Automaton damage

[Jblauh]

I think giving the pet more dmg is silly. My friend plays Pup and he is doing incredible things with the job. We have him tank lots of high tier NMs effortlessly. Even seems to be resisting spells like Death for this Ambuscade and the damn this has like 4K hp and hardly loses hate. Even when I'm on Blu which is geared pretty well. When he uses his Ranger build he is doing massive SC dmg. He solos Apex mobs like nothing finishing them off super quickly with just a few SC's. The job as is right now seems incredible... So it's not doing dmg like Bst. Well big deal it plays differently. I'm a SMN and my pet dies when you fart by the damn thing. Our pets are ridiculously squishy. Now that's something that needs some looking into, but as for Pups atm, I think they're just fine. It tanks like a monster, and dps builds are pretty damn impressive. When my SMN MBs off his Pups SCs we rip through Apex mobs or a lot of NMs like nothing. Only thing I feel needs done to it is just some more control over its SC timing cause once in a while it will ruins our SCs when it tanks.

[Stamos]

Any news on this? PUPs have the biggest disadvantage between pet jobs. PUP has one niche use, which is tanking a singular mob. We have the least control over our pets, cannot macro in pet ws damage gear or enmity gear without sitting in that gear and waiting for the automaton to maybe do the action/ws. Even in fully amazing pet designed gear, Automaton's weaponskill damage is very weak.

Black mage automaton is terrible. Can do okay damage if you put it in a burst only situation. Cannot freely nuke. Designed based in the 75 era prior to magic damage changes.
White Mage automaton lacks curaga, worse than trust healers by a lot.
Red Mage is decent if you in a party situation where people forget to haste you. That's it. Worse than trusts by a lot as well.

[Laruni]

Maybe add job abilities to PUP like Ninja's Innin and Yonin? One JA can stop weaponskill use and give significant boost to enmity to puppet, so that when used with strobe and flashbulb the automaton can hold hate against players doing high damage and the puppet will not interrupt skillchains. The other ability could significantly increases attack and magic attack, since the puppet has access to a lot of accuracy already in gear.

While other jobs can go into content and kill it quickly, the automaton still takes a lot of time to kill things in comparison.

Other general adjustments would be appreciated too, since trusts are better than other frames that are not tank or damage dealer.

[Ilian]

I don't know about it being weaker. Maybe based on the 'damage+' stat that it looks stronger on paper. Apart from that, we never see String Clipper on anything you'd fight at 99 to know for sure if it hits harder. Overall, String Shredder hits not nearly as hard as we'd all like. It's pleasant when it does hit high though.

[waithuhwhat]

I don't know about it being weaker. Maybe based on the 'damage+' stat that it looks stronger on paper. Apart from that, we never see String Clipper on anything you'd fight at 99 to know for sure if it hits harder. Overall, String Shredder hits not nearly as hard as we'd all like. It's pleasant when it does hit high though.

That's true about String Clipper the only Clipper vs Shredder post I found is from 2014 saying that that update made them about the same. I just find it weird that this ws has had three updates deticated to increasing its damage, but its still so much behind Bone Crusher (vs non-blunt weakness mobs and non-undead mobs ofcourse).

[Ilian]

I'm unsure if this is part of these odd automaton weapon skill mechanics, but I'll use Sang Buaya as an example. If you have a WS set specifically for Shredder, this WS will outperform BC on this particular NM. Not always the skill itself necessarily, but the SC damage drops Sang quick. It may just be the darkness aspect of it honestly.

[Furlow]

I know they wanted Pup to be a unique design, but I still don't get why the job that should have the most control over it's "pet" has the least control. Adding a command that allows us to control when the puppet WS and which to use can't be that hard since they have it on BST and SMN. Even Drg has move to make wyvern use breath out of SC's. Then have the maneuvers being more for how much enhancement attachments do and activating special abilities like strobe, flash, barrage, ect... On nuking puppet, seems ok on that one, though its still hard to get them to MB if don't time when their cast timers are at, unless only engage them when want to MB. With help of a Geo and Cor rolls, my nuker is getting around 80k. MB, but that's with 3x ice up and a lot work on gear to get that high as is and heavy risk to overload.

While on this, I think a new ability should be one to make healer puppets be able cast outside of combat, including up to R3 at level 99. Maybe call it something like "Standing ovation"? or somethin that nature, give it like 30second recast so let it buff and heal between battles.