PUP in Nyzul (and subjob perspectives)Follow

At least in Nyzul Isle, since I haven't had a chance to try something else yet, PUP is getting ridiculously potent. Even as PUP/NIN I'm able to stay competitive with other DDs, and that's NOT counting the damage from my automaton. With the boost to mana tanks, Spiritreaver is able to keep up very well and on all 3 of the climbing runs I did today, it matched my damage as master. Was eating pizza and using full haste gear and was able to easily cap hitrate for the entire climb.

Just recently I joined a floor 100 run on PUP/WAR, just to see how useful I would be on a more difficult boss fight. Needless to say, I've never wished more that I was subbing something other than /WAR. I never even used berserk until the boss floor - I was taking hate too often even without it. I actually ended up parsing as the top DD on cerberus, again, without counting my automaton's damage, against a SAM, a MNK, and an adaberk WAR. I swapped out to valoredge while we were buffing up. Wasn't really sure how to go about it, but I knew that the bosses on 60/80/100 resist magic really badly.

I really do think we're going to end up going the way of MNK (at least partially) and need to sub /NIN drastically more often. If not, /DRG, for a haste boost, extra accuracy, and a (small) amount of hate shedding ability for doing things like ventriloquy -> high jump.

The biggest deal of all of this is probably that PUP is going to be able to hold its own as a DD without the automaton at all. That bodes fairly decently at least for the bottom of the barrel PUPs that don't understand how to gear and use automatons. PUP is becoming borderline overpowered in the way that people seem to assume SAM is. The funniest part is that this makes PUP way more potent than when Magic Mortar first came out, but since the damage isn't condensed into one shot (or at least into one player/npc instead of split in two) nobody is going to realize how strong PUP is. Not only that, people will still by in large prefer to take even well geared PUPs over lesser geared players on other jobs.

Oh and here's a picture of the chat log at floor 100. The WAR couldn't voke hate off of me even after he WS'd before I did.





Edited, Mar 24th 2010 3:25am by bsphil

I really hope you guys can keep it up outside of Nyzul too.

Just curious though, how well geared were you compared to the other DDs? I saw the WAR had Adaberk, but aside from that, were they well geared/merited compared to you? I am just asking since you actually beat them without counting your auto which is pretty sick. I guess that difference might be needed when it comes to tougher mobs and the B/A discrepency in skill really starts to show, but still... wow. :)

Awesome account Bsphil! Its good to hear actual experiences from other PUP after this update. I took PUP a few times on my climb to 100, very nice to hear that others are doing the same and having even better results now.





Oh, its the same on mobs outside of Nyzul as well.

OTW to 'necropolis to work on Magian weapon with a buddy, we decided to try popping the VWNM in Batallia. I was PUP/NIN with Soulsoother setup and he was MNK/NIN in full Uksune. Also had a PLD/DNC buddy come along too. We handled the tier one ele's no problem. When Skuld popped though, we had to reconfigure our pt(this NM Pixie is crazy btw. CS and access to high lvl BLM spells, prepare to kite CS).

That in and of itself was expected. HOW we reconfigured was not. We drafted a WHM come help, the PLD swappped to /NIN-then it gets weird but very nice. Without even discussing it really, Uksune MNK decided to go swap to RDM. His reasoning was that me as PUP/NIN plus a reconfigured DD Automaton would be enough DD if it meant support for the PLD and WHM.

And it totally was. When we popped Skuld again, it was a cakewalk. Final setup: PLD, WHM, RDM, and PUP(me); beat this mob with ease. Skuld is lvl 85 at least i think.

Might not mean much to other ppl, but this was a huge outing imo. The fact that it never even occurred to ANY of my associates to have me swap to another job for this, beyond awesome.

But back to the main topic really quickly, speaking for myself, /WAR, /NIN, /DNC-normal subs my PUP will be using; and /RDM or /SCH -f i am ever asked to stay in the back(which i don't think will be happening anytime soon unless its just a mob that physical DD in general can't be on.)

Hey Bsphil, do you have links to your gearsets? I'd be interested in comparing them with my own gear, which while I feel isn't shabby, sounds like it doesn't come close to comparing with yours

Edited, Mar 24th 2010 5:47pm by MagingMartin

There's much less difference in our gear then I would have expected.

Ulthalam's Ring - don't have, I use either Sniper's or Iota's
Pantin Cape - @#%^ing drop gdi. Going to get Odin's DA+1% back piece instead of my Belli.
Creek M mitts - Using Enkidu's
Faith Torque over the PCC (Due to expenses)

My Anwig is STR+4 WS:acc+15, the other stats are RNG based so make no effect to my PUP, but it's still the best WS piece I can get.

