The -na "problem"Follow

it isnt because SE even said so in an interview 2 years ago at one of the fanfests, they said it wasnt working as intended. they just ignored it.

and although this is true, what would be nice if those other puppets cured party members too, incase you are duoing.

sure there is, you are thinking too black and white.

friend and myself came upon a nm, he was thf, I was pup/nin i believe, we saw him and fought him, we died because Soulsoother wouldnt cast anything besides paralyna. Couldnt change the puppet because how would thf get healed since other puppets wont cure him?

could have just not fought nm but why should have to avoid an nm because of SE's stupidity?

so ya, we died for no other reason then the puppets AI, only way to avoid it was ignore the nm. but again, why should.

It's ironic to find a post ranting about the perceived whining of others. It seems at least as reasonable to be irritated with the -na problem as it is to be frustrated by people complaining about it.

Anza, if SE wasnt so stupid and properly programmed the AI your rant would be moot. and yes, programming the auto to use na over cure is just plain stupid, anyone that argues with that is just an SE suck up and needs to take their head out of the sand.

so you must think like most of society, deal with the issue and learn to live with it, not fix the problem and you dont have to deal with the issue.

I guarantee your attitude is the wrong one.

do you not see how incredibly dumb it is to just give up and make workarounds for problems then to work to get the problem fixed? my guess is you dont, like most of society these days. We just like tossing away money dealing with issues instead if nipping it in the bud.

but whatever floats your boat anza.


Toyota had a recall on vehicles because sometimes the car shot forward because the gas pedal stuck, but dammit, I am i so sick of people complaining they got in an accident because their gas pedal stuck, they knew the problem existed, they should have made sure they were farther away from the car in front of them. so please stop complaining about the problem. Next time you go driving stay far behind, or if you know traffic will be bad, take another car so you have room. what is wrong with you people.

see how dumb that sounds? Yes one is real one is a game but the attitude is the same.

the only solution is fix the damn problem

Edited, Apr 7th 2010 9:05am by xbobbobx

To be fair it does kind of make me laugh when people complain about dying because their auto poisona'd them instead of curing in a solo situation, especially in a situation where your not actually getting hit that much or that hard to justify the cure V spammage. I've seen enough times when people have gone full evasion, /NIN and used Soulsoother and needed hardly any curing. Personally I'd rather use stormwaker and a bit more DD gear to speed up kills. Maybe have 3 different sets of evasion: One set of full out evasion, a medium evasion set and a low evasion set. Start out in full, and if you like youe evade rate, drop down to the medium set/lower set.

I'm not saying anything about whether I like the AI or not. I, like most PUPs, would like to be able to prioritize Cures over -na on Soulsoother.

But you're again ignoring the important point: IT DOES NOT MATTER WHETHER YOU OR I LIKE THE AI. Whether I like it or not, whether people complain for S-E to change things or not, the fact remains that the AI as it is now prioritizes -na. If you don't recognize that and throw yourself into situations where this AI priority kicks in, you have only yourself to blame if you die. It's not "the puppet's fault" or "the stupid AI's fault". It's YOUR fault - the puppet just does what it's programmed to do and you should learn when that presents a risk to you. You might want it to be different, but your desires aren't gonna trigger a Cure V.



It's not at all inconsistent to be both irritated with the way -na/cure priorities are AND frustrated by people complaining about it.

I'm not saying people shouldn't call attention to the issue and desire a fix. That kind of complaining is fine, and serves a valuable purpose of potentially contributing to S-E taking some action to change the AI.

I AM saying that unless/until we get such a fix, realize that the situation exists and recognize when it presents a risk to you in the game. If you ignore the known risk, I don't really feel sorry for you if you get yourself killed. It's the whining that "I died because the AI is dumb" that irritates me. We understand perfectly well how the Soulsoother priorities work, so you really shouldn't be dying due to AI-related issues unless YOU put yourself in a dangerous situation.




See, this is the kind of thinking I like. Is it our ideal situation? Maybe not. Eraser doesn't always work to avoid all issues, but it does help lessen the risk (Bob, I COMPLETELY agree that I would prefer things the way you described in your reply to Tatham's comment - but that's not what we have). Maybe you'd rather have Soulsoother -nas that you can control and Cure Vs over full SW, but SW does have some benefits in increased kill speed and avoiding -na spells that override cures. These two examples show people trying to use the tools they have as well as possible. Far, far better than getting killed and whining about it.

These are the kinds of things that are fantastic to see in this thread, so that I can refer newer PUPs to read this when they have questions instead of saying the same thing in /t a couple dozen times.



