Reasons to level pupFollow

My original job was a monk, so I had already merited hand 2 hand, and enjoyed a high haste front row DD job. To me pup at first seemed like monk-lite with some more utility so I figured I'd give it a go. (This was when ToAU first came out)

Initially, everyone just assumed pup was a mage as far as melee dps went and no one wanted to consider the pets contribution as part of the masters, as such I spent many of nights solo, which for a puppetmaster worked rather well.

Skip forward 3 years: The number of 'pup-dates' have changed the class pretty drasticly. Including but not limited to: The addition of two heads, additional attachments, and finally upping the combat skill ranking to B+ for hand 2 hand as well as DEA and numerous other little tweaks. Now people view pup as more of a front line DD pretty much, now with the option of standing toe to toe with blm with their ability to function as a back line job as well.

The number one thing that made me switch from monk main to pup, was I HATE how many events are kite/back row only. Anything my monk would be sidelined on was a frustrating event for me. 1 chi blast every 5 minutes wasn't doing it for me. Now I have the option to bring one job to any event I choose and I have the option to melee or back row it, and be just as viable in either.


Now my real life best friend is leveling pup, and I am usually level syncing with him to dou our way up, and I gotta say, with all the changes (FoV especially) its a lot less painful to level. In fact its rediculously relaxing and easy, once you find a decent solo/dou location you can regularly get up to chain 5-6 on even/toughs. Then once they go to decent can just blow through em fast enough to make up for the lack of chain bonus.

Another thing I love is I can add DD to any mob. Piercing weak? Archer says high to 90% of the mobs in the game. Magic weak? Magebot says hi. Slashing? Yup got it covered. Not to mention i have the birdbanes, and slashing h2h weapons as well in the off event I need em.

On a side note:
If money isn't an option, I'd say just get all the attachments asap. Theres something about being level 19 with a RDM pet that can out nuke an even level BLM. Nukeing for almost 150-200 at that level was so lol funny to me while level syncing with my bud. Mob would start of at 50-75%, then our two rdm pets would enfeble it up and go back to nukeing.

Things like the tranquilizer wont get much use solo, but in pts its essential at low levels if you intend to use mage pet for DD. For some reason, at 20-40, that extra mag acc seems to be like 20x more effective then at 75+, but thats prolly just merits/gear overshadowing it some.


Edited, Oct 8th 2010 3:49pm by dustinfoley

BLM - 18 for warp
WAR/DNC/NIN/SCH - 49

WAR - your go to sub for most dd pts
nin- you sub when you want to have shadows and be nice to healers by not eating tiny ae every 30s
DNC - decent sub for solo and helping keep hp up, not a sub for most parties as it adds very little with pup main
SCH - 75+ and endgame choice for range/backrow, this is the only wrench as it requires a decent mage gear set for the pup instead of the regular dd. 40+ you can start this with a WHM head to help heal the pt but its not really that good till mid 60s+. Truth be told I use it very little but its nice to have.

As far as gear goes:
1-75, focus on EVA+ gear, since you will most likely be soloing a lot. There really isnt even any good DD gear till mid 50s so its not a huge issue. In a lvl 37 Ron (S) party as /war with full eva gear, you should be just as viable as a pld or nin.

75+ Start going for the MAB gear for pet, some mage gear for when you sub sch, and start getting that DD gear. You can probably go to 78 then do auroue gear till 85 at which point you really should do af+1 and get the cirque neck/belt.

completely agree, but from the perspective of "I'm almost always /sch". /sch and /nin are no different in terms of melee capability, unless you count a few points of str/dex difference, in which case you're being waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to picky. Anyway, my point is that just because you're /sch, doesn't mean you can't melee as well, you just won't have the shadows to absorb stuff. Basically, sh*t is situational.



