Automaton massacre: The need for some form of Automaton damage mitigation

[Balloon]

I understand that Puppetmaster might not be the greatest DD in the world, but with Oatixur, good gear, and Divinator it can be respectable. Except in any new content.

Keeping an automaton alive is a great deal of work, when a single WS can take it down 50%-75% and with only repair and items to keep it alive, and role reversal to keep it alive.

Maybe something to allow our pet to mitigate more damage, maybe changing replicator to no longer be when your HP is low, and having shock absorber be more potent.. And more native PDT.

It's just tedious having your automaton dead more often than it is alive.

[Balloon]

I'm not talking about for solo content, I'm talking about new content - Content where large amounts of PDT and shadows are required in order to even survive.

There's next to no way for automatons to recover in a speedy way - Beastmasters have repair and around 6k hp for their pets, Dragoons can function perfectly well without their wyverns and Summoners can quickly resummon their pets.

'Knowing how to play the job' - really is a nonissue here. We're talking about new content. Not level 75 content that you solod.


Even with AF1+4, Guignol and Miniexpac pants it's hard to keep an automaton alive in new content, and if your solution to that is "Keep 3 Light maneuvers up" ... a solution that eats massively into dps of both automaton and master, and even if you were just using whm automaton anyway would cause the pet to cure at 90% which is massively inefficient,. then there's a problem. We're simply much less effective in new content thanks to a mixture of a need to micromanage our pet, our lack of automaton and the need to balance automaton stats and master stats.

It's strange to me that DRG, a job less focused on their pet, can manage to keep their wyvern alive longer than an automaton can stay alive. When I did AA TT with 2drgs their wyverns stayed alive for a good 70% of the fight, whereas my auto died in the first couple of minutes.

[Balloon]

The only way I can see that is with a lot of earth maneuvers, in which case you're eating so far into yours and your pets DPS that it becomes a moot point. JA delay is a huge problem in this game. You'd also have to alter out some of the attachments and it's already a crapshoot with the accuracy automatons have.

The game doesn't accomodate a jack of all trade job. And part of the solution to that would be allowing us to not worry so much about our automaton HP.

[Balloon]

But the idea that Pup should somehow be more powerful is not something I would go with, it is already powerful in the right situations and if played in the according way.

I don't see the balance in having a job that can sometimes kite a little better when there's effectively 0 content based around that. Let's not pretend that all content is equal. When 90% of the new content is geared around mobs that spam AoE, and that require high levels of PDT and Damage Mitigation to survive, then jobs should have some way of dealing with that. Most do in the form of shadows, or having a whm around that can help you deal with it.

I took my automaton to skirmish in Out'Rak - I could stay alive thanks to our WHM. My automaton had to eat Back to back AoEs. It has 1.2~1.3k hp depending on your animator. When 1 of those does 700 and the timer on repair is 3 minutes I fail to see a way it could have survived, sparing spamming maneuvers and severely reducing my dps.

Call beast is also on a 5 minute timer, and pets usually have enough hp to last that long, if not there's reward, if not there's muslum. We have to respawn our pet with 330 hp. It dies near instantly if we can't repair it quick enough. In terms of pet survivability, BST has us beat and then some.

Pup has a place, but that place tends to be doing Ilvl < 110 and soloing old content. All I want is for some way to make it even remotely viable on content that has heavy AoE

[Balloon]

I don't even.. All I said was that in party content the automaton can not stay alive. I didn't mention solo. I didn't mention always using WHM auto, in fact, I rarely do outside of solo situations.

You might not have a problem with automaton survivability in your content, but I fail to see how others don't if their automaton is in melee range. All the AA have extensive aoe abilities that hit for upwards of 1k . And no, sacrificing lots of Master Haste acc atk etc is not a solution to that problem. Eating mountains of ja delay to keep up 3 earth maneuvers isn't either. You become useless either way.

Try going to an AA as a melee character without shadows. Without PDT. You'll die. That's the situation our automaton faces.It's not about being 'uber in all situations' - It's about being completely useless in many.

Also, putting 5 merits into Repair means we lose upwards of 10 acc in either ranged accuracy or melee accuracy. Once again, something we can't afford to do. With a RoE animator you already sit at around 710 accuracy, which isn't enough to have even a 30-50% hit rate on content greater than Normal. Even on normal my automaton had trouble hitting with just RoE.

Divinator helps a little, but I'd still argue that Regimen, Hurch'lan, Stabilizers, scope, and a whole slew of other boons are needed just to get an acceptable hit rate. Then you need to pile on the attack attachments, Turbo charger 1 and 2, Optic Fiber and what you're left with is very little in terms of slots.

