How I Solo at 75Follow

>.> How is this new... at all?

To reply to Yopopoe:

None of this is new. In fact, I got 95% of it from these forums. I just never see anyone doing it. All I see is people in DD gear soloing and it confuses me to no end. Yes, really.

That said, many suggestions I have seen say the first things to merit on PUP are crit and hand-to-hand, and I do personally disagree with that. That doesn't necessarily make me right, it just means I have a different way to do it then some others.

I stand by avoiding deactivating/activating. It might save you for a moment, but it will put you in hot water for the next 20 minutes. Deactivate/activate is the last-ditch, avoid-at-all-costs, only-to-save-your-butt method. Yes it has it's place, but that place is as the final option. Protect your activation timer at all costs; it is the upper limit of a Puppetmaster's capacity.

A second reason (and one I should have mentioned) that I avoid Mana Tanks is that to trigger refresh one must keep a Dark Maneuver up. This has two negative effects. First, if forces Bio and Blind. Don't get me wrong, these are excellent enfeebles, but not always the correct enfeebles. Many times a Silence off the the puppet onto the mob will turn it into an easy kill, for example. Second, it makes it impossible to force a certain enfeeble triggered by a maneuver other than Dark Maneuver. If I want to make my puppet cast Silence and I have a Dark Maneuver up I cannot necessarily get the spell I want just by putting up a Wind Maneuver.

This current post is meant as a clarification. This is my method for soloing and it is both reasoned and functional. I can understand that perhaps you don't agree with me, but I cannot see where the anger is coming from. And I have read the stickies; if anything like this is in there, I missed it.

Ok, Kishar, I can see where you are coming from. I completely agree that this gearing is absolute fail for a party and I appreciate you making that clear.

Like I mentioned, I do have an extremely defensive style of soloing. This is how I bring down NMs and handle multiple links. I do want to note, though, that I almost never have downtime. I can recover puppet mp faster than it is spent and I can do it without resetting my activate timer.

As a note on gear, I don't PERSONALLY see what evasion gear to remove. Removing evasion for accuracy is unnecessary on weaker mobs and ill advised on harder mobs. The only swap I'd be willing to make would be to put an attack back armor on instead of the dodge cape.

When I want to bring a more offensive style, and again this is only me, I instead change my sj to /dnc (accuracy bonus, quickstep/box step) or /war (attack bonus, warcry, double attack... I don't berserk solo). And of course, if things are just plain easy I can unpack pup/war with the rdm puppet, but I rarely spend time soloing anything that easy anymore.

Lastly, and this is a very different soloing style from what I've mentioned before, pup/dnc with the valoredge is a fun solo for EP or DC mobs. Cannibal blade + /dnc + role reversal has some staying power, but it's got nothing on survivability compared to the other things I've mentioned. It's decent for FoV though, if that's your thing.




As a final disclaimer, I'm trying to point out two things.

The first: this thread is "How I Solo at 75". I am not intending to state I am the best, I'm just trying to share something that I do that I do not encounter others doing. I am not the best and I do not have the only functional solo method.

The second: by using a full evasion gear set, shadows, and whm puppet you can solo with no downtime and an available activation timer. This is an extremely sturdy form of soloing, with a full effort made to survivability and no thought given to kill speed. This is how I take down NM's and handle hideous links, frequently finishing with nearly full hp, nearly full puppet mp, and an activation timer counted down to zero.

Edited, May 17th 2010 10:23am by Thydonon

I personally just toss on a few key pieces of Eva gear (Hades Sainti, Boxer's Mantle, and Evasion Torque are the big 3, then maybe I also use O.Hat and an evasion earring). Focus on kill speed in other slots. Haste, Atk, STR, DA... that's the kind of stuff I care about. You're right that you don't often need Acc overkill on solo stuff that you're meleeing though.



Generally, stuff that speeds up kill speed. As for specific slots:

Body - Enkidu or Antares Harness are great, but I do realize a lot of people don't have those. I personally solo in my Mirke Wardecors mainly for the base stats - AGI/STR/DEX+5.

Hands - Fencing Bracers and Tabin Bracers +1 are better. More expensive, but they aren't insane prices. I personally use my Puppetry Dastanas +1 (AGI+5 = 2.5 Eva, and STR+5 for kill speed), or Pantin Dastanas for haste.

Rings - Rajas is much better than any eva ring, no matter what. STR+5 DEX+5 Store TP and Subtle Blow all help you more than the mediocre amount of evasion on your rings. I don't personally clog up my inventory with more rings, I just use Rajas and Iota (which still gives a little Eva from the AGI+3) for most everything on PUP.

