 10 years and the pizza clerk refuses to reply to you. I'm sure you'd be at least a little ticked off.

I still don't understand how hard it can be to be a community representative? If I had the job, I'd be working my ass off to make people happier, instead of attempt to annoy as many people as possible by randomly replying to only a few threads.

You make it sound like being a community rep is easy.... you have no idea what that job entails. I'm sure there are many... many things he can't just say to the community freely... and (based on what i've seen so far) getting the information to answer some of your questions is easyer said then done. Even if he gets said information it must be a nightmare getting appoval to release it...if he's given it. This person has to take that small amount of information that he is allowed to give and make the community happy with it... as you can clearly see by your (and many others) "demand" for more information that sure as hell isn't easy. Plus he has to pass along ideas from the community back to the devs... and seeing some of the "ideas" that the comminty has given it can't be easy to weed out the bad ideas and pass along the good ones... also im sure there are many other things that needs to be done with this kind of job that we know nothing about.

I know how annoying it must be to wait so long for this information... but making rude comments isn't helping your cause at all... it's hurting it.

[Mercilessturtle]

Oh look, it is the "please keep pup terrible" squad. No, pup is not a good DD. No, automatons do not contribute significant damage. I understand you have absolutely no concept of what kind of damage a good DD does, and have no concept of parsing instead of going "I saw one decent WS once so it must be awesome". But try doing something other than soloing and parse it, and get a glimpse of reality.

Pup is miles behind war, drg, nin, and mnk, and of course also way behind drk and sam outside of abyssea where those jobs aren't getting screwed by their lack of crit WS. And yes, that is including automaton damage. There is no magical "being good at pup" skill that negates the fundamental game mechanics. Pup has high delay, low damage, slow tp gain, awful DD gear, and no DD abilities natively. This is supposed to be made up for by having an automaton. Automatons barely contribute more offense than a drg's wyvern, and are way less useful defensively.

[Seha]

Automatons barely contribute more offense than a drg's wyvern, and are way less useful defensively. K. I confirm my previous statement.

[Dfoley]

While I agree to everything in this thread, I would also like to request a simple thing.

If your post something on the jp forums regarding pup, why not translate it to the English forums as well? Are we just expected to browser their forums and use google translate or something?

[Cymmina]

K. I confirm my previous statement.

You honestly believe Soulsoother is better than a Defensive Wyvern? It's the pet that doesn't try to status removal you *instead* of curing you and can be done as frequently as the DRG can cast, instead of on a 20s timer (depending on active maneuvers). Also, it can status removal every time you perform a WS. There's also the emergency Restoring Breath JA on a 1 minute timer, that can be used regardless of which type of Wyvern you have out and the HP levels of your party.

Sharpshot and Valoredge being worse damage than an Offensive Wyvern may be an exaggeration, but not by much. Wyvern can get Haste, Marches, and other assorted buffs via Empathy (depending on merits), and Empathy doubles as a "steal all your Wyvern's TP and heal it up" JA. Plus, it gets food bonuses from Lancer's Plackart +1/2!

[Camate]

Please understand that we are not ignoring you, gallivanting off in some other thread. We make sure that most if not all of your feedback is passed on to the appropriate person and if it is not something that we can answer directly, we wait until we receive the proper information so that we can comment.

With that said, making attacks on me or any of the community reps, or even the entire team as a whole will not aid your cause nor will it speed up the rate in which we receive answers that we can provide to you.

As to the topic at hand, it has been reported and we do not yet have a comment that we can make.

[Karbuncle]

Now you guys got Camate all mad :(

Almost feel like getting scolded by your parents. I'm guilty of my fare share of "why u no respond", but I can sleep easy i always remind myself and others I know you guys read every thread and even if you don't respond, Our ideas are passed to the Dev team.

You just fortified my belief thoroughly :X

I still love you. But its okay cause its http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL4L4Uv5rf0

[Seha]

Can I come and say told you so? lol.

[Karbuncle]

Can I come and say told you so? lol.

I would. >_>

Edit: Forums are quiet now.

[TimeMage]

Thanks for the reply, Camate, that's honestly all that was needed.

Posting our concerns without knowing if those were read, specially after so much time (and i'm not referring just to this thread) can be a bit discouraging. Now, knowing that at least the devs know our concerns, we can only assume they are working on it, or at least they are going to soon.

P.D.: The information regarding maneuvers in the Japanese forums... those would be AWESOME to have in English, honestly ^^U

[xbobx]

Well we have been waiting for 5 years for a response Camate, you can understand how that can get our ire up. The development team admitted at a fan fest that this bug was not working as intended, and they did nothing about it, that was 5 years ago.

But thanks for posting and letting us know they are finally looking into it.

[Sparthos]

It's mainly a problem I hinted on earlier. How close to a second player should a pet get before it's too much? As is, there's very little penalty to the player for letting a pet die (Usually just waiting a short bit on a timer, BST having a small gil expense if using jugs). PUP, BST, and DRG can be a strong physical presence without their pet around, so it's not like they're completely useless without.

Things like the pet invulnerabilities were dumb even if they were useful or gave "a time to shine" as it were. Ultimately, it's a juggling act between what the player and pet can do, to which if people want the pet to do more, the player needs to do less. However, seeing how the early days of PUP reflected that and certainly hurt its popularity through poor gear and perhaps an incomplete implementation, perhaps too much focus has been given to both aspects that, while many might not realize the potential now, still doesn't mean it's not there. The moment a pet can completely replace a party member, however, is when things go too far. That's probably the biggest issue plaguing AI tweaks. At what point do things shift from partially inspired choices to outright delayed, conditional commands?

You obviously haven't played BST or PUP. There is no "strong offensive output", unless we're talking about punking some terribly geared gimps.

BST is supposed to be a generic DD but since half the class is stashed away on an NPC not receiving buffs, you wind up losing to classes like SAM, WAR, DRK easily.

Even against comparable 1handers like BLU, THF or NIN, the lack of DW and the reliance on 1hand axes - a slow weapon by nature -leaves BST in an uphill climb to keep up. The class has no offensive JAs so unlike WAR your Rampages are going to suck and subbing WAR means losing out on an offhand.

Now, I say to myself "well, BST isn't supposed to be a good DD duh, that's what the pets for." and then you come to the realization that even if the BST gears completely to buff the pet that current gear leaves much to be desired. Pet haste, attack and acc are in short supply, magian axes are pretty much the largest bonuses you can get and such a build will cripple the offensive output of the master.

Backline BST would give the job a niche if anything (like SMN but more focused on DPS rather than hateless damage) but the current environment leaves the class in limbo.

-The pets are too weak to fight on their own.
-The ability to cure status effects is still tied to the Reward timer.
-Offensive pet gear is a nightmare to acquire.
-Pets get smoked even in low haste scenarios where they have the advantage.

If BST had some JAs to reduce it's offensive output in exchange for increasing the pets then perhaps the class would begin the long march out of irrelevance.

Puppetmaster on the other hand is sold to us as an all-purpose vehicle but again you have limitations holding the class back from being useful, nevermind replacing other classes.

Again because you have a scenario where pets cannot be buffed, they get blown away in any situation where DD are receiving haste. The master gets the buffs but since they are supposed to be a team and your potential is stuck on an NPC, you lose every time.

The mage AI is just laughable, bordering on useless for any practical application. Every time I see a
PUP say that they can backup heal, the ignorance of the classes limitations becomes more apparent.

It's something like me coming into a party on a DD with an NPC fellow and declaring I can backup heal.

It's possible to make the pets too powerful but as it stands right now, the huge penalties make PUP far too unreliable to use in any scenario.

Need a DD? Any purist can do better.
Need a healer/nuker? SCH and RDM are always options when the purists are away.
Need Ranged damage? Sharpshot shoots so slow, you're gonna be tickling the parses.
Need a tank? Valoredge will gladly appear to be turned into a crushed soda can for you.

BST and PUP need some serious retweaking.

[Camate]

Camate translation at your service! Hopefully this is the post you are referring to and hope that there is some good information for you PUPs. :)


As written in the job concepts the other day, puppetmasters “feel comfortable in almost any type of role thanks to their automatons, but countless hours of research is needed to create the perfect puppet to deal with various and sundry situations.”

“Attachments” are the most crucial thing when it comes to automatons, but there are some that you all might have difficulty confirming the exact effects.

We’d like to introduce the specific effects of those attachments!
(The numbers in brackets are the change in values based on the number of maneuvers.)


Fire attachments
• Strobe: Enmity (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Tension Spring: Attack (+3%/+6%/+9%/+12%)
• Inhibitor: Store TP (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Tension Spring II: (+6%/+9%/+12%/+15%)

Ice Attachments
• Mana Booster: Magic recast time (-2/-4/-6/-8)
• Loud Speaker: Magic attack bonus (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Loud Speaker II: Magic attack bonus (+10/+15/+20/+25)
• Tranquilizer: Magic accuracy (+10/+30/+40/+50)
• Power Cooler：MP cost reduction (-10%/-20%/-35%/-50%)

Wind Attachments
• Accelerator: Evasion (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Scope：Ranged accuracy (+10/+20/+30/+40)
• Accelerator II：Evasion (+10/+15/+20/+25)
• Turbo Charger：Haste (+5/+15/+20/+25)
• Barrage Turbine：Barrage (0/+2/+3/+4)

Earth Attachments
• Armor Plate： Defense (+10%/+15%/+20%/+25%)
• Armor Plate II： Defense (+20%/+25%/+30%/+35%)

Thunder Attachments
• Stabilizer：Accuracy (+5/+10/+15/+20)
• Stabilizer II：Accuracy (+10/+15/+20/+25)
• Dynamo：Critical hit（+3%/+5%/+7%/+9%）
• Coiler：Double attack (+3%/+10%/+20%/+30%)
• Galvanizer： Counter (+10/+20/+35/+50)

Water Attachments
• Mana Jammer： Magic defense (+10/+20/+30/+40)
• Stealth Screen：Enmity(-10/-20/-30/-40)
• Mana Jammer II: Magic defense (+20/+30/+40/+50)

[Sparthos]

What does the Tactical Processor do :3

[Seriha]

Please understand that we are not ignoring you, gallivanting off in some other thread. We make sure that most if not all of your feedback is passed on to the appropriate person and if it is not something that we can answer directly, we wait until we receive the proper information so that we can comment.

With that said, making attacks on me or any of the community reps, or even the entire team as a whole will not aid your cause nor will it speed up the rate in which we receive answers that we can provide to you.

As to the topic at hand, it has been reported and we do not yet have a comment that we can make.

Speaking as one of those crazy RDM melee advocates, it's not hard finding frustration when we can't even quite settle on what we want, have people storming in calling us retards (Perhaps in far more words), and still feel a bit lost on SE's direction despite years and years of fishing for some kind of acknowledgement. As is, even in those moments of lapsed judgment, I don't think any one of us sane folks hold you guys directly responsible for all the preceding has come to inspire over the years. If anything, we're grateful things have evolved beyond blind POL mails, unanswered other-forum feedback, the odd question at a Community Event or Japanese magazine article, eventually to Twitter, and now here. In acting for the betterment of the game, and at times, no doubt "enduring" us, we thank you.

That said, and with other jobs having Manifesto threads here while RDMs have perhaps refrained, all I can humbly request is some prodding on the job's melee future. Is the intent to leave things as is and full-on embrace the vision mentioned in the manifesto, or might there have been an oversight in conveying the message, as some of us feel that enhancing our party members and enfeebling monsters is not something that can be completely separated from swinging a sword if such mechanics were worthwhile and encouraged by dev attention and future growth.

[Seha]

What does the Tactical Processor do :3
They can't answer cause they don't know either!

[Byrth]

That post is awesome, Camate. I wish there were more like it! Specific information from SE has always been very hard to come by. While I enjoy testing, I don't enjoy spending hours and hours to discover something that I could have been told in 30 seconds by someone in the know.

[Darkwizardzin]

You make it sound like being a community rep is easy.... you have no idea what that job entails. I'm sure there are many... many things he can't just say to the community freely... and (based on what i've seen so far) getting the information to answer some of your questions is easyer said then done. Even if he gets said information it must be a nightmare getting appoval to release it...if he's given it. This person has to take that small amount of information that he is allowed to give and make the community happy with it... as you can clearly see by your (and many others) "demand" for more information that sure as hell isn't easy. Plus he has to pass along ideas from the community back to the devs... and seeing some of the "ideas" that the comminty has given it can't be easy to weed out the bad ideas and pass along the good ones... also im sure there are many other things that needs to be done with this kind of job that we know nothing about.

I know how annoying it must be to wait so long for this information... but making rude comments isn't helping your cause at all... it's hurting it.


Please understand that we are not ignoring you, gallivanting off in some other thread. We make sure that most if not all of your feedback is passed on to the appropriate person and if it is not something that we can answer directly, we wait until we receive the proper information so that we can comment.

With that said, making attacks on me or any of the community reps, or even the entire team as a whole will not aid your cause nor will it speed up the rate in which we receive answers that we can provide to you.

As to the topic at hand, it has been reported and we do not yet have a comment that we can make.

...it's good to see that SE is showing you guys that they are doing there job the best they can. Now maybe some of the conplants can stop... or at least the rudeness if nothing else.

[Dfoley]

That is one of the two posts, one that I already translated, but my jp is terrible so i was only able to figure it out due to knowing what the english ones should be and not the second post involving the barrier module.

There was a second post below it involing the barrier module and what causes it to fire off and somethinig about parry.


Speaking of fire, when is the flame cost of heat capacitor getting removed as the devs said it would be back when the attachment was added?

[Unctgtg]

People need to stop freaking out, no matter how good of an idea you think it is, usually it is game breaking and will upset the balance of the game. Usually most ideas are one sided and only are looking to benefit yourself, not the game as a whole.

