Better puppet mage gear.

I think many would agree with me that Mana Channeller 2 was a nice addition, we still have a bit of a disconnect when it comes to gear. The best gear for the Automatons mage frames still comes from Alluvion skirmish, Escha Zi'tah T1s and very difficult to get Herculean augments.

Herculean would be fine, but for some reason the familiar path was limited so that Pet:MAB and MAcc are both limited to 30, and it seems impossible to get a high roll on both along with the INT needed to make the piece at least close to What SMN can get on Merlinic. While you might argue that we get attachments, SMN gets Blood Pact damage and doesn't have to juggle burden, 30 seconds of building maneuvers up after a spell AND hoping their pet casts the right spell.

All I am asking for is some more modern casting gear for the Black Mage Automaton. Something with over 20MAB and MAcc on each piece, that's all we want.

Couldn't agree more with this. Getting a good augment with Pet: Magic Accuracy and Pet: Magic Attack Bonus augments on Herculean gear is an extreme rarity.

I would also like to see an attachment that enables curagas and AoE status cures for the automaton, and AoE nukes for the black mage automaton. right now both suffer from not being able to assist in these situations, where AoE damage/status ailments are something a whm can handle, but the whm bot simply cannot do a thing about; and where AoE magical damage is needed, such as vagary.

another attachment that enhances base magic damage (like magic damage+ stat) and causes the automaton to constantly cast tier I-II nukes would be ideal as well, making it act more like shantotto II trust. You could still have it cast higher tier nukes in an attempt to magic burst, but this would let us keep it deployed and nuking, instead of just charging and waiting for a magic burst to do decent damage.

Finally, can we please have aspir and aspir II, as well as drain and drain II, removed from the black mage automatons magic list, or at least make it require a dark maneuver, AND lower its priority to be below a nuke? right now after ONE tier V nuke the automaton will proceed to cast aspir if the mob has mp, or drain if its hurt, even if a skillchain has gone off and it could magic burst. this completely messes it's usefulness up. you can fix this to an extent by removing optic fiber....but that weakens the automaton's nukes as well, and it still doesn't fix the underlying problem...it just delays it a bit longer.

hp and mp are rarely an issue for mage automatons. if it's getting hit, its either enough for repair and role reversal to fix, or its getting thrashed and drains won't help it. if it's running low on mp, we can simply reactivate it, use our plethora of mp restoral attachments, or repair with JP into repair. we do not need aspir or drains, period.

Don't know if anyone else has had this problem but I've also noticed after a few thousand reisin stones that as far as I can tell if you get an MAB over 15 you can't get any macc at all. I have several times gotten higher maccs with some mab like even got a 30/15 but never once got any macc with an mab over 15. Which is just ridiculous. Basically if you want to go for dmg gotten completely ignore acc.

Also condemner is absolutely horrid for pet augs in general. Like even using familiar path I get way more master augs in fact I've gotten no pet augs once before while using familiar path