Mirke is all RNG stats.

ASA legs are BLMs

Using Wagh, hoping to get some good Oberon's tomorrow

The big difference is going to be then, I guess, merits. I'm far from capped and I'm assuming you are capped. (See below)

1/8 H2H (QQ, gave up on PUP for awhile to refocus on BLM)
Group1
5/5 Magic skill
Group2
1/1 RoleReversal
1/1 Vent
2/5 Optimisation
0/3 Fine-Tuning

Edited, Mar 24th 2010 11:08pm by MagingMartin

Yeah, I can definitely see the major difference between us

The depressing thing is I need 118 merits to match you

I'll just aim for 8/8 H2H for now, then finish up optimisation before doing 5/5 melee skill on automaton I think.

Went PUP/NIN once with SS with my noob climbing static just because I damn well wanted to. SS definitely helped the WHM out and I could hold my own damage wise and take care of some mobs solo. Haven't tried vs bosses yet, since we have crappy luck and haven't gotten very far.

Disclaimer: I tend to come COR/DNC to all Nyzul these days, and I've become very used to it and it's my go to Nyzul job. I'm probably still gonna keep coming COR, main healer, DDx3, and a 6th (preferably THF). The setup just works too well, COR buffs help a ton on bosses, Light Shot is super useful in Nyzul, Wild Card in a pinch, DDs are easy to get to fill the party, etc. BUT...

I always enjoyed PUP in Nyzul floor climbs, but I never liked taking it to boss floors before. Master damage was mediocre compared to other DDs, and pet damage was pretty weak on the bosses. Regular floors you are pretty potent though, especially if you're using Spiritreaver (which I did). When you run into something like magic weak mobs with a party full of SAMs, MNKs, and the like... having those Tier IV nukes is MASSIVELY helpful to the group. And even if you don't run into that kind of stuff, you're no slouch.

The big change now is like what bsphil mentions:


I agree, and that means PUP is now not at as much of a disadvantage on boss floors. Before it was a beast on the climb but less of an asset on bosses, now it's no worse than another solid DD. Truly zerg-capable jobs should still perform better on the boss fights themselves, but a PUP is legit and if you don't have those more zerg-focused DDs you're not gonna embarrass yourself.

Other cool PUP Nyzul things:
* Leaving the puppet to help the party kill off a tough mob (family, leader, an NM, etc.) and running back to the rune! You can deal damage while not even with the party, and that's pretty awesome.

* Hermes' Sandals. Helps a ton in finding mobs, running to rune, finding lamps, etc. 12% movement speed is NOT to be underestimated in Nyzul. You should want these awesome shoes anyway, but if you spend any decent amount of time in Nyzul on PUP (or COR MNK WAR), you should want them even more.

I do all my nyzuls now exclusively on pup. I refuse to go as drg anymore because i lose the utility of nukes and things like stona when needed and flashbulb. I'm almost done with my nyzul mythic requirement too, only 7 runs away.




I think this is one of the coolest thing about pup in nyzul. You can even use maneuvers from any where in the entire zone.

BLM Automaton annihilates Ebony Puddings, need to be very good with Vent/Role Rev though.

The in built scanner does nothing to prevent that?

It's definitely looking like /WAR is losing it's place, at least for merits, and other stuff without a dedicated tank. Just had my first merit party on PUP post-H2H update, and I gave new meaning to the term "MP-Sink" even before weapon skilling I was constantly pulling hate, to the point where light maneuver (Flashbulb) was getting constantly cycled in with the normal Wind, Thunder, Fire, and Dark just so I could survive.

Parse numbers came out to this, keeping in mind that I had to hold back a bit to keep from dying, and that one of the SAMs looked like this.

Gonna have to try a merit party with /NIN soon, to see how that works out.

Very impressive parse, there. Comforting to see such pups exist. Now why can't I ever find the pups like that when I merit, and instead get the ones that make the cor look like a melee god?

ya I was thinking about /drg, get other benefits by using high jump to shed some hate after vent is used also, and att and acc trait dont hurt either.

well although elemental ninjutsu cant be resisted, i -think- the effects can be semi-resisted. so although thats a gret idea, im not sure if it would change the spell, and probably wouldnt want to risk trying

i dont believe this. i capped magic at 75 and had a couple blm's in ls want me to manaburn puddings. id put up 2ice 1 water(since no condenser, just recently fixed that) and the puppet would cast thunder 3. it should have access to aero 4 but i couldnt get it to cast any tier IV spells. always thunder 3 or bliz 3 if recast wasnt up. it was pretty cool that an unmerited thunder III could almost do the same damage as blm AMII. by almost i mean a couple 100 off.