[xbobx]

Ok I tried to find the answer from a developer saying the AI for doing blindna over cure is not the way it is intended, but couldn't find it, but I did find proof that the AI was supposed to be fixed in once instance, and that they said if you equip the damage gauge and put up a light maneuver it would prioritize cure, thus proving it has been bugged/broken since day one and it has been overlooked all this time. This also proves it has been brought to their attention before.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?pager.offset=1&cId=3168323
1UP: Are there plans to improve Automaton and Adventuring Fellow A.I. because watching them cast Silence at enemies like crabs that don't need silencing is annoying.
MG: The guy in charge of that is not here today, so I'm going to answer for him. I'm not 100 percent positive on this, but the Automaton is supposed to only cast Silence on monsters that would cast magic, and uh, but....
1UP: They don't.
MG: Yeah. I'm not 100 percent positive that it's that way with every single monster. That's the way it's supposed to be designed, but I can see how there might be some who have slipped through the cracks.
1UP: So you'll be looking into it?
MG: Yeah. I will report this to the man in charge, Mr. Matsui.

Ok fellows was fixed, automations not, and this was brought up, and given to the person in charge. This is not how it was intended, and still has not been fixed.

http://forums.ffxiclopedia.org/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=14253
Q:Are their any plans to boost the overall effectiveness of an Automaton's AI?
A:No plans for any changes. The AI depends on the master (maneuvers) and the attachments. If the master wants cure prioritized, it can equip a damage gauge and use a light maneuver.

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=14529
The AI of puppetmaster's Automaton seems to improperly prioritize some of its actions. Some of them can be canceled by using maneuvers while others cannot. Status ailment healing spells are among some of the actions, as well as drain and aspir. If a puppetmaster is blind and low on hp, the Automaton will choose to relieve the PUP of its blindness rather than cure. Are there any plans to boost the overall effectiveness of the automaton whether it be fixes to current attachments to AI adjustments? (FFXIClopedia)
Kenji Nakamura: The automaton action is depending on the attachment and management by the master. The casting spell mentioned in the question also like a change of pace in these factors so we are not planning to make changes for you. For example, by equipping a damage gauge attachment there are a number of light maneuvers, cures are prioritized. So please try various things, see what can be accomplished. Also, about the automaton, we of course have plans

Proof that they expect having damage gauge equipped and putting up a light maneuver would prioritize cures. it does not, it never has.

[Olor]

You obviously haven't played BST or PUP. There is no "strong offensive output", unless we're talking about punking some terribly geared gimps.

BST is supposed to be a generic DD but since half the class is stashed away on an NPC not receiving buffs, you wind up losing to classes like SAM, WAR, DRK easily.

Even against comparable 1handers like BLU, THF or NIN, the lack of DW and the reliance on 1hand axes - a slow weapon by nature -leaves BST in an uphill climb to keep up. The class has no offensive JAs so unlike WAR your Rampages are going to suck and subbing WAR means losing out on an offhand.

Now, I say to myself "well, BST isn't supposed to be a good DD duh, that's what the pets for." and then you come to the realization that even if the BST gears completely to buff the pet that current gear leaves much to be desired. Pet haste, attack and acc are in short supply, magian axes are pretty much the largest bonuses you can get and such a build will cripple the offensive output of the master.

Backline BST would give the job a niche if anything (like SMN but more focused on DPS rather than hateless damage) but the current environment leaves the class in limbo.

-The pets are too weak to fight on their own.
-The ability to cure status effects is still tied to the Reward timer.
-Offensive pet gear is a nightmare to acquire.
-Pets get smoked even in low haste scenarios where they have the advantage.

If BST had some JAs to reduce it's offensive output in exchange for increasing the pets then perhaps the class would begin the long march out of irrelevance.



Thank you. Having more than half of your damage output tied to an "other half" that can't receive any buffs seriously gimps pet jobs.

[xbobx]

It is possible for them to get buffs too. It can't be said it cannot be programmed. I and many have seen npc's in campaign cast buff spells on beastmaster pets.

Buffs could overpower pet jobs though, haste is the one thing that hurts pet jobs and ranger. I think pets should be able to share out food though and get the affects of dnc sambas like it use to.

[Olor]

yeah I think having pets receive all buffs would be OP, I agree - but some haste would be nice, I mean really, we are the only jobs that can't really haste most of their DD output (other than RNG). In today's low delay game that really hurts us in the parse.

At the very least they need to get serious about adding some more armor that augments pets. Heck even just a reasonably not torturous route to augmenting existing gear with pet enhancing stats would be great.

[Malamasala]

Please understand that we are not ignoring you, gallivanting off in some other thread. We make sure that most if not all of your feedback is passed on to the appropriate person and if it is not something that we can answer directly, we wait until we receive the proper information so that we can comment.

With that said, making attacks on me or any of the community reps, or even the entire team as a whole will not aid your cause nor will it speed up the rate in which we receive answers that we can provide to you.

As to the topic at hand, it has been reported and we do not yet have a comment that we can make.

Post like these are pretty helpful if you want to avoid attacks on community reps. At least now I can assume you are doing your work.

The only question that remains, are why some developers can't return any feedback to you. For example, this AI issue is 5 years old. 5. Your developers should already be aware of it. Not having an answer for a 5 year old question, makes one wonder what they do with the stuff you community representatives hand in.

If you could ask them this, and get an answer to why, I'll promote you to god representative.

[Byrth]

Camate, while you're on an "answer" roll. . . mind telling me what Building Flourish does and what the progression is between 1, 2, and 3 finishing moves? I have some ideas for how to test it myself, but they would take hours.

[Seha]

It makes me laugh how people see a post from a mod and come asking things that have nothing to do with the thread.

[Madine]

Camate, while you're on an "answer" roll. . . mind telling me what Building Flourish does and what the progression is between 1, 2, and 3 finishing moves? I have some ideas for how to test it myself, but they would take hours.

Repeat after me: Next time, I will look for an answer myself before asking.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Building_Flourish has exactly what you're looking for.

[Sparthos]

yeah I think having pets receive all buffs would be OP, I agree - but some haste would be nice, I mean really, we are the only jobs that can't really haste most of their DD output (other than RNG). In today's low delay game that really hurts us in the parse.

At the very least they need to get serious about adding some more armor that augments pets. Heck even just a reasonably not torturous route to augmenting existing gear with pet enhancing stats would be great.

All buffs with no repercussions would be overpowered but are we really going to say that dropping Pro/Shell/Barspells and support JAs like Rampart/Warcry/Samba on pets is going to put purists out of business?

Nonsense.

SE already has cures limited to timers on BST/PUP/DRG. Potions were created that would cover the problem of timers being down but they don't stack meaning your pet still has moments of vulnerability like any normal DD.

Either create some stances that promote certain types of pet play or proceed to buff the pets at the cost of the master.

How exactly is it overpowered if a BSTs pet becomes as strong as a human player so long as the master isn't equally powerful given the current restraints on curing said pets?

Ditto on PUP.

[Sparthos]

Repeat after me: Next time, I will look for an answer myself before asking.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Building_Flourish has exactly what you're looking for.


You realize he's asking for specific numbers right?

[Supersun]

You do realize Byrth is practically the one who discovers half of the numbers on the wiki anyway if that's who I think it is.

[Seriha]

It makes me laugh how people see a post from a mod and come asking things that have nothing to do with the thread.

People wanting answers isn't inherently bad. As is, the job forums can kinda feel like ghost towns with feedback being minimal to non-existent. Even if they started simple threads like, "How do you feel about Blue Mage's Club selection?" can promote conversation and give them things to funnel back. Otherwise, we're kinda shooting in the dark hoping we eventually hit something.

[xbobx]

One thing to note when you talk about the blindna over cure, it is not an AI issue, AI technically working as intended, problem is the damage gauge is bugged and never worked, only for cure threshold levels.

[Minsc]

Please understand that we are not ignoring you, gallivanting off in some other thread. We make sure that most if not all of your feedback is passed on to the appropriate person and if it is not something that we can answer directly, we wait until we receive the proper information so that we can comment.

With that said, making attacks on me or any of the community reps, or even the entire team as a whole will not aid your cause nor will it speed up the rate in which we receive answers that we can provide to you.

As to the topic at hand, it has been reported and we do not yet have a comment that we can make.

Flattery will get you everywhere. For example...

Oh all mighty and powerful Community Rep Camate... Please, oh please fulfill the Dark Knight community's request and force the developers to make Insurgency a crit-hit weapon skill. In all you infinite wisdom, I am confident you would be able to convince them to fulfill this one small request. We would be ever so grateful and would kiss the ground you walk on even more than we already do. We thank ye, oh great one.

[Psion]

I'm glad that you took the time to respond so kindly Camate. I know it was a bit demanding of a title, and there were quite a few flared tempers in this thread. Please, by all means, we would love it if you keep us informed of this issue. As you can see, it's one that has been grating on the pup community at large for quite a while now. I'm sure you'd be the ultimate hero of pups everywhere if you can get the dev team to fix this years old buggy A.I.! ^^

(And if the dev team is reluctant, tell them my automaton is waiting with a fully charged Blizzard V surprise for them if they don't~!)

[Airget]

Speaking as one of those crazy RDM melee advocates, it's not hard finding frustration when we can't even quite settle on what we want, have people storming in calling us retards (Perhaps in far more words), and still feel a bit lost on SE's direction despite years and years of fishing for some kind of acknowledgement. As is, even in those moments of lapsed judgment, I don't think any one of us sane folks hold you guys directly responsible for all the preceding has come to inspire over the years. If anything, we're grateful things have evolved beyond blind POL mails, unanswered other-forum feedback, the odd question at a Community Event or Japanese magazine article, eventually to Twitter, and now here. In acting for the betterment of the game, and at times, no doubt "enduring" us, we thank you.

That said, and with other jobs having Manifesto threads here while RDMs have perhaps refrained, all I can humbly request is some prodding on the job's melee future. Is the intent to leave things as is and full-on embrace the vision mentioned in the manifesto, or might there have been an oversight in conveying the message, as some of us feel that enhancing our party members and enfeebling monsters is not something that can be completely separated from swinging a sword if such mechanics were worthwhile and encouraged by dev attention and future growth.

In terms of melee RDM, they have worked in some things to allow for melee potential, but you can't just add more and more melee ability without taking balance into account. Enspell tier 2, Composure, and buffs they already have hand make them pretty useful to melee and even take hits.

If you look at the Manifesto as a whole you would see that they are trying to create the defined S rank role for each job. If you take a look at one ability, granted it's timer might be high but the "quick cast" JA they have in mind which they have noted works for jutsu/brd/spells could assist with the RDM/NIN setup of keeping shadows up. Also a quick stoneskin recast, or maybe a quick bind/gravity.

I think RDM's need to realize they are a strong job and they already have the capability to melee, but they shoudln't expect to have the same melee potency as a DD it would just be imbalanced. Unless you don't mind a JA that suppresses all of your enfeebling spells like gravity/para in order to improve your melee capabilities. You just have to consider that melee potential will be give and take. I don't understand why it seems like RDM want to turn into melee when they have a wide range of enfeebles and spells that allow them to solo pretty well. I just hope that the melee RDM suggestions on this forum push SE to change their concept of RDM when it's define trait is it's enfeebling power. To change a job's definition because people want it to melee better just makes no sense when you already have a wide range of melee jobs, if you really want to melee more just pick a DD job since it's the same thing.
-----

As for the automaton list, thanks for translating it for us I know my friends will make use of it and be grateful to have a clear idea of the exact boost with each one. I"m also certain they would be happy if the Dev teams actually responds in a positive way about changing the logic of the automaton AI. Perhaps as a suggestion you could add some things to the attachments they already have. Such as let's say the Dispel attachment which was a RDM unique spell til SCH was introduced could add a "Magic logic increase", where basically the Dispel attachment makes the magic automaton react more logically with enfeebles and checks for MP and ability to cast spells on the mobs in question.

But ya I"m certain the team is trying to work things out you juts gotta give them time when there are 20 jobs in the game, attempting to balance and make each one unique is quite a tough feat. But if we just wait a week or two we'll hopefully see even more news about the vision of each job and abilities we can look forward to.

[Seha]

People just don't understand that it doesn't make sense to stalk Camate's&co. posts.

If they have something to say they'll post, if not, they won't. Askin the same things in every thread is just pathetic.

[Francisco]

http://lparchive.org/SimCity-3000/Update%2042/43-3839.gif
(http://lparchive.org/SimCity-3000/Update%2042/43-3839.gif)
Below Average Melee League

Whoa there, Square Enix, have you
played Puppetmaster lately? Did you
notice our automatons can't even
out-damage a monk or a black mage?
Just how long can we go on playing
Puppetmaster without automatons that
can't even cast Meteor or use Victory
Smite? Why, my mule needed some
Herald's Gaiters off Tiamat and I was
like, "Nope, sorry, I can't solo that.
Blame SE for making PUP a bad job."

I've had it, and so have my fellow PUPs.
We're serious about quitting this game
if you don't give us better automatons.

[xbobx]

That was stupid.

[Supersun]

I don't understand why it seems like RDM want to turn into melee when they have a wide range of enfeebles and spells that allow them to solo pretty well.

Hmm, now what's wrong with this statement.

-----

And you misunderstand the melee Rdm argument. Rdms aren't asking to DD like a DD. We are just asking to at least DD better then a White Mage and a Bard.

With maybe an added bonus of some workable utility on our melee.
(Also, Enspell IIs are crap until they actually fix the accuracy on them and possibly get rid of the stupid damage scaling thingie).

[Sparthos]

lol'd @ the SimCity blurb. All you need now is the music and the horribly deformed Sims complaining in front of the flashing red background.

PUP and BST aren't just mindlessly complaining though, they have been dealt the worst hands you could possibly get.

