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

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Helel

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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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."

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.

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

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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?

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.

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Originally Posted by Camate

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Can you make Magic Mortar a bit easier to use?

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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…

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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.

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Originally Posted by Kristal

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.

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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?

Try put up a Light Maneuver

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Originally Posted by Tellahchan

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?

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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.

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

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Originally Posted by Theytak

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

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Ahahahaha, yes percussive maintenance solves many things.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

does Animator +1/Deluxe Animator offer anything more than the listed Stat bonuses?

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they enhance Tactical Processor attachment...

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Originally Posted by Bhujerba

they enhance Tactical Processor attachment...

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!!

Brilliant! :O

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.

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Originally Posted by 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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Helel

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Shinron-PUP

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Shinron-PUP

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Camate

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.

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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...

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Originally Posted by Camate

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.

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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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

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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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.

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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...

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Originally Posted by Camate

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.

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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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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

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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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 :(

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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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!

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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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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?

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whatever works...

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Originally Posted by Camate

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

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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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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

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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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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

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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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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.

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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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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.

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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

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Originally Posted by Camate

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…

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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?

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.

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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

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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

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Originally Posted by Horadrim

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."

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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!

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

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

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Glamdring

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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..