Exactly. I have also been getting more questions lately from newer PUPs, including complaints or questions about the AI. Instead of creating a community of complainers who keep getting killed, I'd much rather show these PUPs how they can lower their risk, and note that it's maybe not the best idea to stubbornly stick to Soulsoother soloing in all situations when doing so is sometimes especially risky.

Trust me, if S-E made a change where Soulsoother with a light maneuver active/dominant prioritized cures, I'd be as happy as anyone. But I'm not going to sit around waiting for it and get nothing done in the meantime. I'll make do with the next best alternative now (and the next best alternative isn't wondering why I died due to AI priorities when I should have known better).

This really SHOULDN'T be something anyone has to tell people who pay attention and read boards like this. Unfortunately, it appears it does need to be said due to the amount of times I still read people blaming the AI/puppet for their death. You have only yourself to blame if you consciously ignore known issues.

Besides the willfully ignorant, there are also a lot of newer PUPs recently who aren't as familiar with automaton AI and the things we have in our bag of tricks to deal with any issues. I hope some of those people might find this discussion helpful so they can learn something.

Edited, Apr 7th 2010 12:32pm by Anza

The AI is all sorts of muffed up, but it is also the combo of attachments too. You need to experiment with what does the job "closest" to correct. Just like when you wanna force a WS like CB- when you have Inhibitor equipt, itll most likely use string clipper even with 3 darks up. you get rid of Inhibitor and itll will most likely use CB when you have 1~3 Darks up. Play around. Have fun! Sure youll die, but you grow from the loss of experience...in this game hahaha :p

Damage Gauge : Prioritizes Curing

You put a Light Manoeuver up, your puppet still doesn't prioritize cures over -na.

It doesn't work as intended.

End of story.


SE isn't doing anything about it, it sucks, we know.

End of thread ?

Ah, but you're making a common mistake. Trusting that the item descriptions mean what you think they mean (even if your interpretation would be one fairly logical possibility).

Damage Gauge most certainly DOES make the puppet prioritize Cures in some situations where it otherwise wouldn't do so without the attachment equipped. A puppet with no damage gauge and 1 light maneuver won't cure unless the target is below 40% HP. A puppet WITH a damage gauge and 1 light maneuver will cure targets once they're below 70%. So yes, if a target has 60% HP and all other conditions are met, Damage Gauge absolutely does "Prioritize Curing" where the automaton wouldn't do so without it.

Nowhere in the item description does it say Damage Gauge "Prioritizes Curing spells over status removal spells". You're reading way too much into things. And in fact, why would Damage Gauge's description say such a thing anyway? It was created, and that item description written, before Soulsoother head even existed (thus, before puppets even COULD cast -na spells).



I agree. And until that happens (and it might never happen!), any PUP who ignores the limitations of the Soulsoother AI is bringing problems on themselves. Complain or wish for a change all you want, rationalize that the AI is "broken", explain how you think it should be... all irrelevant. You have no good argument to blame the AI for getting you killed when it's well known how the AI behaves.

If a BST complained about getting killed by monsters that are hard to stick Charm on, the answer isn't to complain that Charm needs to be changed (even if you could make a logical argument that the particular mob should be charmable at a good rate). A much more logical decision would be to simply not try to Charm those dangerous monsters unless you accept the big risk. I'm baffled why PUPs don't use this same logic to acknowledge their limitations, and instead keep trying to stubbornly use a playstyle that invites risk and then complain when GEE WHIZ it didn't work out so well...

What is your skill level? It learns Cursna after Cure III I believe. Would be interesting, albeit impracticable, if 3 light is forcing healing now.

That is odd moffatt and as i've never had that situation happen to me before i totally couldnt say for sure what is going on there. I would hazard a guess though that maybe your automaton is reading your cursed status as say a level capped status for whatever reason and as such ignores it, moving to the next priority after a status heala HP cure.

But my speculation about what happened aside, a few questions

* Did you have any HP dmg in addition to curse that would, with cursed max HP status, pull you down into the cure straight away threshold for that max HP?

* And also, what lvl are you? Were the mobs you were DC or better to you? Because it they were EP, yoe wouldn't be getting a regen regardless.

* You had 3 Light up to force a regen?

Gotcha. Now that is very interesting. As i've never been in a situation of fighting TW and really needing a cure, i've never seen this behavior. Got me stumped here as well. Maybe the auto took the lvl of the mobs into consideration and deemed cursed status as less of an issue as opposed to just tossing a HP cure.

