Understanding Puppetmaster Development

So, I’m confused.

I suppose that is the least I can say. Puppetmaster has not been the most welcomed job to any event, ever, unless it was mistakenly so (automaton did not aggro monsters when deactivated, etc.) It does not proc weakness well enough with any of its weapons compared to other jobs in Abyssea, people often whine about how much TP it feeds monsters when both the player and automaton are attacking, it’s still considered LOL by many people (though mistakenly, but it hardly matters if most people feel that way unless all you spend your time doing is soloing or playing with a tiny group in rare situations), etc.

Doing a search for PUPs on any server will reveal what everyone already knows: generally, less than one percent of the players on at a given time are PUPs. Currently on Asura, 19 of the 2050 people online are playing on their PUP. A few other jobs have similar problems (Scholar and Corsair come to mind), but the fact is clear: people do not play PUP in any great numbers.

Herein lies my confusion. Why did Square-Enix think it was necessary to nerf Burattinaios to the ground such that it is now worthless compared to just about any other weapon given the circumstances above? The ONLY thing it is useful for with 1 TP/tick is equipping when you’ve first entered a zone and are running to where the fighting will take place, and even then, you’ll probably end up with a whopping 50ish TP. You can’t switch into it between fights unless you want to lose the master’s TP and, quite frankly, the master’s WS are better than the automatons, so that would be ill advised.

Was having less than 1% of the population be slightly overpowered (and that is arguable) really that big of a deal? I mean, we’ve seen notes from the developers/forum moderators saying other updates “take too much time” or “we don’t have the resources,” yet they had time, desire and resources to change a value that hardly mattered to anyone. Did they really want to make a job that is already much maligned and/or misunderstood that much worse so that, what, even more people wouldn’t want to play it, or even fewer would want to take it with them to events? It boggles my mind.

The problem is further exacerbated by the quality of the new items we have received. The Heat Capacitor is next to worthless because it scrapes off the fire maneuvers that an automaton uses to actually deal decent damage with a weapon skill and, unless you’re one of the lucky people to have an item that suppresses overload, essentially ensures that you’ll have to spam water maneuvers with a Condenser to keep them up for the Heat Capacitor and the Flame Holder to activate, and water maneuvers aren’t all that exciting to use on a melee puppet. In addition, it makes it virtually impossible to keep a fire maneuver up to buff Tension Springs and increase periodic damage.

The Galvanizer is a good idea in theory, but in practice, will see little use. The Valoredge actually has to be tanking to get a counter attack, but it does so little damage (the new WS doing a decent chunk, but nothing compared to Stringing Pummel or Victory Smite) that it rarely, if ever, gets enmity, even when it’s using the strobe. Nevermind that now, without Burattinaios, on anything that the master can’t already tank, it would just die anyway because it can’t use Cannibal Blade often enough to heal itself while tanking. You’re left with deciding whether you want to use the Coiler paired with a Galvanizer that will never be useful or a Dynamo, which might actually cause a little extra damage, or something else entirely. The choice is pretty clear.

The other two attachments are feh at best because the Soulsoother STILL doesn’t have its AI fixed to the point where you want to have it out consistently (and, frankly, a 10% MP cost reduction when it’s spamming Cure VI on you even when your hit points aren’t low (and you’re not enfeebled) isn’t going to do squat, and Spiritreaver isn’t exactly needing to have MP given that you can just deactivate it and refill your MP pool. The Barrage Turbine, on the other hand, is okay for damage, giving some power to an occasional shot (or give an extra big shot), but only works well when you have multiple wind maneuvers up (will do about 1k with one wind maneuver in Abyssea on something with low defense), risking overload, and that means that Armor Shatterer, when it finally goes off, will likely do so with little accuracy due to lack of wind/thunder maneuvers (if you're using more than one wind) and end up doing pathetic damage. In total, if your Barrage Turbine does 1000 and your Armor Shatterer does 900, you've essentially used Armor Piercer, except now your wind maneuver falls off and you lose the haste from Turbo Charger for a while. There’s no reason not to just use Armor Piercer; however, if you do that, since Barrage Turbine uses wind and wind procs AS, using the Turbine will just trade off damage instead of actually increasing it at all because you'll want that wind maneuver up to get Barrage to proc. Unless you keep timers from an outside source on your screen to know when the cooldown is up, you're not going to want to leave wind off (also, Turbo Charger), so that just makes Barrage Turbine annoying in that case.