Waist - I'm more of the opinion that something like Headlong/Swift belt is better to speed up kill speed unless you realllly want a max eva set. Especially if you're using other Haste gear (Walahra, Anwig Salade with haste, Pantin Dastanas, Goliard Saio, Desultor Tassets, Prompt. Solea... lots of haste slots these days).

Back - best upgrade you can make in an evasion set is Boxer's Mantle. It's one of the slots I do switch out for solo.

Feet - Puppetry Babouches +1 are great here. +5 to Acc, Eva, and STR. If you have Hermes' Sandals, these are a pretty good evasion choice too that you might already have for the movement speed+, and the enmity helps ensure hate stays on you and not your puppet (especially nice if you use Cobra gear).



I tend to have a few slots when I solo with Soulsoother or SW that I don't have much to do with, and I often like to equip an Inhibitor and force the puppet to follow my Stringing Pummels (or Howling Fist if you don't have SP) with Knockout. KO is a much better WS than MM most of the time, good damage and it lowers the mob's evasion.



MEAT. Not Acc+ sushi for Acc you don't need.



For campaign, no. Not PUP/WAR.

You'll likely hit the cap from exp from doing damage on either /WAR or /DNC. So go /DNC, and get MORE exp from spamming JAs, exp from curing, and you're still taking hits to get exp from damage. Oh, and you also have insurance for self cures. I personally use full SW and have it enfeeble and nuke for even more overall exp, along with my melee DD, damage taken, and DNC JAs.

A few more general thoughts on evasion soloing...

1) 80PUP may well get Evasion Bonus IV next month if the pattern holds true (20/40/60 gave us the first three traits). Two ways to look at that - might mean you need less evasion gear to get similar results, or might mean you can do some really impressive evasion focused soloing on certain mobs if you go /NIN and really stack the eva gear. Sure would be cool to try something like a Simurgh or Charby evasion solo with an 80PUP geared for evasion.

2) The ability to cure yourself with a puppet can't be underestimated. Cure IV or V spam, Soulsoother Regen III on harder solo mobs, Role Reversal... this is one reason that sometimes a PUP evasion setup is a waste of time. Who cares if you take some hits if you're getting Cure V bombed by a pet with effectively unlimited MP that gets minimal hate? For this reason, I think it's only really useful to go with a very evasion heavy setup on specific mobs where it's worth it. Certain NMs, targets with particularly strong single hit moves, etc. There are some mobs where evasion IS worth it, but I don't bother on most EP-DC stuff that you're able to brute-force your way through by sort of "blood tanking".

3) Campaign specific point - if you can survive without evasion, don't use it. You WANT to take damage in campaign, it gives you experience points! The same reason you don't want to use /NIN in campaign extends to why you don't want to use evasion gear. Evading too much means you get less total exp, so only use evasion in campaign to the point you need it to survive to keep up with damage taken. It's riding a bit of a fine line really, but if you're in Campaign and you can survive while getting hit through automaton cures, /DNC, other player/NPC cures... by all means, TRY to get hit.

4) I do fully endorse having an emergency evasion macro (maybe even max eva). Never know when you might have to make a run for it after a fluke puppet death, kite something, get an unexpected link, get caught with low HP due to a -na over Cure from Soulsoother, etc. Dunno about actually using it as your standard meleeing set while soloing, but it's certainly useful to have just in case it becomes necessary.



Well, it's not tooo reliant on high end gear on some of these choices. I'm missing some of the super elite stuff myself (no Usukane or Enkidu, I don't have everything I mentioned as good - Antares Harness is too rich for my blood). I guess I'd consider the mini-expansion armors as sort of high end pieces, but they aren't that insane to obtain (Mirke and Desultor the two most applicable here, I personally use both when soloing). But anyway, some of the slots with less impressive evasion options often have really nice and not hard to obtain DD options:

Rings in particular, even if you don't have stuff like Rajas, Ulthalam's, Iota... I'd be more likely to use a STR+4 ring than a rather underwhelming Eva+2. Or something like a Garrulous Ring (STR+3 AGI+3), giving you a little evasion and a little more offensive pop too - I use this on my currently ~65NIN where I ditch my Acc ring for it, and I once used it on PUP solo. Hell, AGI+3 is giving you 1~2 Eva anyway (adding 2 Eva to your build if it makes your total AGI an even number)

Earrings are the same. Elusive or Velocity - OK, I can see that (I sold my Elusive a while back, but I do toss on a Velocity sometimes in place of my Hollow for solo stuff). But when you're dropping below the really good evasion stuff and using third tier evasion choices like Dodge earrings... you might be able to get a very solid DD option instead. Maybe you don't have Brutal or Ethereal, but Aesir isn't that hard to get.