[Duelle]

In terms of melee RDM, they have worked in some things to allow for melee potential, but you can't just add more and more melee ability without taking balance into account. Enspell tier 2, Composure, and buffs they already have hand make them pretty useful to melee and even take hits.Enspell 2's are of questionable design. Composure is nice but not enough to say "this Red Mage in melee gear, with a melee sub and using Composure belongs in the front lines". As far as buffs...what buffs? Refresh (can be spammed from the back and basically needs to be cycled)? Haste (same deal as Refresh)? Gain spells are self-only (thank God), and we're still short Gain DEX and Gain STR. And please refrain from bringing up utility, because utility never justifies lacking damage and/or performance in the front lines.

I think RDM's need to realize they are a strong job and they already have the capability to melee, but they shoudln't expect to have the same melee potency as a DD it would just be imbalanced.Not without the proper balancing mechanics in place. If you don't perform up to par, you don't get invited for that role and are never in consideration for that role. That's the start and the end of it.

Unless you don't mind a JA that suppresses all of your enfeebling spells like gravity/para in order to improve your melee capabilities.I'd be fine with that, provided you have melee-exclusive enfeebles that are relevant to front liners (not just those of us who would be melee'ing on RDM, but also the WARs, SAMs, DRGs, DRKs and so on who are also in the front lines), with a buff to personal damage so that damage from another "real" DD doesn't easily outweigh your offered utility when front-lining. I'd also make healing outside of procs or other in-melee gimmicks very inconvenient to help solidify the front-line presence.

To change a job's definition because people want it to melee better just makes no sense when you already have a wide range of melee jobs, if you really want to melee more just pick a DD job since it's the same thing.Less about changing a job's definition and more about correcting something that should have never happened to Red Mage in the first place. Also, tell that to all the DRKs. I already answered in the DRK manifesto thread why some of us are so bent on seeing our classes fixed rather than just throw in the towel and play something else.

If Camate is reading this, I also second Seriha's request to have more than just PUP and DRK get some sort of reaction or response. The RDM forums have been having melee discussions since the forums opened and the manifesto the developers released was far off the mark given all the discussions. At one point I even suspected we were a faction exclusive to the NA region, only to discover the JP players also have a RDM melee camp (or as they call it, naguri aka madoushi). We were conveniently ignored before the forums opened, none of the web pages or sites mentions us during interviews. It's easy to feel ignored under those conditions.

----------------------------------------

Personally, puppet AI doesn't look like it would be easy to fix. I personally feel the healer automaton should just be more open to direct orders from the PUP. You can get away with the recasts and so on while nuking and just AI while having it hit things or use ranged attacks, but healing unfortunately requires being a little more direct. It's more the spell list than anything else, otherwise it would probably play similar to a healer wyvern.

[Supersun]

And please refrain from bringing up utility, because utility never justifies lacking damage and/or performance in the front lines.

Please, you can't think of SOME utility that could make up crap damage on the front line?

[Duelle]

It's been tried and failed. Want me to go into specifics (though I wouldn't want to derail the thread)?

[Supersun]

***, I would PM you but...

I'll try to make this quick then.

Imagine if there was a buff that reduced your melee to one damage per swing, but in return your melee strikes inflicted a debuff that gave the monster +1,000,000% Damage Taken. Would you invite someone for that debuff?

"But such a thing is broke...""
No *** sherlock, but if you reverse the situation to where the debuff now only gives +.0000001% Damage taken would you still invite the job?

Somewhere in the middle there lies a happy medium where the concept is balanced (the point where economically the +DT outweighs the damage reduction from the debuff, the risk of the job being at the front, and it being the best option to increase the parties damage at that point). A concept by itself cannot be broken. Only when it's implemented poorly is it overpowered or underpowered.

If such a concept has been tried and failed then the concept simply hasn't been implemented properly in the past (and if you want I could argue that such a concept actually has been successful in the past)

[Duelle]

***, I would PM you but...You read my mind, buddy. I started thinking about the Enable PM Already thread.

Somewhere in the middle there lies a happy medium where the concept is balanced (the point where economically the +DT outweighs the damage reduction from the debuff, the risk of the job being at the front, and it being the best option to increase the parties damage at that point). A concept by itself cannot be broken. Only when it's implemented poorly is it overpowered or underpowered.

If such a concept has been tried and failed then the concept simply hasn't been implemented properly in the past (and if you want I could argue that such a concept actually has been successful in the past)I am genuinely interested to see how it worked in other settings, because personal experience has shown me how it miserably fails.

I'll white out and hide the rest so that anyone who cares can highlight and read, while the rest of the thread can continue with the PUP discussion.

[Byrth]

Repeat after me: Next time, I will look for an answer myself before asking.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Building_Flourish has exactly what you're looking for.

Err... yeah. So, that's uncited and unquantified information that is probably incorrect. It would be a gigantic pain in the arse to test and find the distribution that the main page claims, and a lot of Dancer information added to the wiki when the job was implemented was straight up wrong. I've corrected a lot of it, but this is one piece that's entrenched in the lore.

The Origin, as far as I can tell:
It was added on January 12th, 2008 without a citation by a guy (http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/User:Treble)who made 122 edits total. Many of those are adding in the MP cost of white and black magic with Light/Dark Arts up and changing drop rates to 100%. So there's no way to know where the information came from, because very few things added to ffxiclopedia get testing cited, and it seems unlikely that it's legit. There was an update in November that added Dancer, and another in March, so the information added on January 12th probably wasn't from either of those updates (and neither of their descriptions mention it). I don't have any idea where the information came from, and it looks suspiciously precise. I'd love to find out it's correct and get some numbers attached to it.

[Mercilessturtle]

Guys seriously, go make your own threads and stop trashing this one. Which part of "we read everything, chill out" did you think meant "spam offtopic crap anywhere I post"?

[Alhanelem]

Camate, I think part of the problem here is that the development team has said in interviews in the past "Use light maneuver with the damage gauge to prioritize cures", when the problem is in fact that light manuvers prioritize both HP cures and status effect cures, with the latter taking priority if the player has a status effect.

Is this just a miscommunication between us and the dev team? We don't want to force automatons to just cure cure cure, we want to be able to prioritize HP curing and status curing seperately.

TL;DR: We know how to make our automatons cure. The problem is that it is impossible to make them do it when we are afflicted with any curable status effect because status cures ALWAYS have a higher priority (Even with the damage gauge).

[Seriha]

Guys seriously, go make your own threads and stop trashing this one. Which part of "we read everything, chill out" did you think meant "spam offtopic crap anywhere I post"?

Do me a favor and just skim all the job forums for threads with the little crown icon. Just looking at 4 of the 20 jobs myself, there's a good 20 pages of topics or so where, while reading may have been done, we don't know much else. This isn't to say every thread is worth responding to, but if you have one that breaks 1000 replies? Some kind of nod is in order.

I don't think it's fair to pin it all on Camate, but the translation game inevitably creates a bottleneck where I can only assume it has to go through him before it gets to us... or the devs. This is also where I say some more routine Q&A can come in handy, even if it's just a weekly thing where one time they're asking about Campaign, the next Chocobo Raising, and after that Corsair. Not everyone will be equally interested, no, but simple silent reading is not much different than the old days where we could only hope our concerns were being heard.

[Malamasala]

***, I would PM you but...

Yea, it is funny that it doesn't exist. You become all "Do I really need to make a "Attention Insert Name here" thread"?

[Mizuharu]

You're not a PUP. You don't even have it high enough for all the frames. So far everything you have said is idiotic.

Grow up or troll elsewhere. The majority of your posts have all just been for attention. You got your attention. Now get it somewhere else.

[Duelle]

Yea, it is funny that it doesn't exist. You become all "Do I really need to make a "Attention Insert Name here" thread"?Don't be silly. They expect me to buy an extra content ID to roll a character on Asura so that we can talk! =P

[Seha]

Someone's trying too hard.

[Niyariko]

Another AI bug I wanted to point out is, whenever the targeted mob is about to die, and my automaton starts casting a spell on me or on my party members, it stop casting right away when the mob is dead. What kind of stupid AI does that!? It should finish what it started, no matter what happens to the mob, a spell casting ON me should never be linked with the health of the mob the automaton engages!! :mad::mad::mad:But the funny part is (and I do appreciate it) even the automaton started casting, and I press retrieve, it still finishes casting whatever spell it started unless the target is out of range. I'll put this in white unless the dev read it and decided to fix it later XD
There are just too much need to be fix on pup, they shouldn't even think about adding more attachments before they starts ironing out the bugs.
...waiting on Dev response...:confused:

[Miera]

I don't know if this has been said but I'd like for my Automaton to use a certain tier of cure depending on my HP. I don't need a Cure VI and only missing 100 HP. =\

[Alhanelem]

I don't know if this has been said but I'd like for my Automaton to use a certain tier of cure depending on my HP. I don't need a Cure VI and only missing 100 HP. =\
I agree, but it might be a balancing decision so that its MP only lasts so long. It would be a little out of place though, considering that the BLM head will use a lesser nuke when a mob is at low HP and it thinks that it will do the job.

[Olor]

So far everything you have said is idiotic.

Grow up or troll elsewhere. The majority of your posts have all just been for attention. You got your attention. Now get it somewhere else.

Honestly, posts like this make me a sad panda. It really isn't necessary to stoop to personal insults, even if someone is being idiotic. Just ignore them. Calling them names just creates drama.

[Camate]

Sorry for the delay, but here is some information from the development team in regards to your feedback! :)



Extend the maneuver duration.

The maneuver duration, recast time, and overload are all balanced very subtly; through maneuvers, the automaton’s operability, as well as the frame and attachments, are largely affected. Due to this, we plan to create balance by adding and adjusting attachments and abilities without changing the operations of the base maneuvers.


Make it possible to select the timing of ability, magic, and WS execution.

In regards to abilities, we are making adjustments based on the original execution timing, however, for weapon skills we are looking into making it possible to select the execution timing manually. For magic, we believe the top priority is the revamping of recast times, so once we finalize those adjustments we plan on looking into being able to select the timing for that, as well.


Extend the range of Deploy.


We understand that there are times this is inconvenient for ranged/mage frames. We will look into increasing the distance for using Deploy.


Make it so my automaton does not keep casting silence on monsters that are not affected by silence.

With the current system, Scanner will detect resist rates, so by using a Scanner it should make it so your automaton does not cast this.
However, if there is even a small chance that the monster uses magic, the automaton will start to cast silence. The chance of there being a bug related to this isn’t impossible, so we will be checking on this.

Also, if you have any feedback such as “I don’t want silence to be cast on enemies that are highly resistant to silence” (ex: Make it so it doesn’t cast silence when the resist rate is over 60%) please make sure to let us know.


Make curing a priority over curing status ailments when HP is low.

We are looking into changing the automaton behavior. Since this is something that we have received a lot of feedback about we will be looking into it, but since the workings of the automaton logic are so complex it will take some time.


Make a separate recast timer for each type of magic.

We understand how you feel and are looking into separating the recast timers.


Would like to save attachment sets.

While we would like to do something for this, we would first need to perform a lot of work to revamp the user interface, so this will be difficult to accomplish right away. Sorry :(


Get rid of the consumption aspect for attachments that consume maneuvers.

We plan on revamping attachment stats, so there is a possibility that we make it so that there is no consumption of maneuvers. This doesn’t mean that we will be adjusting every attachment for this, but we will be looking at each one separately. If you have any feedback please let us know!


Revamp the negative aspects of the tactical processor, drum magazine, and other attachments.

We will be performing adjustments on attachments that need adjusting as necessary.


Add Subtle Blow to automatons.

Planning to implement this in the form of an attachment.


Add a method to gain volatile hate with the Valoredge frame.

We are thinking about making adjustments in the form of attachments, not on the automaton or puppetmaster side. For example, how does implementing Strobe II sound?


Increase the physical damage resistance of the Valoredge frame.

Currently, we are thinking more in the direction of implementing superior lubricant, such as Lubricant +3, instead of directly increasing the physical resistance.


The sharpshot frame’s ranged attacks don’t crit…

It doesn’t crit because it is recognized as a special ability. We are looking into it.


Reduce the attack delay for the sharpshot frame.

First we will be revamping attachments that need adjustments. After that we will take a look at the balance and look into this.


Fix the issue where the sharpshot frame’s ranged attack damage is severely lowered depending on distance.

We definitely understand. Since automatons are different than player characters, and it is difficult to adjust the positioning of the automaton, we are looking into easing up or even eliminating the distance factor.


Add a MP recovery type WS to the stormwaker frame.

We would like to look into new automaton WS ideas, however, since you can recover MP through Deactivate/Activate and by using the Mana Converter, we think it would be better to look at different effects.


Can you make Magic Mortar a bit easier to use?

The damage is calculated as a special WS, however, we will be looking into making this easier to use while making use of its special properties since we hear a lot of people saying it keeps doing zero damage…

[Karbuncle]

Thats a lot of information. I'm sad that Maneuvers will continue to severely hinder the Damage of the Master, But if you can revamp attachments to make it worthwhile like you say, i don't see it being a problem!

Also, "Negative aspects of Tactical processor". Um, Camate, what does a Tactical Processor do D:? Can you please ask them that?

We'd all like to know :(. We know its negatives (Overload Rate) but not its positives.. :X

[Helel]

With the current system, Scanner will detect resist rates, so by using a Scanner it should make it so your automaton does not cast this.
However, if there is even a small chance that the monster uses magic, the automaton will start to cast silence. The chance of there being a bug related to this isn’t impossible, so we will be checking on this.

Also, if you have any feedback such as “I don’t want silence to be cast on enemies that are highly resistant to silence” (ex: Make it so it doesn’t cast silence when the resist rate is over 60%) please make sure to let us know.

I think you misunderstood what is being requested. The automaton will attempt to silence ANYTHING with mp, such as a crab, which never casts any spells. I haven't played PUP in a long time, but it was always very annoying to watch it continually silence crabs for no reason. This does need to be fixed. Perhaps allowing the automaton to cast silence only after it sees the mob cast would be ideal.