And speaking of the two new weapon skills, why are they so weak? String Shredder does decent damage in Abyssea and can be coupled with Stringing Pummel for Darkness, which is nice, but it doesn’t seem to work with the inhibitor and is laughably terrible outside of Abyssea to the point where the stun from Bone Crusher makes BC better. Amror Shatterer just sucks outright because either it has an extremely low damage coefficient or it has horrible accuracy. There is absolutely no reason, as it stands, to use it over Armor Piercer unless it has some fantastically useful skillchain property (but it should be well known how often people actually perform skillchains) or severely reduces defense enough to make the 1k –ish difference in damage worthwhile (the defense down it inflicts seems to be at least somewhat potent, but probably doesn't make up for not using AP).

Puppetmaster isn’t a terrible job; I think most of the people on the PUP forums know that. But what drove SE to make these decisions? Were they worried that more people would actually WANT TO PLAY the job or that it might suddenly become popular to greater than one percent of people? Were they worried that a job, which is pretty much relegated to soloing, would actually be strong in that or that, Altana forbid, people would voluntarily bring someone who played it with them to an event instead of whining that they could come on a more useful job? It is getting REALLY tiring to want to play PUP but ending up spending most of my time on other jobs trying to get gear for PUP and then play it only when I’m soloing because other jobs simply fit the bill better. Even if you get lucky and you have friends who think it’s fine to go on PUP, it still sucks knowing that you’d be helping everyone more if you came to proc yellow on your BLM or something.

What was so damaging, to the game or other players, about Burats that SE had to nerf them so hard? Did it really affect the game? Why couldn’t they have told us with Tactical Processor does or fixed automaton AI along with the nerf? How much more effort could either of those things really have taken? And then why the priority on the Burat nerf? Why did the make the attachments so apparently unthinkingly? Why are the new weapon skills just not that great? What ever happened to making the Valoredge “tank like a flesh and blood Paladin?”

It would be really nice to actually hear from a developer regarding this, but, well, I suppose the less than one percent of the population wouldn’t warrant a response even if responding were something the developers were in the habit of doing.

Well, maybe something surprising will come out of the update, something that hasn't been considered but . . . well, history has not been kind in that regard.

Sigh.

first intellignt post after the update.

i totally approve all your tought.

PUP community deserve some explanation from the DEV.

and, to put the icy on the cake. why all melee job get a new skill+ equip and pup (and mnk) not? what on earth make SE thinks we need dagger skill without a decent ws?

and lets talk about weapons...2 totally useless h2h (unless the proc rate is 100%) versus lots of more powerfull weapon for nearly all the other job...burts was, for the first time, a weapon pup could be proud of.

Signed, Dev team take a read. There was no need to nerf this weapon to such a degree. 5/tic regain would have been still plenty in my opinion. Hell, even 3... but 1?

The regain helped PUP to "catch up" to other DD jobs, and now we've just been knocked back a few paces

I was surprised about the 1tp/tic also. It really destroyed the fun/dot it gave to pups.

Something I wanted to add idk if anyone else realized this, but the new counter attachment is thunder based as is the new ws, so if you are wanting to even use it, you can kiss cannibal blade goodbye completely. So much for my pride in solo'n turul and iron clads as pup.

Giving us the same tp regain of a weapon 12 levels lower then burts as well as way easier to obtain in my opinion is not balanced. Bst pets tp moves are on a timer anyways so its not like it would bother them to have more then 1tp/tic... autos needed more tp to be able to keep up. Was 600~ dmg from cannibal blade being spammed really that game breaking?

we do have a Maintenance later today...we can only hope that SE saw that they muffed up, and are going to give us 20tick instead ^^ wishful thinking but seriously at least un-nerf us...

I'm passed wishful thinking and have gone straight to pessimism and self loathing.

This is truly a sad day. Why pay us any attention if you won't fix the problems with casting A.I. and WS triggering? If you're going to ignore pups SE, ignore them completely.

By nerfing Burts, you've proven that you are FULLY aware of our job and it's problems, but choose to do nothing about them. Someone at SE really hates Pup and Rng.

Maybe if you nerf all the other jobs you can get everyone to play FFXIV.