A job as weak as puppetmaster currently is shouldn't have to make all those sacrifices, because it makes bringing one untenable. 'Oh hey. I'll bring my pup, but don't mind me I'll just have to sacrifice HUGE, HUGE amounts of damage in order to keep my automaton alive, and even then he'll probably only hit 50% of the time because I had to remove all boons he could get to throw on earth attachments and maneuvers... What's that? You'll just bring literally any other job. Okay '

When your perspective is "New Colonization Reives" I'd hazard a guess that we're not talking about the same content. I can keep my automaton alive with nothing in those.

I also don't think you understand just how damaging ja delay is. Keeping 3 maneuvers on at all times reducing dps by as much as 20-30%. Then you're reducing it further with repair, then even further with attachment choices, then even further removing 5 merits into something useful.

[Balloon]

That's entirely the problem. That's entirely the problem I am outlining. You are a detriment to everyone if you're stacking earth and using Valoredge. That's entirely the problem.

I don't even mean the whm frame. I never once even said that. That isn't the frame I was talking about.

I never said it should be perfect in every situation but it's just not usable in 90% of the current, relevant content in this game. And by that I mean Delve, Skirmish 3, and High-level Battlefields including SKCNMs higher than or at Normal Difficulty.

Screw it, give the whm auto Damage taken +10%, that's not even remotely what I was trying to say. When you base your entire job on the efficacy of a pet, you would think that it could at least compete in 90% of todays relevant content. Which it cannot. ANY job can compete better than a 3 earth maneuvered valoredge. If I used PDT claws I'd have to give up oatixur, which is another reason why it'd be untenable to invite me.

I'm not saying I should be a Monk + A pet. I'm saying that Me + A DD pet should approach, but not surpass a monks ability to deal damage. It doesn't.


And no, really, a wisely placed maneuver is not the difference between a loss and a win. Taking any other dd instead of a pup can be though.

And the RNG automaton doesn't even position itself out of 90% of the games AoEs for christ sake. It stands 15 yalms away. Most AoE is 20 yalms.


I'd like you to give me one situation where a Puppetmaster is more beneficial in todays current end game content than another dd. Because you can be situational, but if those situations aren't situated in the current Meta-Game then what's the point. The current Meta is focused around HighLevel Battlefields and Skrim3/Delve. PUP does not strive, nor does it even compete well, in those.

[Balloon]

PUP shouldn't be able to go to events because Automatons are like laptops. Okay.

One of those little machines is literally an analogue to paladin.

[Feary]

This highlighted quote also applies to most DD except MNK, they have been excluded from events for a long while now. I have a decent WAR but nobody will take it over a well-geared MNK. Lots of jobs are excluded from mono-content including Pup.

Your avatar lists MNK as your main job, so you could use that in events requiring a heavy DD, and most events would take you over other DD jobs in a flash. PUP was never designed as a party-based heavy DD in the way that MNK is, it is possible that you played MNK as main and are concerned that PUP is not as relevant in events, which is true. Pup was always a technical job, not a brute force job, and this dates back to the birth of Pup in 06~.

In AA for example, I am always asked to go WHM, sometimes THF, only a few times have I been told Pup is OK to bring, but I am used to that because people want brute-force DDs, PLDs or WHMs in events, and Pup has been this situational pet job for the eight years I've played it - its nothing new. And the fundamental thing is that Pup was never suited to certain situations, while it excelled in others. So it isn't news and I'm never surprised when people want MNKs and I'm told to bring my WHM lol. Because Pup is a versatile tinkerer job and it *never was* what people wanted as primary DD or tank etc.

BST is the same, it was never a heavy DD job, it was a highly risky pet job where a few mis-charms resulted in the Bst dying, and jugpets died in six hits. Stout Servant patch changed the pet job situation regarding pets dying so fast. But the three main pet jobs were never welcome in XP parties for example, Bst were hated, Pup was mocked and bullied, Smn had to go around for years with "Back-up cures / Do you need it?" in their LFP comments and use all their MP spamming cure II for hours just to get an xp party. In many ways Pup and Bst fared the same in events. That is because those jobs were never like MNK, which is the classic brute-force DD.

Re; automatons specifically they are small machines and if you own a laptop you will know how easily they break. They are not heavily armored Paladins, or brute-force monks, they are just small tinkered contraptions and when they were added to the game this was reflected in them dying so fast. But Pups learned to adjust by using the autos strategically in situational ways, and over the years Pup became the best kiting job and the best target-kill job for timed battles where you have to ignore the adds and kill the boss only. Pup is a very powerful job but only in the right situations, and this is a technical matter relating to the nature of it being a small machine.

I will just say, as my final offering, I don't disagree with you on any deep level and I see your points which are valid, and I don't have anything against SE buffing autos if that is what they want to do. I'm just saying that Pup was never a brute force DD or a supertank job, it is a quirky pet job with lots of variable playstyles and strengths/weaknesses depending on the situation.