O.Hat versus Turban is always the one choice I personally debate. I do break my O.Hat out if I fight something where the evasion is really worthwhile and it's too dicey to rely on puppet cure-spam. But the more haste gear you have, the more the Turban becomes appealing.

Headlong is nice in general for solo because it gives both haste AND attack. But yeah, if that's the only haste you're getting it's not crazy to go evasion. Again though, the more other pieces you get with haste, the more it becomes valuable to go toward a haste setup. Especially as /NIN, with haste speeding up Utsusemi recast timers and pushing yourself to kill quickly enough to not have to use many shadows or to kill before you need that extra mid-fight recast.

A related note... having a haste gear macro just for Utsusemi recast helps on /NIN, even if you want to wear all out evasion once you finish casting. You might want max evasion while you're meleeing or when shadows are down and waiting on recast, but you REALLY want to not need to wait on recast as much as possible. So swap into haste gear before the spell goes off. I'd personally just add haste gear to my Ni casting macro and use an "evasion gear" macro to swap back to Eva stuff. For Ichi, you may want to start casting in evasion gear and wait for mid-cast (either through a /wait line or by hitting a "haste gear" macro mid-cast) so you finish your cast in haste gear and lower your recast timer.




Eh... Dodge Cape is pretty solid. Boxer's is VERY nice once you can get that, and it's one of the few staples of my Eva "set". But Dodge Cape is pretty good and isn't one of the things that I'd really worry about if your next best option is just Bellicose. 5 evasion > 6 atk to me on anything that matters. Compare that to some of the other slots like Dodge Earring giving 3 eva compared to, say, +7 atk from Aesir Ear Pendant... now that's a trade that you're working with a mediocre amount of evasion anyway so maybe trading up to the DD choice is smart.

My PERSONAL (and I am constantly trying to stress that this is just my way of doing it) play style is centered around survivability and puppet control. The crown jewel of survivability is an activate timer counted down to zero; nothing trumps the ability to summon a puppet instantly. By using an evasion rig and the mana converter I rarely have to DAD in order to keep a large amount of mp in the puppet. In short: the vast majority of the time I can regain puppet mp faster than it is spent. When DAD is required in order to get puppet mp back I do not hesitate to use it. It's just rarely required.

Now, in terms of puppet control, placing yourself in the realm of requiring an eraser or auto-repair kit means dramatically limiting the range of puppet spells, reducing your ability to trigger mana converter or shock absorber, and greatly increasing the use of puppet mp. It's one thing to put an earth maneuver up in order to get stoneskin, earth will only dictate the puppet casting Slow. Still, I'm very aware shock absorber comes with a high price in terms of control and I might reduce it's use over this. Putting up light will essentially override your puppet in two ways. It will cure faster when an enfeeble might be better (and cures are very mp expensive as your puppet doesn't just toss out a cure 3 when it would suffice), and if you have eraser on it will remove everything including the dark maneuver you might have up to trigger mana converter or the earth maneuver you might have up to trigger shock absorber.

I can see how your method could be successful, and I will try to find ways to incorporate the concepts. I do want to say thank you for tossing out the ideas. I'm always up for more pup knowledge. And, as before, I want to state that I don't know close to everything. Example: I just realized yesterday I should be using scanner to keep my puppet from endlessly wasting casting rounds and mp attempting to silence a mob that cannot be silenced. I should have realized that at level 1. lol oh well.


Edited, May 18th 2010 8:38am by Thydonon

You shouldve realized 90% of the things you said at level 1. Like I said, gear part is fine, but the automaton stuff is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy off.

I have to agree with that last sentence when we're talking about soloing with a healing puppet. That automaton is my lifeline, so I tend to play it conservative and make damn sure I'm never caught without it. I realize that DAD has its place, but I'm with Thydonon for the kinds of things we're discussing here. If you're doing something like manaburning or soloing with Spiritreaver, fine, different story.

When you're soloing with a mage puppet (i.e. Soulsoother, full SW, some hybrid like SW body/Harle head), what are you doing that makes you NEED to DAD? You should be just fine on MP through attachments alone the vast majority of the time. This was mostly the case in the past, and is especially true now with the mega-boost given to Mana Tanks in the March update. DAD is a nice option to have for an emergency if you run out of MP, but it's far better to not have to use it and have a zero timer Activate in your pocket in case something unexpected happens and your pet gets killed. Sometimes you will end up with 50MP on your puppet and need to refill. Great, go for it. But if you're deactivating your Soulsoother at 500+ MP... why?