I would have to agree with EVERYTHING in this Post SE you guys need to explain yourself
the update was nothing short of a complete Nerf and a slap in the face to pups
The Dev team should really explain why this has happend

I'm not the best PUP in the game. Ineedmoney can surely tell you that :P, but I'd like to think that I'm able to do atleast some decent damage and some good works while I'm playing the job, but now this has just screwed over all the PUPs in the game. I agree with everything said here, they have to fix their mistake, if they don't I'm sure a lot of PUPs will find a way to revolt against them. If not, I say all PUPs band together on the servers and just start ripping apart everything, if a single pup can solo Turul or Iron-clad, imagine what would happen if we all got together to just own everything.

The only thing you're going to be doing by spamming this post in other forums is getting yourself Banned or your threads deleted and annoying quite a few people.

I understand your frustration but spamming in other forums wont help the cause..

Now I see why we don't have a Personal Message option in this forum, everyone would spam GMs Mailbox to n end about updates they don't like.

Anyway, I hope they can re-"fix" the problem.

Agree +3, you said what in my mind exactly...

its just pathetic, overpowered jobs walking around like nothing, but pup getting slightly powered and everythung break lose at SE , !!!!OMG SLIGHTLY OVERPOWERED PUP IS SIGHTED! THE GAME WELL BE DOOMED ......LIKE FF14!!!
so they dont want to nerf/continue to buff overpowered jobs because they are widely used but ok with nerfing/not fixing less used job?
it's catch 22 we are stuck, unless everyone and there mother start playing pup we might get buffed and remain desirable forever!...but since we arent that good/not offering as much as other jobs this makes us undesirable and ppl will not play the job therefore we get nerfed because not too many are playing the job so no worries about pissing off tons of ppl, and get nerfed more.

in Rag after the merge 4421 ppl at jp prime time, 45 of them were 90 pups thats 0.98% of the total population. everyone knows you need a "real" job to actually play the game and test the new stuff, and then when everything is easy/discovered you can throw a bone to the LOL jobs. god forbid we become "real" one day...

I can't say I was expecting my post to get the kind of attention that it did, and I'm glad to see some people feel the way I do. :) Sense of community and all.

However, the postings in other threads are probably more likely to make other people try to draw ludicrous comparisons (such as MY JOB HAS IT WORSE, which is completely beside the point. People who "have it worse" shouldn't be uncaring about other people who also aren't terribly well off) or make them act like someone has committed sacrilege against the sacred forum dynasty of ages past (you know, as opposed to just ignoring it or silently reporting it), and so it might be better for one's sanity not to post it elsewhere, despite the fact that the effort is well received!

I think one of the issues with this forum is that people think that they're posting ideas that square enix's dev team is reading and will take into consideration which as of right now, does not seem to be the case. From the responses we've gotten so far its been along the lines of "Well you'll be happy to know that we have something planned for that!" or "Wow what a great idea! Unfortunately it doesn't meet up with the dev teams schedule/way of doing things, so it's not happening - sorry!" There doesn't seem to be any indication that the dev team trusts the playerbase to knows what works and what doesn't.

Of course, you cant go giving everybody what they think is best, but I think with Pup there needs to be a special exceptions made. I am not a pup but I know serveral people who are very passionate about the job and I can say with no doubts that the pup community is by far the most dedicated and informed groups in regards to what works and what does not work in regards to the way the job functions. I think at this point, the dev team *should* be paying more attention to you guys instead of just going ahead with whatever updates they seem to think pup needs - particularly when it comes to the technical aspects of the job. Sure, I'm certain nobody complained when the H2H skill was increased of Deux ex was added, but it seems like SE is completely baffled by the attachment/manuever/Automaton AI system and how they all work together. It seems a shame that they're adding attachments and weaponskills that don't really benefit the job by giving such minimal boosts and at worst, are completely counter intuitive to how the job plays.

As far as burts goes, I feel your pain. I'm sure that it was a mistake to begin with, and that an extra 0 was added by a clumsy coder but still, it seems exceptionally lame that SE seems to have a habit of carelessness with pup that tricks you guys into thinking that you're finally getting your chance to shine. I remember when the last set of automaton weaponskills were added there was a fiasco where pups were doing 3k+ damage with some attachment and Magic Mortar to big NM's and it was quickly denounced as an error and fixed. From what I've heard from my friends and posters the new weaponskills don't even seem that usable so it makes me wonder just who is testing these things and how they're checking to see how they work when used by an actual player.

