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

[Selindrile]

Before I say what I'm going to say, don't get me wrong, I -do- think Pup could use a buff, and I wouldn't be opposed to automaton survivability.

That said, I've done many SKNM Difficult, and AA Difficults with Pup in the party, they're actually one of the better DD for many AA because of their ability to clear hate. They're used somewhat frequently here on Fenrir.

I haven't done nexus or fulcrum with them, but there's a lot of other jobs I haven't done them with either, that don't get to go to AAs either. If you're not familiar with the strategy, use /nin to avoid AoEs, keep your pet out of range (which is easy to do if you know what you're doing) and use ventriloquy and dismiss your pet to clear your aggro, it's extremely useful with a Pld tank. If your Pup has a good Acc TP set and uses sushi, you're a worthwhile DD because you can also clear your enmity and keep DDing where the most other DD (except Drg, or Rng, who can get away with /Drg) just have to suck it up with bouncing aggro till they die.

Delve after the latest update, is not so bad, and while I haven't done it with a Pup yet (I've only gone twice after the delve adjustment), I can't imagine it being a problem, especially Tojil, and I used to have Pups in my delve farming runs before the strategies were well known and people started actually killing bosses consistently instead of just farming.

And Pup does have the edge on Dyna farming for their ability to target WS procs, nobody else can do that efficiently. That said, if you've got no competition, just going Thf is probably better. But if there's a decent amount of JA proc competition at that time, Pup is quite nice to be able to target WS proc instead and so not overcrowd the mobs.

All that said, JA delay is a huge issue for Pup, and I'm a giant fan of making JA delay much, much lower, for Pup's sake, for Run's, and especially for Dnc, reducing JA -> attack delay considerably would allow you to use more maneuvers without sacrificing so much DPS.

TL;DR: I don't think Pup is in the dire situation the OP describes, but it could use a buff, as could most jobs that aren't the extremely popular ones.