[Horadrim]

Wow... Camate... I suddenly want to finish leveling PUP.

As a side note: Activate/Deactivate is an accepted strategy? I never would have guessed the Devs were ok with this -- I thought it was just something they overlooked.

With regards to the Silence issue.

its not that they cast on monsters that resist it -- they will cast it on a monster that has no spells, but has MP; such as Crab.

No one has any complaints with abilities being resisted -- that happens, and while its unfortunate, its no worse than a missed weapon skill. The problem is when the automaton wastes its lengthy casting cycle on a spell that has no purpose or effect whether it hits or misses.

Separating out the magic types (Dark, Elemental, Enfeebling, Healing) and giving each its own timer will help this, but its still something that should be looked into.



Thats a lot of information. I'm sad that Maneuvers will continue to severely hinder the Damage of the Master, But if you can revamp attachments to make it worthwhile like you say, i don't see it being a problem!

Also, "Negative aspects of Tactical processor". Um, Camate, what does a Tactical Processor do D:? Can you please ask them that?

We'd all like to know :(. We know its negatives (Overload Rate) but not its positives.. :X

The problem isn't maneuvers, the problem is that maneuvers are pet abilities. There shouldn't be an animation attached to the Puppetmaster. The Automaton, when activating a maneuver, should get that little steam animation from the PUP special emote (as a kind of "kicking into gear" indication) so that it doesn't distract from the PUP's attack cycles.

The Auto deals most of the damage, but the PUP's ability to maintain decent DPS is pretty important too. In situations where the automaton is just nuking, losing DPS because you have to freshen up your maneuvers hurts the PUP overall. Maneuvers don't need to be fixed, the annoying animation just needs to change.

[Seha]

I'm happy to hear these news but one thing bugs me


We are looking into changing the automaton behavior. Since this is something that we have received a lot of feedback about we will be looking into it, but since the workings of the automaton logic are so complex it will take some time.Like 4 more years? Come on...

[Horadrim]

Not to be off topic but does that mean smn concerns have been passed on? we would love even this much acknowledgement over on smn topics.

.... Didn't the post you quoted pretty much explain that they are making their rounds and a lack of a response is pretty much them trying to find a solid answer for the questions presented...? Please don't be needy, they'll be coming to the SMN forums with info as soon as they have it to give.

[Neonii]

.... Didn't the post you quoted pretty much explain that they are making their rounds and a lack of a response is pretty much them trying to find a solid answer for the questions presented...? Please don't be needy, they'll be coming to the SMN forums with info as soon as they have it to give.

Thank you for clearing that up for me. Lets start the timer until info shows up on the smn topics ok?

[Karbuncle]

The problem isn't maneuvers, the problem is that maneuvers are pet abilities. There shouldn't be an animation attached to the Puppetmaster. The Automaton, when activating a maneuver, should get that little steam animation from the PUP special emote (as a kind of "kicking into gear" indication) so that it doesn't distract from the PUP's attack cycles.

I agree its a Pet Ability, But so is Restoring Breath, Bloodpacts, Avatars Favor, Assault, Snarl, ready, etc. If they update pup this way they'd need to update all pet jobs this way, which would take some work and im sure its probably nigh impossible :|


The Auto deals most of the damage, but the PUP's ability to maintain decent DPS is pretty important too. In situations where the automaton is just nuking, losing DPS because you have to freshen up your maneuvers hurts the PUP overall. Maneuvers don't need to be fixed, the annoying animation just needs to change.

I don't think my automaton has ever once Outdamaged me in combat on normal enemies or NMs :X

Unless we're talking about Ranged fights where I only use BLM automaton. ( i can think of Voidwatch as a possible example, bad AoEs, etc), then yah its possible.

[Sparthos]

I agree its a Pet Ability, But so is Restoring Breath, Bloodpacts, Avatars Favor, Assault, Snarl, ready, etc. If they update pup this way they'd need to update all pet jobs this way, which would take some work and im sure its probably nigh impossible :|

The problem lay in maneuvers being needed to be used often.

Unlike SMN, PUP is meant to be a team which means auto + master damage. The rub is that the more you use maneuvers, the more JA delay you have building up which leads to damage loss.

Yes, other DD have the same issues with their JAs but unlike those DD PUPs lose alot by not putting up those maneuvers.

[Horadrim]

I agree its a Pet Ability, But so is Restoring Breath, Bloodpacts, Avatars Favor, Assault, Snarl, ready, etc. If they update pup this way they'd need to update all pet jobs this way, which would take some work and im sure its probably nigh impossible :|

Dragoon's Wyvern is barely a pet -- it just responds to what the Dragoon does with special abilities and attacks on its own. You can't issue any commands to it at all. The DRG does all of the work and the Wyvern is literally just an additional effect that can die.

Summoner is a different story because Summoner typically isn't going to be meleeing enemies.

Beastmaster's stand alone damage isn't as bad as Puppetmasters is (excluding situations where you have top of the line gear), and Beastmaster's entire relationship with its pets is to the effect of throwing them at things and not caring what really happens (within range of how convenient or inconvenient it would be for the BST himself.) -- Aside from that, BST's JA's are direct commands to preform actions and/or receive perpetual bonus effects. PUP's JAs are status effects that have to be refreshed constantly and in a much more complex fashion to maintain the automaton's maximum efficiency.

The way I see pet jobs in FFXI are a ratio of damage. DRG and BST are on the "player deals more" side of the damage spectrum, while PUP and SMN are on the Pet deals more side of things.

PUP suffers a lot from not using its abilities and it suffers for using them in lacking player DPS.

[Dfoley]

Erm maneuvers arent a pet ability.

Think of it like this:
Court Jester makes the triangle face (activates Fire Maneuver)
Court Jester does a jig (activates wind maneuver)

Etc, basically we are doing a dance maneuver and its telling our pet how it should be acting.

[Karbuncle]

You guys seem to be getting the impression I don't want Maneuvers updated/adjusted. When actually i have a thread in the PUP job forums dedicated to just that.

[Sparthos]

At this point? PUP is more like DRG than BST is.

The master properly buffed will destroy the automaton in damage, like DRG would.

BST is in limbo. The pet is hardier than PUP, DRG or SMN and can be healed every minute but in party play both the pet and master come up short, especially against strong foes.

[Seha]

while PUP are on the Pet deals more side of things.No.

---------

[Horadrim]

You guys seem to be getting the impression I don't want Maneuvers updated/adjusted. When actually i have a thread in the PUP job forums dedicated to just that.

Oh no, I know your stance, I was just trying to make what I'm thinking about clear. :O!

[qoute]Erm maneuvers arent a pet ability.

Think of it like this:
Court Jester makes the triangle face (activates Fire Maneuver)
Court Jester does a jig (activates wind maneuver)

Etc, basically we are doing a dance maneuver and its telling our pet how it should be acting.[/quote]

We're not talking about what they represent, we're talking about what they are programmed as. I agree, Maneuvers should be slight gestures and motions, because PUPs are jesters and performers, not fighters.


At this point? PUP is more like DRG than BST is.

The master properly buffed will destroy the automaton in damage, like DRG would.

Yeah, and I think that's stupid. Why should the master be better? The center of the job is the automaton, there's no reason for the master to be better than them -- we're like Monks with pets at that point.

if I want to be a monk, I'll just play as one as avoid the hassle.

[xbobx]

choosing when to weapon skill will be amazing. Hopefully we can actually choose the weaponskill also. WE cause so much ruby in abyessa right now. Splitting up timers of enfeebling, NA and cures would solve the cure issue too/almost.

but looks like a lot of this is in the right direction. new +3 lubricant is nice but it won't help much. Maybe the repair recast should be trimmed back a bit like reward is. I see no difference in being able to heal a puppet as much as a bst pet.

I also see nothing about pets receiving buffs,

[Sparthos]

Yeah, and I think that's stupid. Why should the master be better? The center of the job is the automaton, there's no reason for the master to be better than them -- we're like Monks with pets at that point.

if I want to be a monk, I'll just play as one as avoid the hassle.

The last time the automaton was better than the master, Puppetmaster had C skill h2h capping at 225 @75. Those were dark days for PUP.... dark, dark days indeed.

SE billed PUP as an all-purpose DD. A versatile machine capable of handling a variety of situations. The closest analogue would be Blue Mage.

The problem lay in the faults of the automaton. The healer pet properly tweaked should be able to act as a pocket healer to complement a DD pup or double down on a support PUP but as we see, that isn't exactly what you get.

This is partly why I believe SE chose to improve the master - it's simply easier to do.

[Frapp]

Camate,

You keep mentioning that the Dev Team is considering a lot of fixes utilizing new attachments. Are there any plans on increasing the number of attachments that can be installed at one time? Currently we only have 12 attachment slots, but more and more attachments mean we have to continue to either get creative with installing them, or lose some of our favorite abilities and traits outright, or just not use the new ones at all.

The only other job that has to actually lose traits to use others is Blue Mage, and they have significantly more spell slots than our Automatons have attachment slots.

Curing / Status Ailment AI - Would it be possible to have an ability to force the Automaton to Cure like with DRG's new Wyvern Commands? If rewriting the AI is too complex, would this be a happy middle?

Animators - Do these do anything other than a few hidden stats? If not, can they do something more?

Tactical Processor - Adding this comment simply to make it visible because people that don't even play FFXI want to know what this does.

Automaton Arsenal - I'm not sure how easy this would be to implement, but would it be possible to see a plug-and-play weapon system for the Automatons? For example, for 90 levels Sharpshot has used the same crossbow with the same bolts. To add to the customization of our little friends, a stronger / slower crossbow could be attached, or a weaker / faster one.

Thank you for reading and considering my questions and ideas.

[Seha]

I agree, some more slots, maybe as level increases, would be nice, much like blu points.

[Horadrim]

The last time the automaton was better than the master, Puppetmaster had C skill h2h capping at 225 @75. Those were dark days for PUP.... dark, dark days indeed.

SE billed PUP as an all-purpose DD. A versatile machine capable of handling a variety of situations. The closest analogue would be Blue Mage.

The problem lay in the faults of the automaton. The healer pet properly tweaked should be able to act as a pocket healer to complement a DD pup or double down on a support PUP but as we see, that isn't exactly what you get.

This is partly why I believe SE chose to improve the master - it's simply easier to do.

I agree -- but at the end of the day those problems are quite simply a lack of control.

Why can't we tell our automaton to focus on healing someone else? Why can't maneuvers be commands that suggest actions towards specific targets? Light Maneuver the Paladin (Casts a Cure or Erase, or Flashes the mob targeting the PLD), Dark Maneuver the mob (dispels or drain/aspirs the mobs).

Suggestive control, however indirect, is still control. And while the control we have now is suggestive as well, its just not potent enough to get the job done.

[Tarumage]

Finally - some good info.

[Seha]

Something that was said more than once: let animators be throwing weapons. We have throwing skill. We always need to equip them, taking away the chance of putting other stuff in ammo slot. Combine the two things and give them some utility!

[Vagrua]

First we will be revamping attachments that need adjustments. After that we will take a look at the balance and look into this.


A major reduction to the drum magazine would be enough:

Wind x0 = 12 seconds

Wind x1 = 9 seconds

Wind x2 = 6 seconds

Wind x3 = 4 seconds

Wind x3 would rarely be up considering overloads.

Another fix would be to take out the melee attacks entirely to speed up ranged attacks as mentioned.

[Nala]

The problem isn't maneuvers, the problem is that maneuvers are pet abilities. There shouldn't be an animation attached to the Puppetmaster. The Automaton, when activating a maneuver, should get that little steam animation from the PUP special emote (as a kind of "kicking into gear" indication) so that it doesn't distract from the PUP's attack cycles.

Yes they are pet abilities but more precisely they are pet commands, all pet JA's have the master initiate some kind of animation, furthermore in the maneuvers case they actually give you a physical buff unlike alot of the other pet jobs. not to say it would be nice if using pet commands would forego the animation, however just wanted point out you're not entirely correct.

[Alhanelem]

Wind x3 = 4 seconds Not even Rangers don't shoot that fast. That's pushing it a little too far.

That said the trum magazine will still mostly suck unless the accuracy penalty is removed or reduced.

[Vagrua]

Not even Rangers don't shoot that fast. That's pushing it a little too far.

That said the trum magazine will still mostly suck unless the accuracy penalty is removed or reduced.

Would 5 seconds be better for you? I was only following their formula of 3 > 3 > 3 > 2

Regardless, it seems like the simplest fix imo. They could adjust the acc penalty also or remove it entirely.

[Fusionx]

Tactical Processor - Adding this comment simply to make it visible because people that don't even play FFXI want to know what this does.


I'm never going to play PUP but I would love to know what the Tactical Processor does. People have been asking about this thing for years, it's like the AV strategy of attachments.

When asked about lights and the brew in Abyssea SE comes right out and tells us what it does, but we've been asking about the tactical processor for years now and still nothing.

[Lyrminas]

maybe they don't know, they fired the guy that worked on it, its been a black box ever since.

while we're speculating xD the guy was working on damage gauge, about to implement the last bit of coding to prioritize curing over status debuffs came back from lunch to see the pink slip dangling from his monitor.

[Theytak]

Note: As a veteran pup who took a break from the game right as these forums started up, please forgive my apparent newbishness/lack of posting cred.

In response to Camate's post from the dev team: It's great that you guys are reading and responding. Some of the answers I was very happy to see, however others I feel need to be addressed as though the original question was misunderstood, or something else entirely. Anything not quoted from Camate's post I was happy to see and having nothing but thank you to say as a response.


The maneuver duration, recast time, and overload are all balanced very subtly; through maneuvers, the automaton’s operability, as well as the frame and attachments, are largely affected. Due to this, we plan to create balance by adding and adjusting attachments and abilities without changing the operations of the base maneuvers.