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Originally Posted by Shibayama

As far as burts goes, I feel your pain. I'm sure that it was a mistake to begin with, and that an extra 0 was added by a clumsy coder but still, it seems exceptionally lame that SE seems to have a habit of carelessness with pup that tricks you guys into thinking that you're finally getting your chance to shine. I remember when the last set of automaton weaponskills were added there was a fiasco where pups were doing 3k+ damage with some attachment and Magic Mortar to big NM's and it was quickly denounced as an error and fixed. From what I've heard from my friends and posters the new weaponskills don't even seem that usable so it makes me wonder just who is testing these things and how they're checking to see how they work when used by an actual player.

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one things is: patch go up, see big number form ws, SE calls maint. and the ws get fixed;
other is: patch go up, see big number from weapon, 3-4 months passes, SE release new patch and the weapon get fixed;

3-4 months are a long enough time to call somethings not a code error but a reality...

yes, there was the earthquake but i doubt was that to stop the nerf in the first time...

So just to summarize, the following things are what PUP has been short-ended on...
1) Asuran Fists. We're the ONLY other job that MAINS Hand-to-Hand weapons and this is a Blue stagger WS. You honestly can't give us this?

2) WHM AI (I don't need a Poisona at <50% HP. I need a Cure.)

3) New Weapon Skills. I did try out String Shredder. And then I deactivated my Valoredge and prayed Armor Shatterer would be better. And then I deactivated THAT frame... I'll still use the frames due to me setting melee Atmas in Abyssea... But I'll stick to Bone Crusher and Armor Piercer/Daze(if I really need that stun)

4) The new attachments. You do realize that, when we Deactivate an Automaton, it's MP goes to full. Even if it 1% left, it'll go right back up to 100%. And Activate resets if the Automaton is deactivated with 100% HP. So what's the point of that Ice attachment? What was it called? ... I don't even want to bother looking it up since I know I'm not going to use it. And the counter attachment? You said when you released PUP that it was a pet job like BST but that it TANKS instead of the PET tanking. Why would we let something that can't receive cures from outside sources tank when we have better Evasion than it... Sure, Valoredge does have a nice HP pool... But the only things it's got to cure it is Repair and Cannibal Blade (Outside of abyssea. And, like the OP said, who takes PUP to anything that matters? EXP parties? The Automaton sure as hell isn't going to pull hate with the damage it currently puts out.)

I'm just baffled by the fact that you make these forums to get opinions from the players but things like this happen. Then again, this has been happening since PUP was released... These forums is more for face than it is for actual use.

Here's to hoping the new adjustments will be good! :)

No offense but these posts get old fast.

Burts was broken, its now fixed, and its back to pups needing Verethragna or Rev Fists if they want to be high end, and stringing pummel if they want to be just above average.

If you look at all past examples, 99% of the time they leave things in for 3 months and just patch it at the next update. If it were 100 tp/tic it would have been fixed over night, but as is it was 30 seconds for a ws with no melee, which wasnt terribly , but was obviously broken.

I feel bad for all you bandwagon pups who only started playing when burts were noticed to be broken.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

No offense but these posts get old fast.

Burts was broken, its now fixed, and its back to pups needing Verethragna or Rev Fists if they want to be high end, and stringing pummel if they want to be just above average.

If you look at all past examples, 99% of the time they leave things in for 3 months and just patch it at the next update. If it were 100 tp/tic it would have been fixed over night, but as is it was 30 seconds for a ws with no melee, which wasnt terribly , but was obviously broken.

I feel bad for all you bandwagon pups who only started playing when burts were noticed to be broken.

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agreed, think the pup community should complain the stuff that actually broke oe need adjustments, like A.I.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

Burts was broken, its now fixed, and its back to pups needing Verethragna or Rev Fists if they want to be high end, and stringing pummel if they want to be just above average.

If you look at all past examples, 99% of the time they leave things in for 3 months and just patch it at the next update. If it were 100 tp/tic it would have been fixed over night, but as is it was 30 seconds for a ws with no melee, which wasnt terribly , but was obviously broken.

I feel bad for all you bandwagon pups who only started playing when burts were noticed to be broken.

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It sounds like you didn't read the whole post, nor understand it, since the post wasn't simply about the change to Burats. That's too bad.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

No offense but...

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lol. If there's ever something that indicates someone is going to be offensive, this is it...

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

bandwagon pups

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See?

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Herein lies my confusion. Why did Square-Enix think it was necessary to nerf Burattinaios to the ground such that it is now worthless compared to just about any other weapon given the circumstances above? The ONLY thing it is useful for with 1 TP/tick is equipping when you’ve first entered a zone and are running to where the fighting will take place, and even then, you’ll probably end up with a whopping 50ish TP. You can’t switch into it between fights unless you want to lose the master’s TP and, quite frankly, the master’s WS are better than the automatons, so that would be ill advised.