As for attachments, I generally like good ol' Mana Tanks and Economizer on all mage frames. I'm not usually a big Mana Converter fan, but that's more up to your personal style. I think it's probably the most useful on full SW though - fairly fast MP consumption if you're using it to nuke and cure, and can still Cure IV itself back to full health fast after convert. Otherwise I tend to not use Converter. Soulsoother or any of the cure-focused hybrids you shouldn't really be using MP so fast that you need it. If you're really eating damage and getting Cure V spam every cast, maybe you're running through MP fast... but that's kind of back to the original point of this thread, if you're in that kind of situation it's probably a place where an evasion build and not taking hits will be a really good idea. Tying this all back in, really... if you're evading a lot, you're not spending a lot of MP - so Converter OR DAD aren't really needed in that kind of situation.



I personally don't really merit a lot this way, but this style has its applications. Trial of the Magians is a good recent one where a lot of the trials can be done very well with this kind of evasion/melee solo setup. FoV is another. Soloing certain NMs it's really good (I've done it on many - Eastern Shadow and Black/White Coney come to mind quickly). Some kinds of farming where it's not just brute forcing a lot of laughably weak mobs - I used to spend a lot of time in Upper Delkfutt's Tower like this, farming for Alky Bracelet pop items while leveling my NPC and getting some gil, then using a heavy evasion set and automaton healer to solo Alky himself. Way, way back in the day before WHM/BLM heads and before FoV I soloed some levels in the 70s on Flamingos in sky just like this XD.

For merits though, it's certainly faster exp to get into a party or solo with nukes.

Edited, May 18th 2010 1:50pm by Anza

Someone fund this man, please.

In all seriousness, Kodo pretty much sums up my sentiments on the OP's reasoning.

Edited, May 18th 2010 1:27pm by Kametame

i read this a while ago but forgot to respond...

So ya you were totally talking about ME when you were talking about u dont know how pups can solo in melee gear, i totally do, i use it for farming and soloing things and just mow things down with my little PLDbot. Granted im not doing like VT's T's that the magic pups can do but nonetheless i had to chime in and say PUP/DNC in full melee DD gear (my expansion gears are all pup attk/acc -dmg% with some acc/attk for myself) and im doing Magian for the +12 petattk.

I'm a fan fave in meripos, i get invited all the time. It pains me to hear how bad it is for some pups to get invited, when im bored of meriting, (got to again for magian, 100 birds during firesday <Easy Prey> woot). But make your own parties then!

Back on track though, ya i agree, going ALL eva just means you last longer and your fights last forever, balance it up. I go all attk and use Vent/RoleRev/CannibalBlade like its nobodies business but thats how i see Pup is, you're a tag team show. People freak out sometimes at my style of play but it works and im happy. I actually cant even use the magicbots, i mean i CAN because you learn how, but i use it MAYBE MAYBE once in a blue moon. It's all about RNG in meripo and PLD farming/missions solo.

I just forgot the real reason i meant to comment....sorry i ramble. Good luck pups though!
Oh! the p.s. was use pld bot in campaign! the extra dmg gets you SO much xp, im racking in 4k easy even on shorter fights. The dmg it does, the dmg mititgation tools, and you can go afk and let it deploy to something and rake in the points without using that extremely tedious deactivate active crap (sorry mage pups, its just annoying to me henc why i never use them).

I find that if you DAD, you run the risk of overload because you don't know which maneuver is close to threshold. Sometimes when I DAD a SoulSoother and use 1 light, it automatically goes to overload even with collar and hands macro. If you really needed that cure, you'd be long dead.

All Maneuvers are close to threshold. DAD wipes all previous burden and restarts you with some moderately high level of burden for all elements. Any time you Activate, consider waiting a few seconds before putting up any maneuver.

Well, yes. Activate gives high burden for any maneuver after initially activating, that's pretty basic. But to put that in perspective, if you DAD and need a Cure you have two choices, neither of which are very appealing:

1. Wait it out a little bit (say, 30sec) until it's more safe to try a light maneuver, hoping you can survive until then. [again, back to the original point of this thread... this is a good place to utilize an evasion build!]

2. Use a light maneuver while it's more risky, with more chance of a catastrophic overload.

So the lesson here is (a) again, avoid DAD when you don't need to use it. And (b), especially if you're using a curing puppet for soloing, if you DO think you might need to DAD don't wait until you're completely desperate for MP. Give yourself a little buffer, try to DAD in between mobs, try to do it when your Utsusemi timers are in good shape if you're on /NIN, etc.

Of course, in a real emergency you can always Role Reversal to give yourself HP from a freshly activated automaton. That can mess with your casting cycles if you end up struggling to keep up on a particular mob though.