This is nice on paper, but adding more attachments really should not be the go-to solution, unless you also plan on increasing the elemental capacity of all of the frames and heads, and/or intend to increase the amount of slots we have to equip attachments. As it stands now, the bulk of the practical attachment fits have been essentially set in stone since the release of the Ashu Talif attachments. Adding more attachments as fixes for things that the pup community considers problems means that we'll lose something from our normal, comfortable play style in order to fix something that we consider "it's working as intended" to be the wrong answer for. With some things, it's fine, or even a great idea, but with others, it just won't help.


We understand that there are times this is inconvenient for ranged/mage frames. We will look into increasing the distance for using Deploy.

I'm also really happy to see this, but I'd ask that you also adjust the range at which the puppet decides to run in and melee. Being able to deploy my mage frame from a distance greater than we already get would be awesome, but totally useless since any distance beyond just the max range causes the very squishy, very low HP mage frame to run in gung ho and start trying to act like it's suddenly a warrior. The scene is rather cute, but the fact that it normally results in the puppet dying is annoying.


With the current system, Scanner will detect resist rates, so by using a Scanner it should make it so your automaton does not cast this.
However, if there is even a small chance that the monster uses magic, the automaton will start to cast silence. The chance of there being a bug related to this isn’t impossible, so we will be checking on this.

Also, if you have any feedback such as “I don’t want silence to be cast on enemies that are highly resistant to silence” (ex: Make it so it doesn’t cast silence when the resist rate is over 60%) please make sure to let us know.
[/QUOTE]

NPC fellows do not cast silence on crabs, beetles, DRK type skeletons, or any other mob that has mp but doesn't use it. The fact that the puppet does cast on said mobs is what we want fixed. Also, I would think that wanting the puppet to know not to cast silence on something that's highly resistant or immune to silence would go hand in hand with said desire :/

Actually, given that puppet -seems- to know when not to cast something that will be resisted in terms of elemental/dark magic, wouldn't it make sense for the puppet to already have the same behavior for enfeebles?


We are looking into changing the automaton behavior. Since this is something that we have received a lot of feedback about we will be looking into it, but since the workings of the automaton logic are so complex it will take some time.

I'm sure you're well aware, but this desire for cure focusing stems from the fact that for some silly reason, our puppets become homicidal towards us if we fight against something that likes to use enfeebling magic. By this, I mean that if I am at 5% HP, while still having the monster's attention, and being blind, if my puppet is about to cast a spell on me, it will not cast Cure VI. It won't cast Cure I. No matter what I'm fighting, no matter how badly injured I am, my puppet absolutely HAS to cast blindna on me first. There is no exception to this rule. None. This applies to all -na able status effects. THAT is the problem, and one that pup has been asking to have fixed since the release of the soulsoother head.

I can respect that it's a complex issue, but it's something we've been reporting as a bug since 2006, and we have never received a "that your puppet wants to make sure your not blind, even if it costs you your life is how we intended it to work" response. I'm sorry if I sound a little ungrateful, but 5 years to fix an obvious bug that has been complained and talked about throughout said 5 years is somewhat... absurd :/

Also, while I'm at it, it would be GREATLY appreciated if you guys could look in to lowering the HP%/MP% that trigger Soulreaver's aspir/drain priority. They are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to high, and now that we have Aspir II, letting the soulreaver puppet sit out (rather than using deactivate/activate, which isn't always a useable strategy) is pointless, because after the second nuke, it spends the next hour casting aspir II, then Aspir, then aspir II, then aspir, then aspir II, then aspir, and occasionally, if you're lucky, you'll get one nuke between 3-4 aspir volleys. All of this despite the fact that the puppet is sitting on 74% mp after 2 nukes... And PLEASE don't try to fix this with an attachment, there's not room for another attachment in the nuking set up.


We plan on revamping attachment stats, so there is a possibility that we make it so that there is no consumption of maneuvers. This doesn’t mean that we will be adjusting every attachment for this, but we will be looking at each one separately. If you have any feedback please let us know!

I'll wait and see how this turns out, I'm not sure whether it sounds promising or worrisome. However, if you make it so eraser only consumes light maneuvers I'd be a pretty happy galka.


We will be performing adjustments on attachments that need adjusting as necessary.

Same answer as the last one? I guess it's basically the same question, though. By the way, can you please tell us what in the world Tactical Processor is/was supposed to do aside from make our puppet overload? It's one of the original attachments, and despite that we still have absolutely no idea what it does, because any and every logical conclusion that can be drawn from it's description has been tested and found to be unaffected by the attachment. Was there some purpose to it that managed to escape our imaginations, or is it just bugged?


We are thinking about making adjustments in the form of attachments, not on the automaton or puppetmaster side. For example, how does implementing Strobe II sound?

Strobe II sounds pretty pointless since if a puppet is going to tank it's going to need to be able to do decent damage, and adding another fire attachment for a small hate spike is counter-productive to that (Tension Springs I and II and attuner are important to maximizing valoredge's damage output, and losing any of them for strobe isn't going to help VE keep hate)


Currently, we are thinking more in the direction of implementing superior lubricant, such as Lubricant +3, instead of directly increasing the physical resistance.

oh, please for the love of god, no more consumables. Repair is already horrible on inventory space, and annoyingly expensive (though it's a lot better than it used to be <3), and on top of that I normally carry 5-6 different sets of gear for my pup, all of which are frequently used, the last thing I need is MORE consumables to buff my pet.


First we will be revamping attachments that need adjustments. After that we will take a look at the balance and look into this.

ok, well, do make sure TO look into this, because sharpshot takes way to long between shots. It's pretty bad that the ranger based puppet has to melee if it is to do any respectable amount of damage.


We definitely understand. Since automatons are different than player characters, and it is difficult to adjust the positioning of the automaton, we are looking into easing up or even eliminating the distance factor.

Wait, I thought you guys fixed this already O.o


The damage is calculated as a special WS, however, we will be looking into making this easier to use while making use of its special properties since we hear a lot of people saying it keeps doing zero damage…

Please do something about it. The ws calculates damage based on the amount of HP the very squishy mage frame that can and will heal itself is missing. Everything about that is counterproductive and redundant. The last thing any pup wants is for their mp intensive mage frame to be losing HP since that means deactivating will cause a headache of the 20 minute activate timer (that is really way to long) or dealing with deus-repair-praythepuppetdoesn'tgethit-deactivate-activate-praythepuppetdoesntgethit. I mean, even if it was just based on the amount of MP missing instead of HP, it'd be useful.

Ok, I've said my peace. I'm definitely happy to see the devs responding to us, and I'm glad to see some of the things that need fixed will get fixed.

p.s. I do not like you, 10000 character limit. You suppress my innate wordiness!

[Mercilessturtle]

The Auto deals most of the damage, but the PUP's ability to maintain decent DPS is pretty important too. In situations where the automaton is just nuking, losing DPS because you have to freshen up your maneuvers hurts the PUP overall. Maneuvers don't need to be fixed, the annoying animation just needs to change.

No, the automaton does like 1/20th the damage of the master, it is really pathetic. This is why using maneuvers so frequently is such a problem, the master is 95% of the damage, and you have to cut your damage by 10% just to get a boost to the 5% the automaton does. I doubt they can remove the delay, all JAs work the same way, having a delay built in like that allows gear swaps to function correctly without messing up your tp gear.

Camate: Thanks for the info, but I have to say the "no we won't fix maneuvers" thing basically means pup will always stay bottom of the barrel. I realize there has to be a balance so that you can't keep up 3 of the same maneuver all the time, but saying "pups have to lose 10% of their damage keeping up maneuvers, tough luck" is pretty brutal.

How about a JA that makes maneuvers last 5 times as long, but also give 5 times as much "burden" or whatever you want to call the "make you overload" thing? That way it stays just as hard to keep up triple wind maneuvers when DDing, we don't lose so much damage to ability delay, and it doesn't break the way things are now. Like if you were using the blm frame and wanted to spam ice maneuvers, you just don't use the new ability and your maneuver duration and burden stay the way they are now. Make the new JA be a 5 minute duration/recast type deal.

[Mercilessturtle]

Wait, I thought you guys fixed this already O.o

They removed the acc penalty, but not the attack penalty. At least, the patch notes said they removed the acc penalty, I haven't tested to be sure that is true. I have tested the attack penalty however, and it is definitely still there.

[Theytak]

No, the automaton does like 1/20th the damage of the master, it is really pathetic. This is why using maneuvers so frequently is such a problem, the master is 95% of the damage, and you have to cut your damage by 10% just to get a boost to the 5% the automaton does. I doubt they can remove the delay, all JAs work the same way, having a delay built in like that allows gear swaps to function correctly without messing up your tp gear.

Camate: Thanks for the info, but I have to say the "no we won't fix maneuvers" thing basically means pup will always stay bottom of the barrel. I realize there has to be a balance so that you can't keep up 3 of the same maneuver all the time, but saying "pups have to lose 10% of their damage keeping up maneuvers, tough luck" is pretty brutal.

How about a JA that makes maneuvers last 5 times as long, but also give 5 times as much "burden" or whatever you want to call the "make you overload" thing? That way it stays just as hard to keep up triple wind maneuvers when DDing, we don't lose so much damage to ability delay, and it doesn't break the way things are now. Like if you were using the blm frame and wanted to spam ice maneuvers, you just don't use the new ability and your maneuver duration and burden stay the way they are now. Make the new JA be a 5 minute duration/recast type deal.
Honestly, the 2sec delay caused by using JAs is only going to have a noticeable effect on a pup's DPS in min-max situations, among min-max players who care about minute differences in over all dps. I'd wager about 75-80% of the game's playerbase doesn't care about min-maxing, and another 14-19% only use min-max stats as a guideline for playing. That leaves a minuscule 1-5% of the populace who actually play the game entirely around min-maxing their gear to squeeze out that last tenth of a percent in their dps. The reason they're not planning on changing maneuvers is because it's only that 1-5% of the populace who actually cares about how they affect dps, and the rest are just griping for the sake of convenience, when in reality maneuvers as they are are actually rather balanced for the bulk of the playerbase.

[Yinnyth]

I think you misunderstood what is being requested. The automaton will attempt to silence ANYTHING with mp, such as a crab, which never casts any spells. I haven't played PUP in a long time, but it was always very annoying to watch it continually silence crabs for no reason. This does need to be fixed. Perhaps allowing the automaton to cast silence only after it sees the mob cast would be ideal.

This, this, a million times this ^

There are many things retarded about puppet AI- casting silence on stuff that doesn't cast spells just because it has MP, casting aspir on stuff with such enormous dark resist that the puppet actually loses MP in doing so (and wastes an entire spell which is annoying like crazy since the puppet waits half an hour to cast again [hyperbole]), and the aforementioned soulsoother casting silena on the pup when he's at 3 HP and being attacked.

The ideal would be some sort of user-programmable gambit system for the puppet (from ff12), but I can't imagine what sort of nightmare that would be attempting to code that in. Perhaps the ability to simply remove certain spells from a puppet's spellbook so you can... oh, I don't know... stop your puppet from casting fire-based spells on something that absorbs fire damage?!

I honestly think it would be better to just give the pup more direct control over their puppet instead of just patching the AI piece by piece. There will always be little things here or there that are annoying about AI behavior, but if the player has more control, they can work to fix those problems themselves in whichever situation they find themselves in. Please take that into consideration when fixing pet jobs; don't patch AI, give the players to power to fix it themselves on a situation by situation basis.

[Mercilessturtle]

Honestly, the 2sec delay caused by using JAs is only going to have a noticeable effect on a pup's DPS in min-max situations, among min-max players who care about minute differences in over all dps.

6 seconds being deleted out of every 60 seconds is 10%. You lose 10% of your damage keeping maneuvers up. Period. It has nothing to do with min-maxing. Just because you don't know or care what is going on, doesn't mean it is ok for a job to lose 10% of their damage having to spam JAs that give less than 10% damage in return.

Having a clue is not a bad thing. Paying attention to what you are doing is not a bad thing. Being able to do basic grade school arithmetic is not a bad thing. Quit acting like anyone who bothers to understand the current state of pup is a terrible person for wanting to actually do decent damage instead of being stuck in "gimp monk with a funny looking wyvern" land.

[brayen]

No, the automaton does like 1/20th the damage of the master, it is really pathetic. This is why using maneuvers so frequently is such a problem, the master is 95% of the damage, and you have to cut your damage by 10% just to get a boost to the 5% the automaton does. I doubt they can remove the delay, all JAs work the same way, having a delay built in like that allows gear swaps to function correctly without messing up your tp gear.

Camate: Thanks for the info, but I have to say the "no we won't fix maneuvers" thing basically means pup will always stay bottom of the barrel. I realize there has to be a balance so that you can't keep up 3 of the same maneuver all the time, but saying "pups have to lose 10% of their damage keeping up maneuvers, tough luck" is pretty brutal.

How about a JA that makes maneuvers last 5 times as long, but also give 5 times as much "burden" or whatever you want to call the "make you overload" thing? That way it stays just as hard to keep up triple wind maneuvers when DDing, we don't lose so much damage to ability delay, and it doesn't break the way things are now. Like if you were using the blm frame and wanted to spam ice maneuvers, you just don't use the new ability and your maneuver duration and burden stay the way they are now. Make the new JA be a 5 minute duration/recast type deal.

the automation AI and what not aside..THIS.. THIS A MILLION TIMES OVER. I swear if they did something like this and gave you more control of your pet via maneuvers..i think i would be in love with this job.
The quoted suggestion seems like a great thing to implement, just make it a "stance" with a decent duration and shortish recast like most other jobs have already (hasso seigan rapid shot solace misery composure etc etc)
It is sad that the way to be the more productive DDer i have to neglect my pet currently.

