Cure IV (conserve MP)

[Kysaiana]

1. Pup is terrible. It is the least popular job, and the least useful job. There is literally nothing in the game that pup excels at. Every single thing you could possibly do, another job can do better.

Anyone that thinks pup is the worst job in the game now, never played it back when ToAU came out... Doesn't really matter if it's the least popular job. Cor is the 2nd least popular job and it's very useful. Casting lower tier cures isn't really more mp efficient. Soulsoother doesn't have WHM AF3 pants, and it certainly won't be curing for 700-800 with cure IV. If you're getting cure VI when you're barely missing HP, don't ride light maneuvers or take off damage gauge, that way the puppet won't cure you till you're lower HP. Optic fiber will also make it cure at higher HP's in combination with damage gauge.

I don't see how casting cure IV would make PUP more popular, and I don't see how it would make it more MP efficient. That said, I wouldn't complain if they changed it, however, I doubt they will. Honestly, if people want to complain about a puppet, they should be complaining about Valoredge. Followed shortly by Sharpshot.

Valoredge does terrible damage, and it's not even useful as a "tank" as useful as those are today, since it's not capable of being cured nor does it heal itself outside of cannibal blade. Sharpshot is not as bad but it's ranged ACC leaves something to be desired, with the lack of a "Scope II" attachment. It also tends to die quickly if you can't manage to keep it out of AoE range, meaning it will rarely get a WS off before dying. Maybe if it got more than 10 TP per ranged attack it would be more useful in the fleeting moments before its untimely death.

tl;dr Soulsoother is fine these days, please complain about stuff that's actually broken with PUP.

[Mercilessturtle]

Anyone that thinks pup is the worst job in the game now, never played it back when ToAU came out

How bad it was then has no bearing on how bad it is now. It could have been the best job when introduced, and still be the worst now. It just so happens that it was the worst then, every job has been massively buffed since then, leaving pup still the worst job now.

Cor is the 2nd least popular job and it's very useful.

Popping your two hour and hoping to reset the two hours of the real jobs isn't what most people classify as "very useful".

Do stupid stuff to make your automaton even less useful to try to work around an obvious bug

Or how about they just fix the obvious bug, since it is a trivial fix?

I don't see how casting cure IV would make PUP more popular

It won't, which was kinda the point. The job is already bottom of the barrel. Fixing little bugs isn't going to suddenly make it overpowered, so there is no reason to be arguing against fixing them.

tl;dr Soulsoother is fine these days, please complain about stuff that's actually broken with PUP.

I have been for several years. SE has given us no indication that they understand how poorly pup performs, or that they care at all. And you have people like spiritreaver constantly arguing against fixing anything about pup (notice his "please keep maneuvers as a huge -10% damage" stance). Wanting the easy to fix bugs to be fixed doesn't mean we don't also want the huge issues fixed. But it is certainly easier to fix, and thus more likely to happen (and in a more reasonable timeframe) than the serious overhaul it will take to fix automatons as DDs. This isn't "please fix this one thing and leave everything else crappy", it is "here's another bug to add to the list of issues with pup".

[SpankWustler]

But why is this the case? It can't be that difficult to make the Healing focused pet at least somewhat competent at one of the most important aspects of healing.

Theory 1:

The part of the Development Bros' development (bro?) kit that handles spells cast by AI things is just wonky and not very advanced. Spell-casting monsters in FFXI started out as either random Black Mage beastmen, or big and scary things with a less than a half-dozen big and scary spells to augment their big and scary TP moves.

The current incarnations of the spell-casting automatons are so different than the original spell-casting monsters that they may well be the equivalent of some impoverished Russian guy's ingenious Russian ceiling fan built out of lawn mower parts, tin foil, one pair of pliers in lock position, and one pack of chewing gum.

Those guys are just doing the best they can with something weird and wonky, working on something way more complex than was ever meant to exist, using a decade-old development kit.