so, so, so, SO wrong. Well, misguided. Do NOT focus on eva gear EXCEPT when soloing. If you're wearing nothing but eva+ gear in a pt, you're doing it wrong. I mean, a piece or two where there's nothing else to wear is fine and all, but there are plenty of DD oriented options for: Head, Neck, Ears, Hands, and Rings, and there are a few choice body/back/waist/leg/feet pieces too if you can get your hands on them. There is absolutely no such thing as a job that can be played well with a single set of gear. This is especially true for pup (If you don't believe me, take a look at my FFXIAH item set page, and compare: Monk: 6, Warrior: 8, Puppetmaster: 17)



Again, no. You're playing a DD job. You need to start getting DD gear when you start DDing (read: as soon as physically possible). Don't halfass this job, or you'll suck royal ass and be 90% useless 100% of the time. Also, Chiv. Chain is still better than cirque neck for both ws and tp, sadly

Dustin, until you can prove to know what your talking about, I'm banning you from pup gear advice.

No, you didn't.

Around level 30 ANY job can tank, given decent healing, but a bit past that, you weren't tanking... and if you were, then you were in some pretty sad parties 30-65... Tanking is more than just subbing WAR, and hitting Provoke. PUP has low HP, light gear, and evasion is largely useless for tanking exp level stuff, especially once you get past 40-50, evasion is not something that you can rely on for damage mitigation.

Secondly, Unless the other DDers in the party are terribly gimped, you really should not be able to hold hate off them with Provoke alone. PUP damage is close to a 50/50 split between the master and the pet at that level, even less for you if you're using evasion-heavy gearsets, so that's not helping you hold hate either.

You may have been "first voke" but you did not "tank" on PUP.

lolwut?

Colibri are abnormal in that they attack FASTER than an average mob does.

I just wanted to say thank you all for the advice. My pup is now at level 32 sitting semi idle. My gf's blm has hit 65 and we have been farming or trying to farm the tier 4 nukes for her. Once we finish that off its back to duoing/partys to get her subs up to level.

I have been doing a little farming and have aquired some of the following gear. I have Vampiric claws, birdbanes and poppet Katars. I have a formor tunic from the nm formor, figure I can use it as a ws piece or body piece in a party for that level. I want to get a sinister mask, but having no luck on finding the nm up.

I have the Cerise doublet at level 50. Other then that most of what I have is from other dd jobs, but I am using the guides on wiki to try and gear up pup the rest of the way. I am planning on doing the add on mini quest to aug the gear for pup so that will give me three solid pieces. Trying to take into account what gear is available at level 80 and up makes it hard to figure out stats for sure. So any advice on stats would be help a lot.

I am unlocking scholar and going to try and level it to 49. So you know I thought I was done with all my mage subs.

So what's the point? With two healers on you (whm + whm-bot), the party just isn't very efficient. Don't waste your puppet's DD potential by using it to make you a sh*tty tank. Let a real tank fill that role so you can fill your intended role (top DD).

Please, gear as a real DD. Evasion gear is for spots that otherwise can't get DD at that level, or for an ohno! macro.

Maneuvers add 1 CE and 0 VE... They're not helping you hold hate. Defender takes your damage output even lower, yet you still lose the same amount of enmity every time you're hit, using it is counterproductive to holding hate.

I don't care how delusional you are, evasion is not consistent enough to be considered helpful for tanking. Get a parse that shows you evading exp level mobs consistently, and maybe you'll have eventually have a point somewhere along the line.

Also, if people in your parties aren't using food until 60+ then you were in some pretty gimptastic parties... Even against colibri, most people I know will buy a few stacks of crab sushi, or some other cheap food to use.




Hence the reason I said "get hate BACK" obviously no one holds hate 100% of the time, but when a RNG pops Sidewinder, a PLD can use Flash, Sentinel, Cures, whatever, and probably get hate back. What do you do in that situation? Pop Raging Fists for 17 damage, since you're fulltiming Defender? Sit there spamming maneuvers, hoping that each 1 CE will be the one that'll get the monster's attention back?