In any event damned odd imo as i know Klaxon tosses Cursna with a quickness when i'm farming Tons in the temple or the den. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least if in SE's weird logic that straight HP cures bypassing stat cures were made available on mobs that pose less of a threat. Ass-backward thinking, but look at the source.

Next free day i have ingame i may go out there and see if i can replicate this on my own consistently. Sorry i didn't have an answer for you.

I'm all about working with what you got. However, while you do, you should be sending that feedback to SE about the problem. I know you stated it in your OP, but I just have to reiterate what can happen when design flaws go on overlooked by both SE and the community. Lets look at BST since you used it as an example. It's the perfect example of what not to do when your job has a obvious design flaw. The BST community (in the past) was extremely resistant to change. They accepted every BS that SE threw to them without question, justified it and just adopted to the new rules. As long as they could solo, sh*t didn't matter. If a few BST brought up any complaints they were immediately sub-defaulted and silenced.

BST had a -30% penalty for using a Pet. The BST community actually justified this obvious design flaw by saying that a "Pet" is like an extra party member so the -30% xp cut had a purpose. Didn't matter if the pet was charmed or a Jug pet. You were only getting 70% exp if it was with you while the mob died. Solution? "Leave" your pet when the mob had a silver of HP left and then solo the remaining HP. this way you would always get 100% XP (unless your pet was higher level than you). So for 4 years bst went with the charm>release>kill method , for 4 years BST reputation in PTs got tarnished and compiled a wealth of misunderstanding with Non-BST, for 4 years the community secluded themselves in the mentality that the job was "Solo Only or STFU!" (since you get only 70% xp in PTs when using a pet). It took SE 4 years to remove the exp penalty when the community finally opened their eyes and saw that jobs like SMN and DRG were running around with pets that did not penalize their exp gain. But the damage had already been done. Till this day non-bst still think inviting BST to parties will penalize their exp (which usually was never the case)

The same Exact thing happened with BST and "Sic" firing off random AOE TP abilities. That crap would wake every sleeping target in the zone as well as aggro every nearby non-aggressive mob, pretty much guaranteeing a party wipe. Justified by people saying BST would go around soloing everything in the game with cactus jug (1k needles) if we could select which TP attacks our pets used. Best solution? Just don't use "Sic" if there was a chance an AOE would cause catastrophic effects, Which was the case 95% of the time if you were in a group or in an end game event. Took SE ~6 years to remedy this problem, and even now, the problem is only fixed with jug pets. If you're using charmed pets you have no control over what they do.

Another problem (yes there are more) with the BST job is Pets engaging unintended targets. You'd be in a PT fighting Mob A, Mob B uses a AOE ability/Spell which causes significant damage and is then slept by sleepers. Your pet now has Mob B on his hit list, he will automatically disengage mob A and starts pounding away at Mob B waking it back up and sending it straight after your sleepers. I've heard BST justifying this by saying that Pets or "Wild" so they are only following their natural instinct to fight back when they are provoked O.O !? Best solution? Spam the hell out of your "Fight" macro to send your pet back to his original target or "Heel" your pet and send it back at your original target. Took SE 8 years to... Wait no... this problem still has yet to been fixed.

Now I can go on about Jug Pets and the retarded level caps, Reward being nearly useless at high levels, Charmed pets going uncharmed without warning, the limited choices of jug pets at 75, Beast Correlation chart being useless, Not being able to zone with Jugs. But I'm sure you don't want to hear about that.


So as you can see BST gets an A+ for working around SE's numerousbad game design, but a D- at getting anything accomplished in a meaningful time frame.

Rather SE mean it or not is irrelevant, I'm sure BST's exp penalty and Random Sics was "Working as intended" at the time it was implemented. Bad ideas are still bad ideas and they should be fixed. You should take note that PUP is a recent addition to the game and in 3 updates got more meaningful job adjustments than BST did in ~8 years combined. Yes the Q.Q about certain problems should stop and more workable solutions be implemented but don't use that as a ruse for poor decisions on SE's part,

You seriously made a rant about this?

Kidding me right? This is like the recent one about role reversal.

"Hi guys, Anza Mays here with Role Reversal, many you already have it and know what it does, but wait there's more."

Maybe you are just trying to get your post count up. Perhaps you really want guru so you post things that will get you rated up. Perhaps you are just a captain obvious, either way sometimes I wonder why you post so many obvious things in the job forums as I know you are smarter than that. Maybe you want to make a solid contribution by being a captain obvious for the brand new pups who this would not apply to. Who knows, but it is sort of disheartening to see so many of these.

