New Weapon Skill Extenterator (Dagger) for Puppetmaster.

[Alhanelem]

If your pup isnt doing more dmg then a thf, then the pup isnt gearing correctly....

No, it's the other way around. While PUP isn't quite a bottom feeder anymore, it's still not going to outperform other people who are serious about their jobs.

All i said from there was even thf (arguably the best dagger user) cant even out DD a pup using h2h.

Actuallly that may no longer be true. DNC is right up there and in a DD mode DNC has more haste than a THF can get without having a DNC supporting them, and has a huge rate of double attack. You're still wrong about PUP beating a dagger user that's playing right. Of course, in a solo situation, it's harder for a THF to maximize its damage. daggers are specialist weapons that are weak on their own but jobs that mainly use daggers get many abilities that bump up their power. PUP doesn't naturally have any offensive boosting abilities. They are most able to enhance the pet, which sadly can't be buffed up much outside of what the master can do for them.

The strong players who are criticizing PUP are not ignoring the pet damage. What they do is compare the performance of the master to a similar caliber player of another job, and then use this information to determine the performance gap that the pet must offset for the job to perform on par. The pet really does not fully make up for the performance gap of PUP's lack of offensive job abilities, slower attack speed and lower base damage due to less HTH skill versus the only other job with the same primary weapon. PUP performs best when haste is out of the picture- the more haste that is available to the players, the more of a disadvantage that PUP is at- Both because the pet doesn't benefit, and because PUP's far more frequent use of job abilities slow down his own attacks.

As valiant a defender as I can often be as PUP, I can still see the job's failings and where it most needs to improve to be a real contender. It has improved greatly over the last year or so, but it still has a ways to go before anyone will really accept it.

TLR; Daggers sure as hell are not EVER going to help PUP and giving them the dagger weapon skill is a collosal waste of time )even if it literally took 1 second to implement) and totally pointless because no one should ever use it.

[Arcon]

Well i said 2-3x not 3x. And you are already admitting that dps per hand is > on pup than thf.

Very misleading. The raw damage, maybe, and by a completely unnoticeable amount (0.4%). That's before you take higher Triple Attack into account, along with higher Attack and Accuracy, a lot higher critical hit rate and even higher critical hit damage increase. Not to mention better DD gear than PUP (easier for THF to reach the delay cap than PUP too). So in the end, THF will decimate PUP in melee damage, disregarding the automaton (as in, easily 50% more damage than PUP).

Add in our pets as is and its pretty darn close to 2x. Add in our pets post pupdate, and its closer to 3x.

No, pet damage post pupdate you'll pull ahead of THF again. But probably not by much. The only time PUP was ever a good DD was with pre-nerf Burattinaios. Now it's probably ahead of THF, but on a comparable level. Not 2x and not even close to 3x.

[Dohati]

i just think it'd be nice if pup had a decent dmg option that wasn't blunt for those blunt-resistant or blunt-immune mobs.

[Motenten]

Well i said 2-3x not 3x. And you are already admitting that dps per hand is > on pup than thf. Add in our pets as is and its pretty darn close to 2x. Add in our pets post pupdate, and its closer to 3x.

Using non-empyreans for simplicity:

Thf:
TA - 6% (trait), 5% (merit), 3% (AF3), 3% (Epona) = 17%
DA - 5% (Brutal), 3% (Epona), 3% (Atheling), 2% (Twilight) = 13%

Delay/round at max haste with a pair of magian daggers: 76
1 swing every 26.24 delay.

Pup:
TA - 3% (Epona) = 3%
DA - 5% (Brutal), 3% (Epona), 3% (Atheling), 2% (Twilight), 3% (AF3) = 16%

Delay/round at max haste with magian h2h: 108
1 swing every 44.44 delay


So Thf swings 69% more often. Crit damage bonus means another edge of ~1.5% total melee damage (excluding SA/TA), so I'll just merge that with swing frequency and call it a 70% lead.

Therefore the pup needs to be doing 70% more damage per hit just to break even.

Thf: 45 base on Kila +3 dagger plus ~8 fStr = 53 base damage. Pup needs to have 53 * 1.7 = 90 base damage to break even with thf.

Assuming the same 8 fStr, and with Taipan +3s giving +32 dmg, you need 50 dmg from skill. Cap for pup at level 95 is 376 skill, plus 16 from merits, 7 from Faith and 5 from AF3 head gives you 404 skill, or 47 dmg.

So, you're 3 base damage short of being able to match the thf on the melee side, not counting SA/TA, accuracy or attack, and before accounting for weaponskills. And at those haste levels you aren't going to be getting a 50/50 master/pet split to pretend you can reach 2x thf damage; probably closer to 90/10. The extra ~10% from the puppet is balanced against the ~3% shortfall in base damage plus whatever edge thf can get with SA/TA (will also be fairly low at those haste levels, but still enough to make that gap pretty much disappear).

Lots of additional variations can be had with different weapons (including Empyreans) with different damage and delay values. However nothing is going to change the overall balance enough to get anywhere even remotely close to the idea of pup doing 2x or more damage than thf. If your pup is doing that much more damage than your thf, then your thf sucks.

[Kristal]

Although I agree PUP's 2x+ damage claim under ideal circumstances is farfetched, your numbers are skewed in favor for THF.
For starters, DA and TA do not stack. You're using THF/NIN, but PUP/--- instead of PUP/WAR. Also, you can't compare fSTR like that, since H2H uses a different formula for weapon rank.

[Arcon]

For starters, DA and TA do not stack.

I'm pretty sure he knows that. It's not much of an issue anyway. TA will take priority, so it will just remove 17% of the DA swings.

0.17*0.13 = 0.0221

So a THF would get 72.21% single hits, 10.79% double hits and 17% triple hits:
0.7221*1 + 0.1079*2 + 0.17*3 = 1.4479
(76/1.4479)/2 = 26.24

Which means 44.79% additional attacks, which means 26.24 delay per swing on average.

You're using THF/NIN, but PUP/--- instead of PUP/WAR.

No, he's using THF/---. The only thing THF gets from /NIN is Dual Wield anyway, which plays no part in these calculations, since they just assume delay cap, not how it is reached. THF can reach that without /NIN at 98 (THF will get nothing damage related from /NIN at 99).

Also, you can't compare fSTR like that, since H2H uses a different formula for weapon rank.

H2H uses floor((D+3)/9) instead of floor(D/9). THF has rank 5, PUP has rank 4 at 99 (rank 3 at 95, assuming Taipan Fists +4 vs. +3 at 95). The fSTR calculation is the same. Also, interestingly, THF has more STR than PUP, even more so in this particular scenario from the offhand Kila.

[Kristal]

Ah, I see where I went wrong in my own calculations in Excel. Somehow I ended up at the same 69%, but I made a wrong conclusion there.

Still, THF has an advantage in that setup. Once you add proper gear in the mix, and fight tougher stuff, PUP does start to pull ahead.