the AI makes the automaton cast the spell that it thinks will deal the most damage with the least amount of resist. or.. no idea what would cause your auto to do that lol. but if somehow you got your auto to nearly rival AM2 with a tier 3 spell, i'd just trust it knows what its doing

Here's the thing... it's possible to trigger nukes on some mobs by lowering resist of one element with an elemental Ninjutsu to the extent where some other element has a higher chance of resist. I don't think what Jinte is saying is inconsistent with this trick NOT working on Nyzul puddings though:

If a mob has very little/no resistance to a certain nuke (as I believe is the case for Nyzul puddings which are HEALED by certain nukes), you can't get any other element to have a lower resist rate. Same thing if a mob has a very low resist rate to the normally higher priority element X, to the extent that even if you lower the resistance to element Y, X still has a lower chance of a resist.

Example #1:
Mob has 20% chance to resist all nukes. If you use ninjutsu to lower the resist rate to, say, wind... you may be able to trigger an Aero IV (instead of the typical priority of Blizz->Fire->Aero). This is sort of what Jinte's discussion is getting at. Let's say Aero would be a stronger nuke - we're trying to find a way to trigger the Automaton to use that, not Blizz or Fire. Well, if we can lower the RESISTANCE to Aero to where it's the least resisted element, that may be enough to get the puppet to choose Aero. Simply knowing "but that mob is WEAK to this element" isn't enough if the higher priority nukes aren't more likely to be resisted.

Example #2:
Mob has 0% Blizzard resistance (I'm not 100% sure this is the case for the puddings that are healed by a particular element, but it's probably at the very least closer to 0% resist than any other element). It doesn't matter what element you weaken the resist rate of, Blizz is the default automaton nuke priority AND there's no chance (or a very small chance) of resist. You won't be able to tell the puppet to choose a nuke other than Blizz. Let's suppose the mob still has a 20% resist rate to all other nukes - even if we act like we did in Example #1 and lower wind resistance, it's still probably going to be a higher resulting wind resist rate than the very minimal chance of resist to Blizzard, so the automaton will still have no reason to deviate from Blizzard (the "normal" AI choice).

Example #3:
Mob has a 50% resist rate to Blizzard, 10% resist rate to Fire. Automaton will choose Fire over the normal choice of Blizzard. This is the most obvious way to show the AI at work in deviating from the standard prioritization of higher level nukes. The lowered resistance of a lower "priority" nuke is what triggers the AI to not follow the standard priority.

Example #4:
Mob has an 90% resist rate to all elements. Spiritreaver (with built in Scanner AI), or an automaton with Scanner attachment, will find the resist rate is so high that it won't nuke at ALL.

And note that for all examples I'm just throwing out these resist rate %ages for illustration's sake. I have no idea of exact resist rates (when a puppet won't nuke at all), what exact amount of quantified "resistance" any mobs have, etc. Point remains the same though - Scanner/Spiritreaver AI is based on avoiding greater elemental resistance, not on looking for potential strengths.

It's really just a quirky bit of AI logic that comes into play quite infrequently. But every once in a while it does rear its head, and the automaton will do seemingly illogical things all while following its AI quite normally.



Going back to Jinte's langauge, that makes perfect sense knowing SR's priorities:

1. Blizz IV
2. Fire IV
3. Aero IV
4. Water IV
5. Stone IV
6. Thunder III

Jinte is saying we would love to get Lightning or Earth (or in the absence of those, at least one of the top 3 spells which typically do more damage when they land unresisted). As we can see, Lightning and Earth are the lowest two priority nukes. I'm not super familiar with Tinnin and its resistances, but assuming Jinte has 5/5 merits, we can explain the default choice of Water if Tinnin has a lower chance to resist Water than it does to resist #1-3 on the list. But we don't want Water. We'd REALLY like Stone IV. So, to manipulate the AI we would ideally try to lower resistance to Earth to the point where Earth has a lower resist rate than Water. In that case, it's likely that the automaton would cast Stone IV.

Edited, Apr 5th 2010 6:15pm by Anza

That's definately awesome to read! I'm slowly leveling my PUP after swearing I'd never level another pet job. It's much more interactive than I had ever thought possible. Just hit 66 last night and I can't wait to use some of the Cobra gear.

I'm still learning the ropes on how to equip because H2H is different from the other weapon wielding jobs. Been trying to get the right balance, but options are little sparse at lower levels. I either need sushi to hit, but end up with low damage or eat meat and end up missing.

There's still a bunch of gear I need to get and I'm looking at Shikkoku hands and body to go along with Cobra gear. I don't play long stretches at a time so it's difficult to camp NMs.

Eventally I'll get the hang of it all.