This might also explain why the Development Bros don't even know what the puppet actually does half the time, if that's not what it "should" be doing in accordance with a crazy mess of code piled onto itself endlessly.

Theory 2:

Like the last son or daughter jettisoned from a dying world, the Soulsoother automaton has been imparted with all the knowledge of its progenitors. All of it. Every bit.

Thus, how the Soulsoother cures is a window into how the Development Bros think curing a bro works.

This would definitely account for why the Development Bros don't know what the puppet actually does half the time, although I don't think "explain" is the right word here.

[Kristal]

1. Pup is terrible. It is the least popular job, and the least useful job. There is literally nothing in the game that pup excels at. Every single thing you could possibly do, another job can do better.

There are other jobs that don't particularly excel at something, but as popularity and usefullness go, I'm more inclined to put RDM at the bottom of the ladder.

Besides, there's at least one thing that PUP excels at: dyna procs.

[Theytak]

In general:

Not at all sorry about my view on this. I seriously consider it in the same vein as worrying about delay from using manuvers or the ongoing crusade by some to have Asuran Fists on PUP 'just because'. We all know how SE operates by now in regards to PUP and if having to pay attention to auto MP and actively work to keep MP up(just like mages have to incidentally) is one of the last areas where the job is struggling? That is fine by me, especially after the MASSIVE AI overhaul automatons recently got.

While I agree with your sentiments on asuran fists (we don't need it, shijin spiral and stringing pummel are both stronger, and it doesn't give us any new skill chain properties, because asuran fists and stringing pummel have identical SC properties (Gravitation/Liquefaction)), I know you've read my math as to the problems with maneuvers and why their delay severely hurts us in high haste situations, so I'd prefer you not ignore it, please. I also completely disagree with your stance on the issue in question here, but I'll respond to that with this,

I spent so many years dying because Klaxon felt the need to -na me instead of give me ANY cure. So my personal view on being able to force my little buddy to cure me at all, is very forgiving of what cure he uses. Its just another case of different strokes for different folks.

Two Cure 4's for 176mp(88x2) or one Cure 5(135mp) or one Cure 6(227mp); as long as i'm getting the bleedin' cure when i NEED the bleedin' cure, i couldn't be assed sweating which one Klaxon lays on me. That's me though of course, i'm easy.

As to not fighting stuff with no AOEs, is that somehow a bad thing? If i'm about to do an activity ingame and i know upfront that it is going to be AOE heavy, as much as i love PUP-its not gonna be my first choice. If others only have the one option of PUP for everything, i feel a bit for them-but ultimately its on them to diversify their available jobs.


That's about all i have to say on it. Feel free to lay into me as needed. Not the first or last time my view on something ingame isn't the more popular one.

I've spent just as many years dying because Caroline was being a derp as you have, and while I agree that any cure is better than no cure, I don't agree your "we should be happy with the shitty system they gave us because it's better than it was" sentiment. There are still several major flaws with Soulsoother/Stormwaker that really need to be worked out, and we shouldn't just sit by and idly accept that we got any change to them.

I've already explained my feelings on the issue of mp efficiency in this thread, so I'm not going to reiterate them, but I would also point out that for the most part, the -na over cure system IS STILL IN PLACE. If you have 1 light maneuver, your puppet will prioritize curing. However, if you're, say, in abyssea, and try to put up 2-3 LM to boost your cure potency for a bigger heal, this will cause your puppet to revert to -na's before cures. This is somewhat helped by cures and nas being on separate timers now, however there is still a universal delay and that can be enough to completely fuck you over.