I know i am still hoping for a fix to the puppet behavior (is it really that hard to have a trigger for when we want silence or blindna etc?) but is there any hopes to have an auto-assist function for pets? as in you engage > pet atks? i always felt the way the NPC or DRG's pet behaved friendlier towards their master..and before ppl throw the "its a puppet you have to control it" realize it is more like a robot then a puppet! it cast at his own rate, and clearly ignores us when we beg him for cures >.>

[esoR]

auto assist is a slippery slope. its much better to select what you want your pet to fight, than for it to choose based on what you're doing. having to engage something on drg and run out of range to leave your wyvern on it is a bit annoying, when a simple command attack or stay would be more useful in the situation. (specificaly for survivability)

that said, i feel another adjustment that might serve well to be implemented, is the ability to deploy on player characters, that might open up some options for pups to be more useful, aside from the straight damage dealer.

as for -na spells, they are triggered by water maneuvers to cast on other players, they should remain on water maneuvers for us as well. if i need a paralyna in red hp, i rather get cured, while fighting to put up a water, than die, because the light maneuver triggered the wrong thing. i believe on top of the cast priority change, this would be a simple long term fix.

changing what maneuvers trigger spells may not be the best course of action, but i see it as the most realistic option, from the coding stand point. this could apply to silence, drain/aspir etc. they are already triggered when certain maneuvers are used. but if these were required for the puppet to use them, i think that would solve some headaches, without the need to add more attachments that we cant afford to equip due to the maxed out slots/ele. capacity.

what we really do need is a new frame, or at the very least, the ability to merit elemental capacities in the upcoming lvl 99 merit system. adding more attachments wont solve all our issues, without being able to use them, they will just multiply problems instead of relieve them.

(as for tactical processor, last i heard it was rumored to effect recast/cooldown of other JA and attachments ~ ala: shield bash stoneskin provoke flash etc)

[Keyln]

My thoughts:

Tactical Processor: Yes, we want an answer to this. What does it do? Specifics. Now.

Attachment space: Can we get some new attachment space? 12 attachments is hardly enough, and I find myself unable to choose between which ones I need to use. It would be nice that if more attachments are going to be added that more attachment space be made. Also, don't forget about the elemental factors.

Maneuvers: One idea I have is to have an ability that will allow me to put in multiple maneuvers at once (perhaps similar to DNC's Presto ability). I wouldn't mind a counter-balance, like an increase chance of overload or something.

Drum Magazine: One thing I would like to see is instead of losing accuracy, lose ranged attack either. That way, it becomes a good attachment for building TP.

Tactical Processor: Mentioned twice because I want to know. What Does It Do?

[Bhujerba]

If i'm not mistaken the puppet also doesn't recognize Immunities, I don't know the inner work about NM's Immunities but against NMs that have MP and cast magic but Immune to silence the puppet will continue cast Silence ..forever.. with Scanner..example:
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Teekesselchen

[Seha]

Scanner is bugged and they always knew this, but never fixed it for some reason.

Also, it appears as if they have no fraking clue what Tact processor does and are afraid to admit it lol.

[Karbuncle]

Something tells me the guy who made Tactical Processor got fired and no one knows what it does now >_>

[Fretion]

Make it so my automaton does not keep casting silence on monsters that are not affected by silence.


With the current system, Scanner will detect resist rates, so by using a Scanner it should make it so your automaton does not cast this.
However, if there is even a small chance that the monster uses magic, the automaton will start to cast silence. The chance of there being a bug related to this isn’t impossible, so we will be checking on this.

Also, if you have any feedback such as “I don’t want silence to be cast on enemies that are highly resistant to silence” (ex: Make it so it doesn’t cast silence when the resist rate is over 60%) please make sure to let us know.

Skeleton Warriors in KRT, for example. They never cast, but Koumei keeps silencing them. I've had similar issues with other non-casting Skeletons, Crabs and Beetles in the past, but that particular one has been since Grounds of Valor was added, as I was doing page 7, and being annoyed by Koumei casting silence on Skeleton Warriors when I had Ice and Wind active.

[Telford]

The other side of the silence problem is that while the automaton will happily spam silence on non-casting crabs and the like because they have mp, they will never cast silence on any NIN or BRD mobs because they lack mp.


Since I'm posting I'll add my vote to what does the tactical processor do? Automatons should be smart enough not to cast a spell that will heal a mob just because that spell is the least resisted.
While new attachments are great and all, they should not be used to patch general/AI problems especially when were so limited by slots and elemental capacity.

[xbobx]

After reading all of these issues, you really have to sit back and realize how moronic the old development team had to be in designing pup. Never thought of the magic mortar one where damage is based on how little hp it has, on a frame that can cure itself.

There really were a lot of stupid decisions made in the past, bugs that were fixed a few times abut still exist. Testing not properly done etc. Hopefully this group isn't as lazy, although the answer for helping puppet survive is to add another lubricant is kind of lazy and dumb. although a higher cure is handy for VE it doesn't change the fact that repair is too long of a timer.

[Karbuncle]

Back in the old days Magic Mortar used to be insanely broken (3kDMG+ mirror'd light) if you got your automaton low enough HP/MP.

Then they nerfed it to where only HP was a factor. They should just change that to HP/MP being a 50/50 Factor.

[Psion]

Back in the old days Magic Mortar used to be insanely broken (3kDMG+ mirror'd light) if you got your automaton low enough HP/MP.

Then they nerfed it to where only HP was a factor. They should just change that to HP/MP being a 50/50 Factor.

Actually, MP was never a factor in magic mortar. instead, it was a different ratio of HP than it is now, I think it used to be 1 hp = 1 damage at 100 tp, and flame holder was bugged with it, causing a gigantic change to the weaponskills damage boost instead of it's normal amount, which caused even 1 fire magic mortars to go off in excessively (by old standards) large amounts of damage.

Of course nowdays magic mortars doing 3k+ damage isn't exactly broken considering people do twice that in abyssea and even outside it many people can easily break 2k on most monsters with certain spells/weaponskills. Even more so considering it required your automaton to be at 1 HP, and if you didn't want it curing itself and weakening MM, less than 8 mp. That meant that ANYTHING, even a monster giving your automaton a funny look, tickling your metallic buddy, telling it a shocking story, what have you, would destroy it. Excluding self skillchains with the master doing dragon kick to one shot exp mobs low HP NMs, it was more of a suicidal puppet tactic, something to gain an edge at the start of the fight and then continue as normal. Especially since it takes a lot of time to deplete an automatons MP all the way while getting it to extremely low hp.

In fact, it was pretty balanced in a way, since if you wanted to use the weaponskill without suicide, you would leave your automaton around half HP and fire off 1.5-1.8k magic mortars, leaving it enough HP to fight and be a strong addition to NMs.

[Karbuncle]

Are you sure Psion :X?

Then again when i read "Getting your Auto's HP/MP low enough..." might have been because with high MP he'd of cured himself. So it makes sense.

I trust you when it comes to PUP though.

[xiozen]

I think you misunderstood what is being requested. The automaton will attempt to silence ANYTHING with mp, such as a crab, which never casts any spells. I haven't played PUP in a long time, but it was always very annoying to watch it continually silence crabs for no reason. This does need to be fixed. Perhaps allowing the automaton to cast silence only after it sees the mob cast would be ideal.


This was corrected back in 2008; equip the Scanner attachment to stop the automaton from casting silence on mobs that don't have MP. The reason your automaton is casting silence on a crab is because you are not equipped with the Scanner attachment and the crab has MP (even though it does not cast spells). Odd as it might be, that's the way it is.

[Byrth]

Crabs have MP because they're Paladin type. It's stupid to force PUPs to waste an attachment to correct an AI mistake so basic that even the worst players wouldn't make it.

[Horadrim]

Crabs have MP because they're Paladin type. It's stupid to force PUPs to waste an attachment to correct an AI mistake so basic that even the worst players wouldn't make it.

Ain't that the truth... Each Attachment slot is a vital component in making the auto as effective as possible, wasting one on an attachment that has had problems since day one is asinine.

[MarkovChain]

Crabs have MP for retarded reasons, same as non mage skelettons. There should be an attachement that forces nukes, another that forces debuffs, and another that forces cures, each on their respective timer.

*For debuffs, priority should be para>slow>blind. Bio and dia should not be used unless a specific attach is equipped, same for silence.

*For nukes, priority should be the highest tier spell, and not the spell to which the mob is the least resistant. For instance at 75 the puppet would systematically cast Fire IV over Blizzard IV on puddings, pretty fail seing as the resist difference is probably marginal. This is why the "nuke attachment" should work on the highest spell by default. It is probably wise to introduce an attachment for high resist rates (like kirin, hnms etc) that prioriterizes lowest resistance element (hi tactical processor).

On that subject, automatons don't have staves, and according to camate's previous posts, tranquilizer is equivalent to an HQ staff. When a BLM wants(ed) to nukes resistant crap like JoL or Kirin it required to stack magic accuracy on gear on top of staves. Seing as puppet have already less skill than BLM, less INT, and no gear, I think tranquilizer should be boosted so that equipping it gives the same as magian magic accuracy staves (+30 at least), then more ice manoeuver would give additional accuracy. I remember trying JoL on PUP at 75 with 3/3 ice manoeuver and the resist rate was 100% lol.

[Horadrim]

Crabs have MP for retarded reasons, same as non mage skelettons. There should be an attachement that forces nukes, another that forces debuffs, and another that forces cures, each on their respective timer.

*For debuffs, priority should be para>slow>blind. Bio and dia should not be used unless a specific attach is equipped, same for silence.

*For nukes, priority should be the highest tier spell, and not the spell to which the mob is the least resistant. For instance at 75 the puppet would systematically cast Fire IV over Blizzard IV on puddings, pretty fail seing as the resist difference is probably marginal. This is why the "nuke attachment" should work on the highest spell by default. It is probably wise to introduce an attachment for high resist rates (like kirin, hnms etc) that prioriterizes lowest resistance element (hi tactical processor).

On that subject, automatons don't have staves, and according to camate's previous posts, tranquilizer is equivalent to an HQ staff. When a BLM wants(ed) to nukes resistant crap like JoL or Kirin it required to stack magic accuracy on gear on top of staves. Seing as puppet have already less skill than BLM, less INT, and no gear, I think tranquilizer should be boosted so that equipping it gives the same as magian magic accuracy staves (+30 at least), then more ice manoeuver would give additional accuracy. I remember trying JoL on PUP at 75 with 3/3 ice manoeuver and the resist rate was 100% lol.

I really don't want a "nuke attachment"

I don't want to have to burn an attachment slot for functionality that should be native to the Automaton. That's ridiculous. Every Ice slot we lose, that's less damage/accuracy a nuke has, depending on the attachment you choose to sacrifice. We should we have to suffer in damage or resistance rate just to get our Automaton to do what it's supposed to do from the get go?

The baseline A.I. for the Automaton should be able to assess the situation and use the most effective nuke as opposed to the most "Accurate."

[MarkovChain]

You don't lose anything. It doesn't have to be ice or whatever. It can be one of the existing ice attachment too because when you use mab you want to nuke. Stop being narrow minded. There is no way you can control every move with 3 manoeuvers. The AI must be adapted to what attch you are using, and just fyi this is exactly how the are planning ajustement according to the last dev's post.

[Stabattack]

While on the topic of improving PUP, can we get HP, MP and TP values for the automaton displayed on the front UI?

[Frapp]

I had an idea while at work today regarding the attachment issues we've brought up, and I wanted to run it by the PUP community here.

Basically it involves reworking the Automaton menu.

1. Get rid of the physical installation slots. The only thing you would have to worry about is fitting the attachments under the Elemental Capacity for your Automaton setup. Use the space in the menu for larger graphical representation of the elemental capacity instead of 2 lines of text with icons.

2. Equip installed attachments using an On/Off list, like we see when adjusting our chat filters.

Using this method Elemental Capacity could be tweaked allowing us to use more attachments while not completely overpowering the bot. This also would make more sense (to me at least) about how attachments are actually installed. You have to take the item and have the girl in the Automaton shop install it into your bot, meaning the attachment exists inside your Automaton's core, just either plugged in or unplugged.

While thinking about this further, I also began to wonder if it would be possible to turn unused elemental capacity slots into other elements, at a cost. Let's say for example you wanted to plug in one more Fire Attachment on Valoredge, but there isn't enough elemental capacity. Because you may not utilize the 2 Ice Capacity slots (I'm looking at you Tactical Processor) you can change them to 1 extra Fire Capacity slot (Half the capacity of the unused element). To counter abuse of that, you would have to have 0/X for the element you wish to re-wire to another element.

Let me know what you think. As always, thank you for taking the time to read and consider this idea.

[Psion]

I had an idea while at work today regarding the attachment issues we've brought up, and I wanted to run it by the PUP community here.

Basically it involves reworking the Automaton menu.

1. Get rid of the physical installation slots. The only thing you would have to worry about is fitting the attachments under the Elemental Capacity for your Automaton setup. Use the space in the menu for larger graphical representation of the elemental capacity instead of 2 lines of text with icons.

2. Equip installed attachments using an On/Off list, like we see when adjusting our chat filters.

Using this method Elemental Capacity could be tweaked allowing us to use more attachments while not completely overpowering the bot. This also would make more sense (to me at least) about how attachments are actually installed. You have to take the item and have the girl in the Automaton shop install it into your bot, meaning the attachment exists inside your Automaton's core, just either plugged in or unplugged.

While thinking about this further, I also began to wonder if it would be possible to turn unused elemental capacity slots into other elements, at a cost. Let's say for example you wanted to plug in one more Fire Attachment on Valoredge, but there isn't enough elemental capacity. Because you may not utilize the 2 Ice Capacity slots (I'm looking at you Tactical Processor) you can change them to 1 extra Fire Capacity slot (Half the capacity of the unused element). To counter abuse of that, you would have to have 0/X for the element you wish to re-wire to another element.

Let me know what you think. As always, thank you for taking the time to read and consider this idea.