LOOOLLLLLLLLLL. Random shout party wont invite me on my war. LOLLLLLLLLL so lets /whine and compare two totally different situations.

why is every post about someone being mistreated by job selection. its never just about the job or Player skill. Here there is a legitimate claim to pup and you must bash it.

if your playing skill and networking is decent you will get invites on WAR. Like all the other DD excluding BST or PUP and by extension SMN. They are pet jobs and excel/built as solo jobs and have a niche.

Stop trying to compare apples to oranges.

bst/Pup will never be sight out for the highest content or anything over ILvL 110. Like Delve or Skirmish, basically anything worth doing in a party setup 6 or higher. If they are its only because the group of players are being sympathetic to the player.

the reason why? it will require a strategy too accommodating to the PUP and not the other 5+ ppl in the pt. like an all pet burn.

like Balloon is trying to post. Maneuvering as JA and choose maneuvers for attachments is so detrimental to pup. it cant even been considered as a low to mid end DD. You are just stuck trying to either support your Automaton, sacrificing DPS or not using your Automation because its dead. again sacrificing DPS.

this is why PUP is truly LOLPUP.

Thank you balloon for pointing this out. hopefully. they take your posting in to serious consideration.

ps this is why i lol at all the pup because they have no idea why thier job is bad. instead of explaining this to them. i just troll them and say lolpup.

if you are claim to be a serious pup and dont know this about your job. then you arent a serious pup.

[Damane]

Well you keep talking about how using maneuvers is time-consuming and lowers your DPS, to which I say again that PUP is not a DPS MNK, it is a sophisticated pet job and maneuvers are the primary requisite of Pups, using the right maneuvers wisely can change a fail into a win. I wouldn't send my auto near the AA mobs unless it was valoredge and I was stacking earth maneuvers. If I was meleeing I would use the party WHM to cure me and a ranger frame positioned away from the NM.

From what you're saying is you want a sort of "monk with a damage-resistent PL" type of situation but that isn't what the Pup job was ever about. It is a pet job designed to modify the auto to adapt to different situations which I outlined earlier.

All that said, I will repeat the thing about we should be allowed to upgrade our magian fists to lvl 117 at least, with pet pdt say -25 on the finished piece. But in the meantime I don't have a problem doing new content on Pup, I know that this job was never intended to be perfect for every situation, it is a situational pet job not a dual-box MNK+WHM.

this has nothing to do with DPS or not, JA-delay affects every job and imho should be fixed/removed whatever. It effects most those jobs that have to use JAs alot: PUP (extremly) DNC, RUN. SCH to some degree with stratagems. Not only does it kill your DPS it prevents you from acting, I can count several times I missed on SCH a stun because I was in JA-Delay, or a cure because of JA delay.

While yes PUP is a Pet job, it is a DPS job in my eyes, with the versatility to adjust itself with different matons.

[Frost]

I agree to a degree that the maton is a little, um... "flimsy". But the issue I have, as someone pointed out earlier: It's a "Jack of all Trades, Master of None".

I admit I skimmed most of this thread, but I did read most of it until it turned into walls of text. That being said, my only addition, and it doesn't' really pertain to anything mentioned is the following (and it's based on what I usually hear in regards to Pup):

- Should the maton be a better paladin, than a paladin?
- Should the maton be a better ranger, than a ranger?
- Should the maton be a better healer than a white mage?
- Should the maton be a better melee than a [insert melee job here]?

- Should the master be a melee better than, or equal to a monk?

I hope you're seeing a pattern. Pup is a job that's just too much of everything, and in lies its own downfall.

The second the maton or master becomes 'good' at anything, it becomes the best at that thing because it has the other half as well. It's a nasty balancing act. Say if the Pup was as proficient as monk (for argument's sake), then you're have a heavy DD + a minor DD/Healer/Nuker/Ranged attacker. Flip that for the maton, if it was 100% a ranger, then it's a ranger + minor DD/extra DPS.

If the combo was 50% one job and 50% another to make a complete job, it's rendered 100% useless, as two half people aren't' the best way to play this game.

At the moment it seems like the balance is about 80% on both. Which for hard stuff makes it a waste of a slot/liability, as there are the things a Pup could be, but in their respective forms; I.E. Mnk, Whm, Rng, etc, etc, etc... On older content makes it easily 160%+ of a character, which makes soloing/independent content amazing. You don't hear 'top tier DD' complaining about the inability to solo stuff. Everyone has a role, find yours.

In closing, I got to say, "Old Dragoon" suffered from the same problem Puppetmasters do. It's the players... If you go in game and onto forums and complain so frequently as to why your job 'sucks', people will believe you. It's akin to going on a date or job interview and the first words out of your mouth is why you're such a loser, you think you're going to get very far?

Find the job's strengths and go with it. I love the job for what it does for me, but I'm not going to waste my time and everyone elses trying to shove a square peg in a round hole.