For those of you who read this since it will be sub defaulted, hi.

I'll stop being concerned with it when I stop seeing people mentioning getting killed "because of their puppet not prioritizing cure". Not only here and on other boards, but in game, I see people complain about this with startling regularity. In the week or so prior to my original post, I received several in game /tells about the issue, seen puppet AI mentioned as a reason people died doing Trial of the Magians soloing, and seen it cited as a reason why PUP is not a very good solo job.

Especially due to the somewhat increased interest in PUP lately, it's a good time for a reminder. If nothing else, having some suggestions for what you CAN do instead of getting killed due to resisting the reality of the AI is a benefit to me personally simply so I can point people to a thread to read instead of having to explain in detail.



Never said that was a massive revalation, just a nifty little benefit I realized while playing that I didn't really consider the first few times I played post-update. I'm glad you're so awesome that you know everything before anyone says it, but it never hurts to clearly describe things for the community. Not everything is a major OMG moment, but those little tips sure don't hurt. Might have made some people say "oh, yeah I didn't realize that - nifty trick, I'll have to remember that".

At any rate, I'm 100% sure that my posts you're complaining about (some of which might indeed be obvious to you) are a hell of a lot more helpful to the PUP community than you whining about me making observations you already recognized. If anyone is padding post counts here, it's the guy saying nothing of value at all.

***



Interesting points, and you do bring up a good point that just accepting flaws might lead to other seemingly unrelated issues. I think what you say has some merit and really is worth thinking about. It's also valuable to recognize lessons from other jobs so that PUP can avoid being stigmatized any more than it already is. And I'm with you that there is some value in complaining as a form of advocacy so that S-E might fix things the knowledgeable PUP community thinks are issues (though judging by things like the slow response to the vocal BST complaints, I'm not that hopeful this late in the game that S-E is gonna make many more substantial tweaks to PUP).

However, I disagree on a couple of key points:

1. There's a difference between complaining to get something done, and using "AI sucks" as a crutch or an excuse. "I died because the automaton AI is bad" is just a lousy excuse that I unfortunately see a lot of. PUP soloed fine before Soulsoother existed. It's even better in many situations now precisely thanks to Soulsoother. It's just bad in CERTAIN solo situations. Stay out of those situations unless the advocacy described above helps to usher in a change, rather than putting yourself in those situations, dying, then getting frustrated. Something I see way too much. Also, just giving up is equally bad - PUP CAN succeed in a lot of the situations people have issues in due to AI by just making a few fairly simple changes (say, different automaton head).

2. A big difference between PUP and BST here is that this issue doesn't affect usually come up for a PUP in a party, so it shouldn't have a major affect on people besides the solo PUP (or much more limited instances where Soulsoother is useful - perhaps a small duo-trio group). Generally in party, PUP will use a DD puppet anyway, so the question of -na over cure is entirely irrelevant. Plus, even in a party, a PUP who isn't an idiot can use Soulsoother in party and avoid this AI issue by simply staying out of range from nasty enfeebling effects (though some PUPs, bob among them, apparently haven't figured this out). Your BST examples are/were things that really did have a party impact at some point in time. This Soulsoother issue has always been mostly thought of as a problem that affects solo play the most adversely. Hard to hurt PUP's reputation in parties from a problem that usually only shows up for solo PUPs. Parties care about PUP's solo difficulties with Soulsoother about as much as they care about whether X camp for BST has a decent number of charmable mobs in good locations (read: they don't care one bit).

Especially considering that PUP+automaton is already often a #1 parsing DD in parties from 1-75, and it has only gotten a BETTER reputation lately through a highly publicized increase in H2H skill, I don't really think that an issue that largely affects solo PUPs using an automaton that's rarely used in parties is going to be affecting invite rates. There may be some misconceptions about the job (many people don't even notice that #1 parse even when they are in the party with that PUP), but I truly don't believe a lack of invites for PUPs has its roots in the WHM head wanting to blindna a solo PUP instead of Cure V them. If nothing else, dumb/bad PUPs are probably STILL the worst problem facing PUP's reputation. PUPs getting themselves killed because they can't comprehend their own job's solo shortcomings only makes PUPs look more laughable to outsiders.

Edited, Apr 12th 2010 6:32am by Anza

First off, of course i ain't Anza, but i have common sense and felt like speaking up:

1- In some situations yeah. If you have Soul Soother setup out in a party, goes to reason that some healing is needed. Now if you are just back-up healer, park your auto back in mage country and do your thing up front.