Was having less than 1% of the population be slightly overpowered (and that is arguable) really that big of a deal? I mean, we’ve seen notes from the developers/forum moderators saying other updates “take too much time” or “we don’t have the resources,” yet they had time, desire and resources to change a value that hardly mattered to anyone. Did they really want to make a job that is already much maligned and/or misunderstood that much worse so that, what, even more people wouldn’t want to play it, or even fewer would want to take it with them to events? It boggles my mind.

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I read the whole post, but honestly nothing you said wasnt said by others already, and some of which were confirmed bugs and are being fixed (attachments and ws) so /pat on the back for putting it in one place x2?

And as far as "no offense" and "bandwagon pup"... trust me my 'offensive' responce would have gotten my post nuked with how sick i get of these posts

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

I read the whole post, but honestly nothing you said wasnt said by others already, and some of which were confirmed bugs and are being fixed (attachments and ws) so /pat on the back for putting it in one place x2?

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You do realize this was posted before the adjustments were announced, right, and the content of the message involved the whole thing, and not just what you quoted? And that it suspiciously mirrors some of the announced changes?

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

And as far as "no offense" and "bandwagon pup"... trust me my 'offensive' responce would have gotten my post nuked with how sick i get of these posts

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Well, I suppose if one must have a hobby...

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

No offense but these posts get old fast.

Burts was broken, its now fixed, and its back to pups needing Verethragna or Rev Fists if they want to be high end, and stringing pummel if they want to be just above average.

If you look at all past examples, 99% of the time they leave things in for 3 months and just patch it at the next update. If it were 100 tp/tic it would have been fixed over night, but as is it was 30 seconds for a ws with no melee, which wasnt terribly , but was obviously broken.

I feel bad for all you bandwagon pups who only started playing when burts were noticed to be broken.

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Not sure I agree that burts is "fixed". It does nothing now, litterally nothing. Just look at 2 of the level 89 JSE daggers as an example, Rapidus and Triplus? Now that burts has been nerfed down to the equivalent of that level 77(?) bst axe (I have one and I can't even remember the name since I never use it, it's just an inv -1 item) whose only use is for the paltry regain it is not on par with any of the other dropped 89 weaps. The only useful weaps for pup are trial weaps or the damn near impossible to get mythic Kenkonen. We don't even have a relic as an alternative.

Burts should not be a reatively weak level 77 equivalent. They are a level 89 JSE weapon and as such should be on par with the other level 89s. Moreover, pup was designed to be another solo type job, like beast but with a different skill set from the pet. In that regard, burts might actually be justified to be more powerful than the other 89s to keep that solo dynamic in place. 10/tic I'll agree was a bit high, but anything 3-6/tic would be appropriate.

I find it hard to say burts does nothing
Its more dmg and less delay then 90% of the trial weapons,
It adds 1 regain and for stuff like bcnm / hnm its useful to have full tp on pet, switch to a good weapon, then tactical switch, (for people with verethragna/rev fists)

Best of all, it took no trials, and can be gotten in as little as a single 30 min trip to abyssea.


I still think the OP was pointless as all of it was already stated in other threads before this, sorry to burst your e-bubble.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

I find it hard to say burts does nothing
Its more dmg and less delay then 90% of the trial weapons,
It adds 1 regain and for stuff like bcnm / hnm its useful to have full tp on pet, switch to a good weapon, then tactical switch, (for people with verethragna/rev fists)

Best of all, it took no trials, and can be gotten in as little as a single 30 min trip to abyssea.


I still think the OP was pointless as all of it was already stated in other threads before this, sorry to burst your e-bubble.

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Considerring that there has been precisely 0 words in response to pup concerns from SE, the OP had a perfect right to start a new thread. I honestly think every single pup with a beef should start a new thread until we actually start to get a response. And don't stop creating new threads until we do!

And as to your points about burts, without the higher regain I can get more desireable traits out of trial weaps than anything burts bring to the table. Attack, acc, def, eva, -pdt, +mab, etc.; all of that is more useful to me than standing arround for 100 tics so I can open with a WS. In aby where I can stack it with VV they are marginally useful, and I'll prolly take one when I fight the NM for whatever, but it's certainly not worth a dedicated trip now. I rate its utility about as high as those +weapon hachimaki pieces, nice if you have them when you need to skill your weapon up but certainly not a need. Burritos were a need.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

I feel bad for all you bandwagon pups who only started playing when burts were noticed to be broken.