Yeah... You're the one spouting non-sensical garbage about evasion tanking at 50, and being able to hold hate while using ABSOLUTELY NO tanking abilities. Yet you want me to prove that it doesn't work... Brilliant logic there Mr. Holmes. Until someone besides your imaginary friends actually sees you perform this magical task, you're the one that has to prove that it's possible. Until you can provide a parse or video, anything that you say has absolutely no credibility whatsoever.

1) Players gain enmity by using abilities and skills. Outside of skills that specifically swap, drop, steal or place enmity on one's self or a party member, no typical skill causes a loss of enmity to another player. As such you should be using a DD frame, not the WHM one.

2) A B+ in H2H may have improved things a bit, but an extreme lack of quality DD gear combined with that B+ rating means a PUP is never going to be out performing a decently geared DD. And if they are in an evasion heavy setup, the chances of doing so drop even further. The automaton makes up around 50% of the dmg done when playing PUP at those levels, so that means the PUP is earning only 50% or less enmity compared to what the other DDs get through melee/WS. of course if all DDs are losing enmity faster than they gain it then they won't really pull ahead of the PUP anyway.

3) Learn how VE (volatile enmity) works and you'll see why provoke either does the job on its own, or fails to do anything when well geared DDs are there, or if people use certain skills.

4) PUP already hurts in the +atk gear department. The last thing you'd want to do is lower it, especially considering how little difference +def makes.

5) This gives +22 evasion, which means +11% chance to dodge, assuming you aren't below the 5% chance floor already. And an 11% reduction in dmg is not going to match the near 100% reduction NIN gets, nor whatever shield blocking grants a PLD/WAR/etc.

6) Because of the delay (2 seconds I think) after using a skill, using maneuvers actually lowers your enmity gain because it lowers your DPS. This is one reason PUPs want longer lasting maneuvers.

7) If you used food and the rest of the party didn't, that might account for your ability to tank a little (since the increase accuracy over others does help maintain more enmity than the other DDs would, but not much). But relying on the entire party to majorly gimp themselves in order for you to tank is not a good argument.


80% sounds like you pretty much just rode the provoke timer and were only losing the mob’s attention as provoke was running out. With a good tank I expect them to maintain the mobs attention for at least 90% or more of the fight in those low to mid levels. Pretty much any job can maintain an 80% tanking ratio at those levels just using provoke. And if the other players in the parties were using /nin for shadows, then 80% is actually kind of horrible since the mob has to break through 6 shadows (3 initial shadows, 3 from recasting) before even scoring a single hit (outside of TP moves that bypass them).

Again, go read up how enmity works. Getting hit reduces CE. The lower your HP (hint- PUP kinda sits on the low end for HP values), the more CE that is lost when hit. Considering PUP doesn’t really have much (if anything) that grants more than 1 CE, it’s gonna be at 0 most of the time. The reason provoke seems to work is that it grants a big 1800 VE when used that disappears over 30 seconds. Most DDs at the lower to mid levels struggle to get enough VE through melee atks and WSs to actually keep it above 0 for more than a couple of seconds. That is why simply having provoke active will make you tank a lot of the time at those levels. You'll take more dmg, have less HP and have less enmity gaining tools than most other melee DDs, but so long as they didn't gain more VE than they lose over time you would only ever lose the mobs attention briefly as provoke nears the end of its 30 second cooldown or when someone suddenly gains a big chunk of enmity from some action.

Of all the things to suggest doing with a PUP, tanking is NOT one of them. Of all the jobs not meant for tanking that one could try and tank with, PUP ranks somewhere at the bottom (I think there may be 1 job worse at it, and a couple on par).

That said, you may very well have assumed the tanking roll in some parties. It doesn't mean that everyone else there wouldn't have been better suited to it, and chances are they weren't pulling their weight (making one wonder why you didn't just solo for more exp). Almost any other job could have subbed /war and done just as good a job of tanking, if not better. Your tanking was because of /war only. Being a PUP at the time had nothing to do with it.

also after I pass the level range for vampiric claws and birdsbane is it ok to keep them for mobs who are weak to those damage types since claws are slashing and birds are piercing?

On a side note any crafters on titan server able to craft tiger fangs so I can get my valor edge by chance?

