Puppetmaster: A Guide by Orenwald

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Introduction
Welcome to the wonderful world of Puppetmaster! You've either started reading this because you are intersted in the job, or you want to find out if I'm an idiot who doesn't know what I'm talking about. Puppetmaster was my first love in this game, and I hope to share that same sentiment with the world. The job itself is a lot like a Red Mage, it is very versitile. A Puppetmaster can fill many roles in party situations. In a low man party you can fill the slot of Damage Dealer, Tank, or Healer. In full-sized parties fighting really strong monsters you are a bit more limited, usually filling the role of Damage Dealer, but with the right setup a Healing job isn't too far-fetched. Before we begin with that however, let's start with you.

Race Selection
You probably already have a Race of your own. You, however, will quickly realize that Puppetmaster is a very forgiving job. No race can truely play it poorly, although some are better suited for certain tasks than others.

Elvaan
The elvaan make incredibly potent Puppetmasters. The low Dexerity will slightly decrease accuracy and critical hit rate, and the abyssmal Intelligence will Damage your ability to stack Ice Maneuvers (covered later), and the low MP pool will limit your ability to take advantage of mage sub jobs... but what you lack in brains you make up in brawn. The elvaan are gifted with high Strength and Vitality, which will make your Hand-to-Hand weaponskills rather painful. The large HP pool will also aid in your efforts to solo while you spend days on end seeking for a party! :)

Galka
The Galka make a very solo-friendly Puppetmaster. They have moderate Dexterity, agility, strength, intelligence, and a much diminished MP pool... but they have Vitality and HP in spades. Fortunately for you, your automaton's stats aren't based off yours, so you can take beating after beating and your tiny little cure-bot's nearly endless supplies of MP will keep you charging along.

Hume
Humes are... well... Very balanced. There isn't anything you can't do well as a PUP, however you will not excell at any particular task either. Sound familliar? Ha! Well... Definately a solid choice for a PUP, you won't be dissapointed.

Mithra
Mithra is another race that plays Puppetmaster very well. They don't have the best Strength or Vitality, so their Hand-to-Hand Weaponskills won't be top-notch, but they have an excellent supply of Dexterity, Agility, and Intelligence, which enables them to be fierce in both solo and party play.

Taru Taru
With the lowest supply of both HP and Vitality, Tarutaru perform the worst in solo play. Although they have a low base Strength, through the use of their RSE they can bring themselves to a respectable damage level in party situations. A Taru Puppetmaster really shines at the later levels however. By throwing on a sub like Scholar, a taru Puppetmaster can sleep -> Nuke monsters to death like a pro, leading to fairly efficient soloing.

Support Job Choices for Puppetmaster
There are two categories for Sub jobs for a PUP: Party and Solo

Party Sub jobs
In a party you are going to want to augment your ability to deal damage as much as possible. My favorite among this list is WAR, however you are most likely to use MNK early on, so let us begin with that.

Monk
The Monk support job offers you Boost to increase the damage of your weaponskills (although I would not reccomend using it for anything else), and the elusive Martial Arts I job trait, which Puppetmaster does not get natively untill level 25. Monk also supplies a boost to your Strength, Dexterity, and Vitality.

Warrior
This is my favorite sub to use after 30. Berserk is good for boosting the damage you do over time, and it never hurts to have someone else with provoke in the party. After 50 you get access to Double attack which turns this sub into the best Damage over Time sub for PUP. It supplies mosty Strength and Vitality.

Dragoon
Dragoon offers you a couple Accuracy bonus Job Traits as you level, although I would not reccommend using it unless you have the Level 30 earring "Wyvern Earring" which grants you 5% haste when your support job is set to Dragoon. It supplies mostly Strength and Dexterity.

Theif
This Support Job is really only viable after you gain access to the Single Hit Weaponskill "Howling Fist", and with it you can stack Sneak Attack and Trick Attack with it to do a nice spike damage, and put the enmity on someone else so those infernal Colibri don't eat your food! Cool beans! This sub supplies mostly Dexterity and Agility.