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Yea man, all 8 of the pups on Siren jumps on that ****ing wagon...

30 minute trip to abyssea? What Tier 3 VNM takes 30 minutes? I guess if you are supremely lucky on upgraded abysite, MAYBE 30 minutes. It's also the only VNM that suicides with a 30' aoe magic spell, kills everyone in range and then depops.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

I still think the OP was pointless as all of it was already stated in other threads before this, sorry to burst your e-bubble.

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You must be talking about something else, given that this thread was started about the changes on THE DAY OF the changes and included mention of things that weren't even known until after they were rolled out. I'd find it hard to believe that an inordinate number of people had mentioned, say, the poor damage of AS prior to my post, much less before they had even released it and anyone knew. Even if it were, as unlikely as that is, repeating other threads, reiteration and expounding on issues are common in conversation and completely worthwhile.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

I find it hard to say burts does nothing
Its more dmg and less delay then 90% of the trial weapons,

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Most of end-result Magian weapons have the same damage and slightly higher delay, and those which people actually use have much better effects than allowing your pet another WS every 5 minutes. It's not like people were going out and getting +CHR Magian weapons. Comparing current-iteration Burats to most of the Magian weapons is like comparing the tastiness of unsweetened baking chocolate to that of a table. Since no one is going to eat the table, it doesn't make a difference what the chocolate tastes like. However, the taste of the baking chocolate, outside of the comparison, is not something anyone is going to enjoy.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

It adds 1 regain and for stuff like bcnm / hnm its useful to have full tp on pet, switch to a good weapon, then tactical switch, (for people with verethragna/rev fists)

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It takes 5 minutes for the weapon to tick up like that. It'd be a lot more efficient to get an Opo-opo Necklace and some sleeping potions, which is easier, faster and means you don't have to waste time getting a weapon that is otherwise useless.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

Best of all, it took no trials, and can be gotten in as little as a single 30 min trip to abyssea.

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You can win the lottery in as little as $1, too. Chances are, however, it will take days/weeks depending on how long it takes to change your demilune and get a group together to do it - a group who would be willing to waste their time for you to get what is now a worthless weapon from a T3 monster who people can't be bothered to fight because it doesn't carry anything else that's valuable. It's especially uninviting when anyone could go beat up easy monsters during weather/day for the same potential amount of time and get something much better.

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Originally Posted by Dfoley

e-bubble

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Sometimes I wonder about people.

tbh it also drops that awesome "enhances stoneskin"/enhancing magic casting time- belt which is quite useful to alot of pple. not to mention colorless souls which r annoyingly popular atm so..... i believe its still valuable ^^ lil research goes a long way

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Originally Posted by Xanaduu

tbh it also drops that awesome "enhances stoneskin"/enhancing magic casting time- belt which is quite useful to alot of pple. not to mention colorless souls which r annoyingly popular atm so..... i believe its still valuable ^^ lil research goes a long way

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Oh, I know what Ogopogo drops. I'm unconvinced that it makes a difference, as I don't see any of those items hotly (or even remotely) sought after, certainly not enough to be the spur that makes people want to help a PUP get their now-defunct Burats. The "annoying popularity" of the colorless souls, if they are even popular, almost certainly is an artifact of being T3 VNMs - on spawn timers - where just a handful of people wanting to upgrade their harp or shield when they need 75 of the souls would make it seem like they were being camped to death.

But then, I can't tell you how many times my emerald demilune has tracked Brulo in Abyssea - Altepa. In my experience, one is more likely to accidentally pop him by resting than to actually see or hear about someone fighting him for colorless souls. Koios, on the other hand, seems to be up only for a few seconds before he's rendered into a thong-wearing corpse, which, I think, speaks do the difference in popularity.

Though, I guess, to be fair, maybe people who want to upgrade *anything* for Bard and Paladin are a lot more popular where you are.

The update today (5/13) seems to have given a considerable boost to the new weaponskills, though I haven't tested them on monsters in the Heroes areas. AS seems to have gotten a much bigger boost (it seems to be hitting near 3k on DC tree in Kon, as opposed to 800-1300 before) than String Shredder, but that's to be expected, I should think.

So far, they look promising!