I'm getting flashbacks that some of you old timers may remember, from back when Enaru/Littlegalka constantly tried to convince people that PUP can tank exp parties nonsense back in... 2006-2007? He was ridiculous and wrong then, just as dustinfoley is ridiculous and wrong now.

Your party sucks if you can tank it as a mid-level PUP/WAR, riding Defender.

Maybe you can first voke a meripo style TP burn, but you shouldn't be able to "tank" pre-75 exp parties on PUP if you have a single competent DD in your party. If you're trying to voke and keep hate in a tankless party (meripo, Abyssea, etc.), or keep hate on a particular mob by doing something like 3x Ice nuke > Ventriloquy, that's one thing. Tanking a Colibri party? There is no way you can do it reliably unless every DD you're playing with is truly awful.

hmmmm... * Pokes Dustinfoley's corpse * Think its dead! * watches Lady Jinte heel grind the pulverized mess * * Lyrminas gets a big shovel *.....

while you are correct in theory, you're still incorrect in practice. Just because you're using your puppet to heal you, doesn't mean you're good at hate control, it just means that you're an mp sponge, and you're not giving your party the awesome DD a low level pup provides.



Also correct, and also wrong in practice. By riding defender and fulltiming evasion gear, you hinder your damage out put, and thus, reduce your net enmity generation. I agree that Ortana is incorrect here, though.



The ONLY way you're going to be generating hate on pup/war, outside of voke (which I've already explained to you) is from your DD. If you're reducing your DD, you're reducing your hate generation. You can be as durable as you want, but if you can't get hate, it does @#%^ all. You're not a pld with fifty billion hate generating tools, after all.


No... nin pretty much has near 100% damage reduction if they're paying attention. You sound like you've never played nin before, or that you suck at ninja, because I know that my 41 nin doesn't have to "hope" I can get my ni/ichi off 9 times out of 10, I just.. well... get my ni/ichi off. It's not really that hard... Sure, everyone has to deal with random shadow stripping sh*t, but that's a universal. And while yes, we DO have more evasion than ninjas, ninja's ignore the 80% evasion rate cap due to shadows. If a shadow takes the hit, you take no damage, thus, you evade. Regardless of semantics, 0 damage is 0 damage is 0 damage.

Also, @#%^ NO. shield and guard are NOTHING alike. Capped guard gives you lower block rate than a size 4 shield, with about the same, if not less, damage reduction as a size 1 shield. You don't seem to know much about shields, but shield size is variable, as is block rate and damage reduction, where as guard just sucks 100% of the time. And Yes, I DO know wtf I'm talking about. I had 75 monk when ToAU came out, so I leveled pup 1-50 with capped guard skill. Also, The more you evade, the less you guard, so stacking evasion gear makes guard less and less reliable.



Regardless of the credit given to bird parties, Ortana's point still stands. "I can tank when no one uses food" is not a valid argument, regardless of the mob in question.


I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

fixed your fix

I mighta missed something but where is the puppet being compared to PLD? I'm assuming you're referring to the post above mine, in which he was listing stuff PLD main has, that PUP does not, though the use of Holy still confuses me unless it got such a hate spike to make it worth the 100 mp

I have been playing with pup and drk and really enjoy both jobs. Sadly the two players I knew who played the jobs the most on my server have stoped playing altogether or hardly play now. So I needed some help to tip the cup one way. It looks like pup is next followed by drk. I like the versitilty the job brings. Since I seem to be partial to those type of jobs I think Pup would be a great fit. The versitility of blu is one of my biggest draws to the job. Pup has the same thing going with it, but without the having to change subs or what not.

Now I just wanna be sure I am gearing correctly and not adding any negative impacts to the pup community.

Intentional exaggeration was intentional...

Your pld is 80. Mine is 74. That list is is waaaaaay to short for you to have 80 pld.

pup can tank 75+, with the right gear/merits, but not anything intense. Abyssea exp mobs? sure. Anything worthwhile? lolno.