Additionally, there are other issues. For example, we still can't force regen, and the puppet won't cast regen on the mobs where it's most desired; we still have to be fighting something DC+ to get regen at all, even though regen is all we need against most EP mobs, and TW mobs aren't even liable to touch us to begin with. They also removed our method of healing sleep when they took it off of eraser, which I still don't understand, and there's the ever present problem that our healer pet can only be used in combat, and with the separated recasts, this issue has been made worse because it's now more difficult to deploy the pet on a random mob you don't actually want to fight just to get your buffs up, because it'll cast slow or dia or something while the global recast is down, which means we need to spam deploy and retrieve, which is both annoying, and logistically stupid. It really makes absolutely no sense that we don't have an ability like, "Support" where the puppet acts as if it's deployed, but only casts healing and defensive magic. This would be so incredibly useful for both soulsoother and stormwaker being usable outside of combat, and also for allowing stormwaker to not drive you insane by starting the first fight where you don't need a buff with a damn thunder IV before you even get a chance to establish hate. I could go on, but I really don't feel like it.

Yes, look at how hard you don't care. If you didn't care, you wouldn't have said anything in the first place, much less posted huge rambling walls of text that amount to nothing more than "the job isn't bad because I have no idea how the game works". Your post couldn't be any more stereotypical of a delusional garbage-job special snowflake. You are not special because you are happy with a bad job. People who would like the job to not suck are not pretenders or posers. If you can't make a valid point and have to resort to "in my imaginary fantasy world I have been a pup longer than you", then you are better off simply keeping it to yourself. If you have an actual argument as to why obvious bugs shouldn't be fixed, then present it. If you don't care, then don't argue against it.

1. Pup is terrible. It is the least popular job, and the least useful job. There is literally nothing in the game that pup excels at. Every single thing you could possibly do, another job can do better.

2. Making pup better will not stop it from being fun. Fun and useful are not mutually exclusive.

Pup is not, in any way, the worst job in the game, and if you honestly think that, you're either very narrow minded, and parroting something you read posted by someone else who doesn't play pup and has no idea what they're talking about, or are just a terrible pup. I've got a very good idea how this game works, and I quite often post math related to the game mechanics, especially those related to pup. I've run all the numbers around the job, I know its strengths, and its weaknesses, and it is very far from "terrible" or "the least useful" that you're claiming it is.

The problem is that you're looking at pup through zerg-colored glasses. Pup is not a zerg job, that is a fact, one which I have done the numbers on many times, and is unlikely to change, short of an act of god. Pup not performing as well as other DD jobs in high-haste, high buff situations does not, however, suddenly mean that pup sucks in every other situation.

In response to your first point, let me explain both why pup is the least popular job, and why its popularity has absolutely no reflection on its overall ability. I won't deny pup's popularity being what it is, since SE has given us the cold hard numbers. However, you really shouldn't be so dense as to assume it's a matter of "pup sucks, so it's unpopular" because throughout the history of FFXI, that has never once been the case for any job. There are several reasons pup sits at the 20th slot, and trades off with corsair, but "pup being terrible" is not one of them.

One of the most prominent reasons are the very high start up cost (pup is one of the most expensive jobs to fully gear, because of the cost of the attachments, especially those from ashu talif) and while over time, bst, rng, nin, and cor will all dwarf pup's cost due to the cost of their consumables/ammo, pup's big price tag comes very early, and in very large chunks. Aside from the high start up cost, there's also the high level of competence necessary to play pup well. Pup is not a job that one can simply deploy the pet, engage, swing for TP, ws, rinse, repeat. You can't play pup like you would a mnk or a sam, and expect to be remotely proficient at the job. Pup requires a lot more active thought, attention, and especially gear, than most other melee jobs (though it has blu rivaling it on the gear front). Further, there is that annoying stigma that's been stuck with pup since it was released before it was ready, which, while no longer true in any sense, is incredibly persistent. There are other, smaller points for our popularity, but they're not really important atm.

Beyond that, though, to say that there is "literally nothing" that pup excels at is both a complete crock of shit, and incredibly loaded. Your use of the word "literally" is completely wrong, because there are, in fact, things that pup has the #1 slot for, such as single target nukes with the same spell (pup thunder V vs blm thunder V vs sch thunder V, pup will come out on top if you account for universally possible things, like day/weather procs; and no, I'm not saying pup is a better nuker blm and sch both nuke faster and more often, and have more variation in their spells), greatest ability to customize one's pet's stats (and actually the only job with this ability), greatest melee damage from a job that is capable of casting cure VI, a job capable of casting T5 nukes, as well as being the only job capable of casting both cure V/VI AND use T5 nukes (not at the same time).