I like the idea. On top of that, you could balance it by making the new attachments use different elemental points than you would normally consider. For example, a new attachment that gives physical damage down, using dark or ice elemental slots, or a magical damage down attachment that uses fire or earth or the like. That way, if you combined it with the convert x element into half of a different element if it's totally unused system, you would have to make a decision: do i use these new attachments, or do i sacrifice those elements to add more of the older attachments?

[Niyariko]

And maybe we can equip over the limited elemental and slots in a trade off in higher overload rate. In an extreme case, u can equip ALL attachments, but the automaton will overload right away when you activate it, or, activate the auto with only one attachment so it can never overloads.

[Kristal]

Can you make Magic Mortar a bit easier to use?

The damage is calculated as a special WS, however, we will be looking into making this easier to use while making use of its special properties since we hear a lot of people saying it keeps doing zero damage…

I've seen many instances where the automaton would to the following:
* Automaton TP 111%+
* Cast Cure VI on me
* Trigger Mana Converter (Halving HP)
* Trigger Economizer
* Keeps meleeing, despite Fire Maneuver active (TP150%)
* Cast Cure VI on itself, healing it to 100% HP.
* Magic Mortar for 0.

[Tellahchan]

I've seen many instances where the automaton would to the following:
* Automaton TP 111%+
* Cast Cure VI on me
* Trigger Mana Converter (Halving HP)
* Trigger Economizer
* Keeps meleeing, despite Fire Maneuver active (TP150%)
* Cast Cure VI on itself, healing it to 100% HP.
* Magic Mortar for 0.

You literaly have to make your 'Maton cast it self dry of MP to ever get a good Magic Mortar out of it.... Sad.
Also with Inhibitor on I've yet to get it to Magic Mortar for me to skillchain Light, even with both of us meleeing and above 100tp... am I forgetting some trick?

[Niyariko]

Try put up a Light Maneuver

[Theytak]

You literaly have to make your 'Maton cast it self dry of MP to ever get a good Magic Mortar out of it.... Sad.
Also with Inhibitor on I've yet to get it to Magic Mortar for me to skillchain Light, even with both of us meleeing and above 100tp... am I forgetting some trick?
inhibitor tells the puppet to hold TP once the master hits 90% and/or follow the next ws with the highest SC it can make. You can't force MM to start light, you have to open with DK first so you can get your awesome 0 damage light skill chain!

Alternatively, insert the floppy disc in upside down, whack the puppet, and hope for the best. That usually works for me.

[Karbuncle]

Okay sorry for the semi-bump, not really a bump, but i feel the need to repeat it.

Can we has Tactical Processor information please Mr. Reps?

For that matter, does Animator +1/Deluxe Animator offer anything more than the listed Stat bonuses? l

[Tellahchan]

Alternatively, insert the floppy disc in upside down, whack the puppet, and hope for the best. That usually works for me.
Ahahahaha, yes percussive maintenance solves many things.

[Bhujerba]

does Animator +1/Deluxe Animator offer anything more than the listed Stat bonuses?
they enhance Tactical Processor attachment...

[Karbuncle]

they enhance Tactical Processor attachment...

!!

Brilliant! :O

[Kojo]

About Magic Mortar.. Why not either swap the modifier from HP lost to MP lost or give it regular modifiers and have like 25% DMG converted to Automaton MP... or better yet, swap Magic Mortar to MP lost and make an entire new WS that converts dmg to MP. Magic Mortar is good for soloing Light.. but I don't find myself using that very often. One thing I loved in the 50's about Knockout was that it actually had a point and contributed, yet wasn't high enough dmg to pull hate. Magic Mortar consistently does 0-40~. I'm not looking for a 1000-4000 DMG Magic Mortar, just something of use.

P.S. An Auto-Repair Kit III and Mana Tank III would be nice, too. >.> :D

P.P.S. Fix the bug in the Scanner.

[Shinron-PUP]

Thats a lot of information. I'm sad that Maneuvers will continue to severely hinder the Damage of the Master, But if you can revamp attachments to make it worthwhile like you say, i don't see it being a problem!

Also, "Negative aspects of Tactical processor". Um, Camate, what does a Tactical Processor do D:? Can you please ask them that?

We'd all like to know :(. We know its negatives (Overload Rate) but not its positives.. :X

Tactical Processor, according to what my friend and I from Ramuh have determined lowers the reaction rate of the puppet and possibly magic by about 2 seconds... attachments in which addle or mitigate the mob fall under this category like flash bulb, strobe, Shield Bash, and things like ranged attacks sometimes are used quicker. Of course we have to go off of a whim by the data because it's such a miniscuole change. In other words... really isn't worth using until they "Adjust" it like they're saying they will.

[Shinron-PUP]

I think you misunderstood what is being requested. The automaton will attempt to silence ANYTHING with mp, such as a crab, which never casts any spells. I haven't played PUP in a long time, but it was always very annoying to watch it continually silence crabs for no reason. This does need to be fixed. Perhaps allowing the automaton to cast silence only after it sees the mob cast would be ideal.


If you equip scanner to red mage or white mage frame and fight a crab it will not silence. That's what he was trying to get across. Most people usually don't use it because its glitch one a mobs resistance to all elements is so incomprehencible to the pet that he will not cast any elemental magic, but when using the white mage pet it's useful. Try it and you'll see that he knew what he was talking about :P.

[Shinron-PUP]

Karbuncle's Quote - [/QUOTE]I don't think my automaton has ever once Outdamaged me in combat on normal enemies or NMs :X

Unless we're talking about Ranged fights where I only use BLM automaton. ( i can think of Voidwatch as a possible example, bad AoEs, etc), then yah its possible.[/QUOTE]

The puppet actually during the "Burrattinaois" Era had dished out about 70% of damage because of the 10% regain if you used Ranger pet hands down, but now adays I notice that if you end up being the one to out damage your pet you tend to neglect our pet (I'm not saying this is something that you do of course) but this is what I notice in myself. If you can manage to keep your pet consistantly getting TP quickly via tactical switch and attachments he will out DD the master easily. Even with Armor shatterer, the new Ranged ws, its base damage when it lands is much much higher than my victory smite with level 90 verethragna. So in my opinion if you wield the pet correctly then he will out DD us but I guess it really depends on what you're fighting, subbing, and the situation entirely.

[Mercilessturtle]

If your automaton is doing a significant chunk of your damage (and you aren't just nuking with him) then you are doing something horribly wrong. Pup has access to some DD gear, use it. Yes, if you make an effort to gimp your damage you can make yourself bad enough that your automaton will out damage you. That is not a good thing, and doesn't mean automatons are good. Compare a real DD vs a PUP focusing on doing damage vs a PUP focusing on their automaton. The real DD will destroy the smart PUP, and the smart PUP will destroy the PUP focusing on his automaton.

[Shinron-PUP]

If your automaton is doing a significant chunk of your damage (and you aren't just nuking with him) then you are doing something horribly wrong. Pup has access to some DD gear, use it. Yes, if you make an effort to gimp your damage you can make yourself bad enough that your automaton will out damage you. That is not a good thing, and doesn't mean automatons are good. Compare a real DD vs a PUP focusing on doing damage vs a PUP focusing on their automaton. The real DD will destroy the smart PUP, and the smart PUP will destroy the PUP focusing on his automaton.

I guess it's worth consideration that I might be. After aquiring complete Usukane/Verethragna/Enkidu/Cirque +2 Set I still see a "Lack of damage from the masterr incomparison to the automaton, but I don't gimp myself when fighting with my automaton. Of course it's difficult to concentrate on both the automaton and fighting on the master but if you actually fight on both with equal attention the pet will out DD you but you'll dish out more damage in sum than you will focusing mainly on yourself. Don't get me wrong... I'm not a narcacist who believes that his method is absolute and I believe you might be correct and I'm wrong but give it a try. I think from what people are saying where they are like, "The master dishes out 90% of the damage," shows that there must be something completely wrong in their damage logic incomparison to mine even when checking damage preportions using a scanner the pet does about 60% of the damage when using Heat capacitor, Barrage Turbine, and the correct attachments to enhance ws damage and DPS. I actually prioritize coiler alot more than normal people though and keep up 3 thunder manuevers during TP... I notice, at least, that it's the optimal tping method for the pet rather than turbo charger.

[Shinron-PUP]

Actually now that I think about it... We should make sure we're actually on the same terms lol. If talking about out damaging the pet inside abyssea, I can see that, but I mean outside of abyssea and on a general basis.

[MarkovChain]

I guess it's worth consideration that I might be. After aquiring complete Usukane/Verethragna/Enkidu/Cirque +2 Set I still see a "Lack of damage from the masterr incomparison to the automaton, but I don't gimp myself when fighting with my automaton. Of course it's difficult to concentrate on both the automaton and fighting on the master but if you actually fight on both with equal attention the pet will out DD you but you'll dish out more damage in sum than you will focusing mainly on yourself. Don't get me wrong... I'm not a narcacist who believes that his method is absolute and I believe you might be correct and I'm wrong but give it a try. I think from what people are saying where they are like, "The master dishes out 90% of the damage," shows that there must be something completely wrong in their damage logic incomparison to mine even when checking damage preportions using a scanner the pet does about 60% of the damage when using Heat capacitor, Barrage Turbine, and the correct attachments to enhance ws damage and DPS. I actually prioritize coiler alot more than normal people though and keep up 3 thunder manuevers during TP... I notice, at least, that it's the optimal tping method for the pet rather than turbo charger.


No you are wrong. In order to max your automaton you have to use manoeuvers and each use is 2 seconds during which you cannot fight. There is no way you can recover this damage. The extreme comparison is when killing trash exp mobs in abyssea when after you engage yourself you first use deploy for -2 sec, then wind manoeuver for haste. That's 4 seconds wasted, when the mobs takes maybe 10 second to kill on a DD (like ... the master). The devs have released the manoeuvers stats and unless you use MAB attach on BLM head they are all not worth using. The most retarded are the attach for attack+ or the haste ones. I mean it is cool to have +25% haste on your pet but it requires 3x2 seconds of not DDing for +25% damage ONLY (and only after the 30 initial seconds + the time for not overloading so probably 1 minute) on the pet that starts with an incredibly severe GIMP damage compared to you.

[Mercilessturtle]

I think from what people are saying where they are like, "The master dishes out 90% of the damage," shows that there must be something completely wrong in their damage logic incomparison to mine

Yes, something is wrong alright. Why are you pretending you can keep up 3 thunder maneuvers? Why are you acting like barrage turbine is worth using? Losing 2 seconds to get your automaton to shoot one extra arrow is a loss in damage, not a gain. Gimping your own damage by more than the amount you are benefiting the automaton is exactly the problem I was mentioning.

Abyssea or not doesn't make that much of a difference, it is just cruor buffs. Gives the pup a bit of an advantage over the automaton, but nothing huge. Just compare attack speed, with just haste, a pup is attacking 50% faster than a sharpshot automaton with a wind maneuver up. Each of those attack rounds includes 2 fists, and the 2 chances to double attack that goes with it. Plus the automaton's single attack is pretty low damage. He only shoots every 20 seconds, and can't even be bothered to WS at 100TP, further lowering his WS output.

If you don't put up the wind maneuver you are attacking 80% faster. If you add marches or haste samba (or worst of all both) then things get much, much worse for the automaton. And this is ignoring things like AoEs killing your automaton all the time, him getting slept, bound, grav, etc and all the damage loss that goes along with that. It isn't worth losing 10% of your damage (or more if you use the horrible attachments that eat maneuvers) to give an automaton a 10% damage boost, because the automaton's damage is far too low to begin with.

[Glamdring]

Sorry for the delay, but here is some information from the development team in regards to your feedback! :)




The maneuver duration, recast time, and overload are all balanced very subtly; through maneuvers, the automaton’s operability, as well as the frame and attachments, are largely affected. Due to this, we plan to create balance by adding and adjusting attachments and abilities without changing the operations of the base maneuvers.

Annoying since for much of this the problem is AI, not attachments, and we're running out of room for necessary attachments, but whatever, it's your game...


In regards to abilities, we are making adjustments based on the original execution timing, however, for weapon skills we are looking into making it possible to select the execution timing manually. For magic, we believe the top priority is the revamping of recast times, so once we finalize those adjustments we plan on looking into being able to select the timing for that, as well.

other than making skillchain/magic burst a bit more likely this was never actually a concern for me...


We understand that there are times this is inconvenient for ranged/mage frames. We will look into increasing the distance for using Deploy.

Thank you, I know alot of players would rather the thing ran into melee. Me, I like my auto to live a bit...




With the current system, Scanner will detect resist rates, so by using a Scanner it should make it so your automaton does not cast this.
However, if there is even a small chance that the monster uses magic, the automaton will start to cast silence. The chance of there being a bug related to this isn’t impossible, so we will be checking on this.

Also, if you have any feedback such as “I don’t want silence to be cast on enemies that are highly resistant to silence” (ex: Make it so it doesn’t cast silence when the resist rate is over 60%) please make sure to let us know.

can't you just borrow it from the NPC fellow AI? think it's been a few years since I saw my NPC try to silence a normal beetle...


We are looking into changing the automaton behavior. Since this is something that we have received a lot of feedback about we will be looking into it, but since the workings of the automaton logic are so complex it will take some time.

ABOUT ****ING TIME!!! tell them we want this fast-tracked, they've had about 5 years now, they must have had SOME thoughts on the issue and all told I think this is THE top priority issue for most pups


We understand how you feel and are looking into separating the recast timers.

nice, thanks, but I wasn't actually worried about this


While we would like to do something for this, we would first need to perform a lot of work to revamp the user interface, so this will be difficult to accomplish right away. Sorry :(

another big issue, #3 on my personal list, just get it done


We plan on revamping attachment stats, so there is a possibility that we make it so that there is no consumption of maneuvers. This doesn’t mean that we will be adjusting every attachment for this, but we will be looking at each one separately. If you have any feedback please let us know!

sooner the better, or else beef up the performance on the attachments that DON'T eat manuvers so we don't NEED to use the one's that do


We will be performing adjustments on attachments that need adjusting as necessary.