Same scenario now, but mob has stat-inflicting moves. If you want the auto to be of any use as a backup healer, you now need to get the master(you) out of harms way; or all the auto will be doing is curing status effects on you every time it casts.

Bottom line here, if you agree to a hybrid role in a party, be ready to shift your actions on the fly. If back-up/main healing is something you agree to as PUP, you need to be ready to step to the backline as needed.


2- I don't think he said ignore the master's DD, but if the SS is already out in a party setting(note: PUP doing this has already consented to a hybrid role as they don't have a DD frame out) it would be stupid to continue forcing conditions where the auto only -na's you over and over. If that is what's happening, may as well have set-up a dd frame from the get go and killed the mob faster.


3- No one here is saying there is no possibility that its a bug and absolutely no one is saying that the way spell priorities are for the SS atm are awesome; but until this fix happens, if ever, what do you do? Keep running into the same situation time after time hoping this time you'll get that HP cure over a status cure? That kind of behavior can easily be used as a definition of insanity.


4- This was just low rent. Bush even. Bush-league.

If you are in a party and using Soulsoother, you're already in questionable territory. Bsphil says it well in another recent thread:



If you are in the extremely uncommon situation where your party is so lacking for healing magic that they need to rely solely on a PUP's automaton for healing, AND you're fighting something where there is a strong risk of AoE status effects... then yes, I do think you should "ignore the DD potential of the master". At this point the damage that a PUP punching something is going to contribute is far less valuable than ensuring that other party members stay healed. In fact, sitting on the backlines on /SCH is probably going to benefit your party more than you punching stuff. This is the same reason a WHM won't be running in to melee on a nasty NM. They could contribute damage! Hexa Strike is pretty strong! But the WHM is obviously more useful ignoring their "DD potential" and hanging back to focus on the role they have been assigned, which is typically "make sure others stay alive".

If you're talking low-man stuff with 2-3 party members, yeah, it kinda sucks for Soulsoother when you're fighting something with AoE status effects. Known limitation. But suggesting you should go ahead and get right in there anyway practically begging to get party members killed due to how you KNOW the AI works... YOU are the fool. What you need to do is tell your party members "uh, this isn't going to work so well". How about we (1) get a true healer, (2) use some sort of better suited hybrid healer (DNC, a DRG/mage, etc.), or (3) do SOMETHING to mitigate the risk (maybe come PUP/DNC and hold some TP for emergency cures if the puppet misses a round on -na spells, or to Healing Waltz yourself), instead of relying solely on an automaton in situations where you know it won't perform too well.

Would you run into a fight where you know you need a strong tank, and bring only BRDs, SCHs, and RNGs? Guess what, genius? Not gonna work so well! Doesn't mean that BRD SCH or RNG need to be "fixed". Just means you're bringing a knife to a gun fight. Soulsoother PUP works in a lot of situations, but not all of them. QQ.



The Damage Gauge does not work like you (and many others) want it to work. It does not prioritize cures like you wish it does. But the item description certainly does not decisively say that it "prioritizes curing in all situations, including for the Soulsoother frame in situations where the Puppetmaster (but not other party members if the proper maneuvers are active) is affected by an enfeebling effect". You've read too much into this, particularly considering that the Damage Gauge and its description have been around longer than the Soulsoother head.

And good luck with your "only solution" garbage. If S-E doesn't implement your desired suggestions with the level cap raise, what are you going to do about it? Because let's be honest here, after the AI working the same way for years already there's a very good chance that we're not going to get the change you want.

Edited, Apr 12th 2010 2:28pm by Anza

1. Learn to quote correctly.

2. Although it's generally a bad choice for a traditional exp party, there are non-standard situations where Soulsoother in party can be useful. Lowman groups needing healing, maybe some specific mission/NM fight, mid-level WHM/PUP, etc.

If you are in one of those admittedly uncommon situations, and your automaton's healing magic is important enough to be the difference between success and failure, AND there's a risk of a meleeing master getting status effects (say, AoE mob moves)... You should probably focus on ensuring that you can do your most important job (hint: that job isn't adding a little extra DD by punching). Keeping yourself status-free so your puppet is ready to cure is a higher priority here, and what the non-idiot PUP would do.

Edited, Apr 14th 2010 1:21pm by Anza

Hehe, this made me think of the fictional scenario of testing invite rates.

Tester 1: Ok, I'm flagging up now.
Tester 2: Ok, invite sent.
Tester 1: I really don't see what they are complaining about. The invite came almost instantly.
Tester 2: Well, we can report back that invite rates are fine to SE now.