Finally, pup does, in fact, have two claims to fame. First is our evasion, and by extent, our survivability. No, point for point, we do not have the highest evasion. That belongs the thf; and our spot as 2nd best was stolen from us when dnc got Eva Bonus IV, since they have a higher evasion skill, however that 6 skill difference is negligible. Further, While thf has the best evasion, thf can't heal itself without bloody bolts, which aren't really that reliable on anything very difficult. Dnc and Pup are effectively tied for the role of best evasion soloer, since waltz's recast timer and TP cost cause it to effectively mirror pup's 15 second global healing recast. After that, pup's strongest point is, and has always been, hate generation; or rather, lack thereof. We nuke essentially hate free. While we don't put out as much damage as the heavy DDs, we rarely ever have to hold back, either. We're able to put out just enough damage to make a dent, but not pull hate. Sure, this is rather irrelevant at the moment, because of how badly the hate system works at 99, but that doesn't mean it stops being true, it just means it's lets obvious.

Honestly, the last bit of your point, "Every single thing you could possibly do, another job can do better." blatantly ignores something very important. How many other jobs are capable of using T5 elemental magic, High level healing magic, and very respectable melee numbers? Sure, Whm will heal better, Blm will nuke better, and Mnk will put out more damage, but I've never seen a monk cast thunder V or cure VI themselves (ignoring DB alts, because 2 characters are not 1 character).

Now, the word I'm about to use is often a cause of controversy for us, but it's really hard to deny; pup is one of the most versatile jobs in the game. Pup is a hybrid job, and always has been. While, of the hybrid jobs, pup is the least able to quickly switch between roles on the fly, it trades that for being the most potent of the hybrid jobs in almost all of its roles. Compare the other hybrid jobs that can melee, and pup is easily the strongest in that regard, though if they really put effort into it, dnc isn't far behind, and can pass pup up in certain situations; and while we're not able to put out the same level of magic damage as blus, we can very easily compete with schs if hate is any issue at all, and since the healing magic buff, pup has become a very strong healer, if geared right and played intelligently (sub sch or whm). We're no whm, but we can hold our own against a sch or a rdm, and in some respects, surpass them.

Pup is a fucking amazing job, that can do a lot of shit in a single job that most other people have to level, gear, and merit 3-4 different jobs to accomplish. Saying it's terrible in this day and age is just ignorant. Zerg's aren't everything, and when a job can do more than just melee, you can't measure its total value purely by its performance in zergs.

[Spiritreaver]

While I agree with your sentiments on asuran fists (we don't need it, shijin spiral and stringing pummel are both stronger, and it doesn't give us any new skill chain properties, because asuran fists and stringing pummel have identical SC properties (Gravitation/Liquefaction)), I know you've read my math as to the problems with maneuvers and why their delay severely hurts us in high haste situations, so I'd prefer you not ignore it, please. I also completely disagree with your stance on the issue in question here, but I'll respond to that with this,


I've spent just as many years dying because Caroline was being a derp as you have, and while I agree that any cure is better than no cure, I don't agree your "we should be happy with the shitty system they gave us because it's better than it was" sentiment. There are still several major flaws with Soulsoother/Stormwaker that really need to be worked out, and we shouldn't just sit by and idly accept that we got any change to them.

I've already explained my feelings on the issue of mp efficiency in this thread, so I'm not going to reiterate them, but I would also point out that for the most part, the -na over cure system IS STILL IN PLACE. If you have 1 light maneuver, your puppet will prioritize curing. However, if you're, say, in abyssea, and try to put up 2-3 LM to boost your cure potency for a bigger heal, this will cause your puppet to revert to -na's before cures. This is somewhat helped by cures and nas being on separate timers now, however there is still a universal delay and that can be enough to completely fuck you over.