Planning to implement this in the form of an attachment.



We are thinking about making adjustments in the form of attachments, not on the automaton or puppetmaster side. For example, how does implementing Strobe II sound?

whatever works...


Currently, we are thinking more in the direction of implementing superior lubricant, such as Lubricant +3, instead of directly increasing the physical resistance.

sorry, but honestly, for a pseudo-pld the ability to take a hit should simply be an inate characteristic, using a consumable for this is a bad idea in my opinion. you COULD make either the Armor plate or equalizer perform better, and that WOULD be in keeping with that tank-type role


It doesn’t crit because it is recognized as a special ability. We are looking into it.

this never should have been classed as a special ability, especially since it still gets all the PENALTIES of being a ranged attack. so yes, fix it please


First we will be revamping attachments that need adjustments. After that we will take a look at the balance and look into this.

faster attacks, more dead autos, {You Can Have This}! I honestly think the speed of attacks is fine as is. Using ranged only attack my pup still generally pulls hate off any tank or anything else in 1-2 hits as it is, and that's WITH the stealth screen. And it can't take a hit


We definitely understand. Since automatons are different than player characters, and it is difficult to adjust the positioning of the automaton, we are looking into easing up or even eliminating the distance factor.

have the auto automatically move itself to the sweet spot and stay there unless a command is given otherwise? the real reason most pups are asking for this is the usual QQ about "my job is broken, it's not the game's top DD" by people who just want to deploy right on the mob so it will melee, too to add to the almighty DPS parser




We would like to look into new automaton WS ideas, however, since you can recover MP through Deactivate/Activate and by using the Mana Converter, we think it would be better to look at different effects.

absolutely right. people been complaining about the unfairness of ADA for MP for awhile now, let's not give them even more reason to try to have our auto's nerfed like the witch hunt they did about bst -pdt. because you know which way that will turn out and it rhymes with turf


The damage is calculated as a special WS, however, we will be looking into making this easier to use while making use of its special properties since we hear a lot of people saying it keeps doing zero damage…

Good.

Now for my biggest concerns. Are there any plans to remove the misguided, unnecessary and completely unjustifiable from either a game balance or difficulty standpoint caps on new spells for Stormwalker and Harlequin autos?

[Kojo]

Hey, why not add a special Maneuver-like JA that makes the Automaton Cure or Raise and give Soulsoother Raise? Just thought of how handy that'd be.

[Karbuncle]

faster attacks, more dead autos, {You Can Have This}! I honestly think the speed of attacks is fine as is. Using ranged only attack my pup still generally pulls hate off any tank or anything else in 1-2 hits as it is, and that's WITH the stealth screen. And it can't take a hit

Unless you've hit Enmity cap that must be a very very bad tank... Even @ Enmity cap it must be a bad tank >_>;;

I agree with the rest of your points but I just, and really not trying to be mean, literally laughed out loud when i thought of how bad a tank must be to lose hate to an Automaton after 1-2 shots...

I know the RNG Frame is strong but lordy loo i don't think its so strong reducing Delay between ranged Attack will make it a constant thread to Enmity :P

[Glamdring]

I really don't want a "nuke attachment"

I don't want to have to burn an attachment slot for functionality that should be native to the Automaton. That's ridiculous. Every Ice slot we lose, that's less damage/accuracy a nuke has, depending on the attachment you choose to sacrifice. We should we have to suffer in damage or resistance rate just to get our Automaton to do what it's supposed to do from the get go?

The baseline A.I. for the Automaton should be able to assess the situation and use the most effective nuke as opposed to the most "Accurate."

precisely, losing attachment slot(s) to compensate for a basic error in AI is NOT a smart solution, it's a way of avoiding the NEEDED fix of the AI to accomplish something that doesn't need player control, just a repair of BAD CODE! don't encourage laziness on the part of the devs to "sorta" address an error that was oricinally created by them in the 1st place, FIX THE ERROR!

[Sparthos]

The tank must be dead if an automaton is pulling hate with the /ra.

As it stands, the pet just doesn't compete against human players when buffed. The more buffed your party is, the more the Puppetmaster takes over as primary DD and the less the automaton contributes.

[Kojo]

Another thing I'm not completely sure of, dunno if there's a way to do this already because I don't use Spiritreaver too much for fear of double procing, but why can't we control nukes with maneuvers? Like Ice = Blizzard spells, etc.

[Glamdring]

Unless you've hit Enmity cap that must be a very very bad tank... Even @ Enmity cap it must be a bad tank >_>;;

I agree with the rest of your points but I just, and really not trying to be mean, literally laughed out loud when i thought of how bad a tank must be to lose hate to an Automaton after 1-2 shots...

I know the RNG Frame is strong but lordy loo i don't think its so strong reducing Delay between ranged Attack will make it a constant thread to Enmity :P

I don't have AF3 +1 yet of my pup gear, still using ACP/MKT/ASA gear, and it all boosts the pet (a legacy from my building the set for my bst). And I'm talking about good tanks, or well equipped/merited mages for that matter. Not being sarcastic in the least. I also use Empy weaps along the elemental path, a mage set that's +MAB, a physical set that's +ACC. My pup misses about as often as the planet has total solar eclypses. I don't even use + damage attachments unless we fighting MB in Aby or an HNM, I concentrate on EVA once I've maxxed out Auto-repair or refresh (or both) on my auto.

I never even double up on a single element, I always use 3 different manuvers, except when resting when I MIGHT double light or Dark for faster recovery. And I haven't run out of MP since I got the Mana converter, not once.

oh, and both my ranged and valoredge autos are 25-40 skill off cap in their respective offensive skill categories.

[Glamdring]

one other concern, the DRAIN/ASPIR complaint. I don't actually have an issue with my pup casting these, if it's casting them it's because he needs HP or MP. But the YIELD on these spells considering my mage Autos are capped (and merited to make them even better casting) is, to put it honestly, PATHETIC. Can't the yeild be scaled to your auto's magic skill? if it was, your auto wouldn't sit there and spam (relatively speaking) them unless there were damage issues going on that the auto needed to correct for, i.e. fighting mobs that were draining/aspiring the auto, or in the face of high dark resistance when the scanner (or the built-in scanner we hear so much about but never actually see working on the spiritreaver head) should prevent your auto from using.

[Mercilessturtle]

And I'm talking about good tanks, or well equipped/merited mages for that matter. Not being sarcastic in the least.

Of course you are not being sarcastic, you are being delusional. Let's look at your claim, giving you every benefit, no matter how absurd. We'll even call the tank a pld since they suck so badly.

Let's pretend your automaton is pdif capped against whatever NM your pretending this happens on. So he does 630 damage per shot. He shoots every 20 seconds. So best case for you is 1260 damage in the span of 20 seconds. Lets pretend this imaginary NM is only level 75, since that gets you way more enmity than if it were a realistic level. Your automaton has 1938 CE and 4615 VE without using any of the -enmity attachments.

A pld who isn't engaged and is just relying on gaining enmity from JAs and spells (the worst possible way to gain enmity) generates 6240 VE and 543 CE in the first couple seconds just from popping sentinel + DE + flash. Toss in a cure4 and their other JAs and the pld has capped their VE at 10,000, even if they take enough damage to completely zero out their CE, they are still 3500 enmity ahead of your automaton.

Now imagine you aren't using a horrible tank, but a DD. Lets say monk, and let's make them /nin. Do you think a mnk/nin is going to do more or less than 1260 damage in 20 seconds? A Taurine Cesti mnk/nin with an amazingly low 1.0 average pdif (impossible considering we're pretending your automaton is pdif capped, but let's give you every magical fantasy land advantage possible) will deal 1140 damage if they have 0 (or negative) fstr, only have haste, don't WS, have a 0% crit rate (pretty cool trick especially with impetus) and aren't countering because of shadows.

Is that your definition of a good tank? Because that completely impossible scenario is the only way your automaton can be pulling hate, and that is with an automaton that has no -enmity attachments like you claim to use. With stealth screen on, and no water maneuvers to enhance it, you wouldn't be pulling hate even in that hilarious fantasy scenario. Please stop making up crazy nonsense because you want to imagine your automaton is some kind of godly killing machine. Your automaton is exactly the same as everyone else's, and they suck.

[Bhujerba]

Another thing I'm not completely sure of, dunno if there's a way to do this already because I don't use Spiritreaver too much for fear of double procing, but why can't we control nukes with maneuvers? Like Ice = Blizzard spells, etc.
actually maneuvers does influence the type of elemental magic the pet may cast, I found out about this 100% when I was fighting Weak to Wind NM I dont recall it's name, the BLM pet defaulted on casting Aero V, I added 1 Ice Maneuver and still Cast Aero V, then I used 2 Ice Maneuvers and the pet switched to casting Blizzard V, still I'm unsure if this "control" only works against monsters with elemental weakness or any monsters...

this actually may turn into a serious issue once we get Thunder V, since thunder > Ice the pet will default to casting Thunder but with "ice" attachments we will be forced to use Ice Maneuvers thus forcing the pet to use Ice V instead of Thunder V..the only reason this wasn't obvious or an issue before, its because by design it was only going to affect Thunder elemental (Thunder IV specially), but in both capped level (the current one and at 75) BLM pet never had access to the next Thunder Tier magic for a long period time to make this issue apparent to players (the first cap increase we completely skipped thunder 4 to Stone V) I think we were lucky..

[Telford]

actually maneuvers does influence the type of elemental magic the pet may cast, I found out about this 100% when I was fighting Weak to Wind NM I dont recall it's name, the BLM pet defaulted on casting Aero V, I added 1 Ice Maneuver and still Cast Aero V, then I used 2 Ice Maneuvers and the pet switched to casting Blizzard V, still I'm unsure if this "control" only works against monsters with elemental weakness or any monsters...

this actually may turn into a serious issue once we get Thunder V, since thunder > Ice the pet will default to casting Thunder but with "ice" attachments we will be forced to use Ice Maneuvers thus forcing the pet to use Ice V instead of Thunder V..the only reason this wasn't obvious or an issue before, its because by design it was only going to affect Thunder elemental (Thunder IV specially), but in both capped level (the current one and at 75) BLM pet never had access to the next Thunder Tier magic for a long period time to make this issue apparent to players (the first cap increase we completely skipped thunder 4 to Stone V) I think we were lucky..

Adding an ice maneuver didn't cause your auto to cast an ice spell (as in adding earth maneuvers won't make it cast stone). More than likely either the recast on Aero V wasn't up so it cast the next best spell which was Blizzard V or if this was a consistent occurrence then the added int, mab/macc (depending on your attachments) from the second ice maneuver tipped the balance in blizzards favour over the bonus aero was getting from the mobs weakness.

[brayen]

Pretty sure the puppet will default to highest nuke unless it detects some sort of res with highest nuke. The one thing i think it does not account for is weather the spell will heal the monster (never actually taken it but there a bunch of mobs who like to absorb magic and considering i have had my pet double proc i dont think it can detect absorbing spells)

[Bhujerba]

Adding an ice maneuver didn't cause your auto to cast an ice spell (as in adding earth maneuvers won't make it cast stone). More than likely either the recast on Aero V wasn't up so it cast the next best spell which was Blizzard V or if this was a consistent occurrence then the added int, mab/macc (depending on your attachments) from the second ice maneuver tipped the balance in blizzards favour over the bonus aero was getting from the mobs weakness.
I know about the recast, this wasn't the case, the test was done over the course of NM farming (about an hour) I even swapped Atmas and whatnot in to make sure, the pet defaulted to using Aero V (with Atma of gale..the wind one) the NM was Sharabha, as I said I dont know if this kind of maneuver influence only apply if the BLM auto tried to exploit a weakness or in general, I never cared before until that fight.

[Pyrobunny]

for the love of rod make the rng auto stay out of range!!! i'm tired of it running in and getting itself killed. same with the mage auto's

[Xellith]

The pup automaton is working as intended. Unfortunately for us they intended the puppet to have incredibly stupid AI and no survivability whatsoever.

Good going SE.

You need to stop making adjustments based on what YOU want and start making adjustments on what WE want.

[Kayn]

any response from the dev team? it would be cool if an admin could rely the message from the community that "more attachments are not the answer", if they want to add more attachments im all up for it (even tho im hating getting the new ones), but there's several pressing issues they do want to fix with attachments and for the love of god, we dont want to be stuck with Tactical Processor II "may fix some issues, erases all maneuvers."

im still waiting for the pups manifesto part2, i mean really, have you guys seen what has been going on with the other jobs follow ups? dual weilding great katanas?? pup might be the most grounded follow up of them all.

[Horadrim]

The pup automaton is working as intended. Unfortunately for us they intended the puppet to have incredibly stupid AI and no survivability whatsoever.

Good going SE.

You need to stop making adjustments based on what YOU want and start making adjustments on what WE want.

Normally I wouldn't really be a fan of this mentality, but these days I have to agree. Ninja worked out completely different from SE's expectations and they embraced it, now PUP has to suffer the same long-winded transformation process because SE's original design for them didn't work.

The primary disadvantage being that NINs actually had something to bank off of that ended up being becoming a crucial element of the gameplay, where as PUP has zero legs to stand on outside of ignoring its pet and being a generic DD. Why is the automaton so useless in party settings? There's no justification, rhyme, or reason when there are SO MANY OPTIONS for making it better.

[Seha]

Having more attachments is not a bad thing, they're more than welcome.
BUT we need more space to use them, otherwise it's just a useless solution.

[Kayn]

Having more attachments is not a bad thing, they're more than welcome.
BUT we need more space to use them, otherwise it's just a useless solution.

agreed. hopefully well see a response to this soon.

[Seha]

dual weilding great katanas?? pup might be the most grounded follow up of them allI wanna dual wield two puppets!