Additionally, there are other issues. For example, we still can't force regen, and the puppet won't cast regen on the mobs where it's most desired; we still have to be fighting something DC+ to get regen at all, even though regen is all we need against most EP mobs, and TW mobs aren't even liable to touch us to begin with. They also removed our method of healing sleep when they took it off of eraser, which I still don't understand, and there's the ever present problem that our healer pet can only be used in combat, and with the separated recasts, this issue has been made worse because it's now more difficult to deploy the pet on a random mob you don't actually want to fight just to get your buffs up, because it'll cast slow or dia or something while the global recast is down, which means we need to spam deploy and retrieve, which is both annoying, and logistically stupid. It really makes absolutely no sense that we don't have an ability like, "Support" where the puppet acts as if it's deployed, but only casts healing and defensive magic. This would be so incredibly useful for both soulsoother and stormwaker being usable outside of combat, and also for allowing stormwaker to not drive you insane by starting the first fight where you don't need a buff with a damn thunder IV before you even get a chance to establish hate. I could go on, but I really don't feel like it.

Fair enough Jinte.

And your right, i, unlike some, actually have sat down and gone over your math on things PUP various and sundry and its solid(the few times i ever had an issue with info you gave out, you yourself have corrected before i could even say anything). I guess just chalk it up to me being old now, i just don't get as rile'd up to some things as i used to. And things that i would have gotten super-ticked about, i just deal with it now.

Admittedly prolly not the best stance to have, but there you go.

I prolly wouldn't have said much of anything after my first post in this thread, but i admit angryturtleman amused me. I wanted to see how good a rant he could muster. Gave it a 6/10, made me chuckle-almost a 7. Just a tad too zealous.

[Theytak]

I prolly wouldn't have said much of anything after my first post in this thread, but i admit angryturtleman amused me. I wanted to see how good a rant he could muster. Gave it a 6/10, made me chuckle-almost a 7. Just a tad too zealous.

I can't knock you for that, that's the only reason I reply to half the shit I read.

[Mercilessturtle]

I've never played ffxi.

At least you acknowledge that pup is a terrible DD job, and don't pretend losing 10% damage to maneuvers is ok. But your justification for pup being good is laughable. We're almost as good as dnc and nin/dnc at evasion soloing, that is not impressive. He'll, I'd put blu up there as on par with pup for evasion solos even. You even admit hate-free damage doesn't matter at all, anywhere, ever, yet pretend it is somehow still making the job good. Notice how often smn is used for their hate free damage? That we can do the part of smn's job that smn never gets used for does not make us good. Pup can't even come close to touching a sch as a healer, or even a pathetic rdm. Go use a job other than pup so you can actually see how poorly pup functions in comparison.

I am a special snowflake and am going to pretend player skill magically makes bad jobs good.

Notice how all you special snowflakes can never make a real argument, but have to resort to pathetic logical fallacies like "you're not a real pup" or "I've played pup longer than you" or "you just suck at pup"? You are not special. Plenty of people like me have played pup just as long as you have, and yet still manage to use our brains and realize the job is still badly in need of being fixed. Just because I am capable of objectively assessing that the job currently sucks, doesn't mean I wasn't around when it sucked even harder.

[Theytak]

At least you acknowledge that pup is a terrible DD job, and don't pretend losing 10% damage to maneuvers is ok. But your justification for pup being good is laughable. We're almost as good as dnc and nin/dnc at evasion soloing, that is not impressive. He'll, I'd put blu up there as on par with pup for evasion solos even. You even admit hate-free damage doesn't matter at all, anywhere, ever, yet pretend it is somehow still making the job good. Notice how often smn is used for their hate free damage? That we can do the part of smn's job that smn never gets used for does not make us good. Pup can't even come close to touching a sch as a healer, or even a pathetic rdm. Go use a job other than pup so you can actually see how poorly pup functions in comparison.

I'm sorry, but how are game mechanics that affect every job now some how an inherent flaw with pup? It's not our fault all SE's released since abyssea came out has been zerg events. The fact that you seem to be stuck on the idea that "ZERG DD IS ONLY MEASURE OF JOB QUALITY" is rather silly, though. Besides, on the matter ofhealing, it just depends on how intelligent you are, your gear, and your sub. You didn't think I meant "the puppet alone" can heal that well, did you? I'm not stupid.

Notice how all you special snowflakes can never make a real argument, but have to resort to pathetic logical fallacies like "you're not a real pup" or "I've played pup longer than you" or "you just suck at pup"? You are not special. Plenty of people like me have played pup just as long as you have, and yet still manage to use our brains and realize the job is still badly in need of being fixed. Just because I am capable of objectively assessing that the job currently sucks, doesn't mean I wasn't around when it sucked even harder.

It's cute that you think this, but I'm pretty far from the "special snowflake" camp. Actually, to be perfectly arrogant, who the hell are you, anyway? There's no more wrong with pup than there is wrong with pld. We're held back by shitty game mechanics that apply to everyone, not shitty job design. Yes, we have some issues, but most of our problems have been fixed for a while, and what's left are mostly annoyance things.

You know when pup did suck? When we had C+ h2h skill, got put on nothing but mage gear, couldn't equip any of the good h2h weapons, our puppets had a global recast, the ashu talif attachments didn't exist, and we didn't even have fucking martial arts. Pup sucked then. Pup does not suck now. Pup is not terrible. What is terrible is that for some stupid reason, people have started measuring jobs only by how well they can DD in zergs, as if nothing else ever existed, and that's the only type of event SE will ever add again.

[Mercilessturtle]

1. It has nothing to do with zergs. Yes, pup is especially bad at DDing in high haste situations. But it is also very bad at DDing in typical "just haste spell" situations too. Going to duo some random NM with a whm isn't a zerg, and pup is still way behind real DD jobs for doing that.

2. No, it doesn't "just" depend on your sub and smarts. It also depends on game mechanics. And the game mechanics dictate that sch is miles ahead of pup as a healer. Rapture, aurorastorm, light arts regen V, penury, accession buffs, sublimation, etc. Pup can be a last resort healer when you've got no better options, but you have to be delusional or completely ignorant of other job's capabilities to suggest that pup is a better healer than sch.

3. Ignorance of other job's capabilities is the basis of your argument. You still think pup nukes hard ffs! How about you join the rest of us in 2012 before arguing how totally awesome pup is? Remember when they gave us ice maker to make up for automatons having no gear, and that is what made pup nuking strong? Have you noticed they gave blms and schs ice maker now too (magian staves), on top of their massively better gear?

4. You are still acting like a special snowflake while insisting you aren't. Who cares who I am? What kind of stupid question is that? I am a random pup, just like you are. There's no magical "real pup club" you can join that makes your argument more valid. Yes, we have some issues. Yet here you are, arguing that the job is fine and shouldn't be fixed. That makes a lot of sense doesn't it?

5. I already pointed this out, but obviously I need to do it again. The fact that pup used to suck even worse, doesn't mean it is good now. Yes, I was a pup when we had shitty skill and no gear. Yes, it sucked a lot. Yes, we have been buffed since then. So has *every* other job. Stop comparing 2012 pup to 2007 blu to declare pup totally awesome. Look at the realities of the game as it is now. Compare 2012 pup to 2012 every other job. We're a mediocre evasion soloing job, that's it. Take the time to learn what other jobs are capable of before pretending pup excels at things other jobs are far better at.

6. Our versatility isn't a strength, this game is designed around specialist roles. Nobody wants a job that can do a poor job of 3 things, they need someone to do one thing, and do it well. When was the last time you saw a pup and a pup being healer+dd instead of a whm+war? The game has always had the ability to job change, and they made it so everyone can have every job at 99 easily. You don't see pups being invited to heal because "in theory if I changed sub and re-did my attachments I could switch to being one of the worst DDs in the game instead of one of the worst healers in the game".