Soloing Support Jobs
When you solo you're going to want to pick a support job that will either Aid in your ability to quickly finish off the enemy, or Aid in keeping your butt alive.

Monk
Only use this sub untill 25. Martial Arts I is big, its about 80 delay. Your ability to swing faster with this sub job will outweigh the benifits of any other sub available. If you choose to use this sub till 25, I would reccomend stopping at level 3, subbing PUP on a different job and capping your magic skill to teach your automaton "Cure".

Warrior
I used this sub after 25, The Vitality helped me stay alive, the Strength helped kill faster, Berserk at 30 gave nice boosts to Weaponskills (I'd cancle after the WS), and provoking monsters off the automaton is invaluable!

Dancer
A great sub post-30. Drain Samba and Curing Waltz will help relieve some of the pressure on your automaton, but your killspeed will probably suffer for it, you have been warned. :)

White Mage
I shudder typing these words... I see it a lot so I figured I'd mention it. I am not a fan of /WHM on PUP at all. Your automaton can do more than well enough on its own to keep you alive to warrent gimping yourself this bad. Its better than no sub at all... but not by much.

Scholar
This sub is excellent for sleep-nuking things with your BLM automaton, you sleep he nukes. Good deal. I wouldn't melee-solo with this sub tho... See: White Mage.

Basics
At Level 1 you will notice you have 2 Job Abilites: Overdrive and Activate. Activate will summon your automaton. The target of the ability is yourself, and the recast is 20 minutes.

Upon summoning your automaton, your "Pet Commands" menu (listed under "Abilitied" in the combat menu) will have gained 10 new commands. These are only available while your pet is summoned. We shall cover the 8 elemental maneuvers later. Lets focus on the first two. Deploy tells your pet to attack something. He will continue to attack it untill 1) His target dies. 2) You die. 3) He dies. You also have a Pet Command called "Deactivate".  This kills your automaton.  It will kill him dead.  When you level up, your automaton won't level automatically.  You must Deactivate him, then use Activate again to summon him at his new level (Henceforth called "Cycling").

At level 10 you gain a new Pet Command called "Retrieve". This will force your pet to stop attacking the enemy he is engaged to and return to your side, as if the monster had died. The target for this ability is yourself.

Attachments
When shopping for attachments, you should look for two things: The Effect, and the Element. Every attachment has a specific effect to it. Some raise Attack (Tension Spring), some raise Defense (Armor Plate). After you've bought an attachment and traded it to the girl wearing the Alchemist's Apron in the Automaton Workshop in Aht Urhgan Whitegate, you are ready to equip it. You can only equip attachments when your automaton is NOT activated. You automaton can only wear a certain number of attachments. He also can only wear a certain number of each ELEMENT of attachments, depending on his head and body. For example: The Harlequin head and Frame together allows you 5 points in the 6 base elements, and 3 points in Light and Dark. The Tension Spring requires 2 points of fire, which will leave you with 3 remaining points to spend in fire, light, and dark, and 5 points to spend in ice, water, wind, earth, and thunder. What you wear is up to you, but you should buy an "Attuner" and "Target Marker", and always, always, ALWAYS put them on. They will make your pet hit harder, and hit more often on monsters that /check Tough, Very Tough, and Incredibly Tough.

Using Maneuvers to Enhance Attachments
Some attachments, like the Tension spring, will give a boost just from wearing them. However, you can increase the boost from these parts by using a Maneuver that corresponds to its element. To Enhance a Tension Spring you would use a Fire maneuver. To enhance an Armor Plate you would use an Earth maneuver. The Attuner and Target Marker cannot be enhanced.

Using Maneuvers to Activate Attachments
Some Attachments, like the Shock Absorber, will do absolutely NOTHING when you equip them! To make them function you have to use a maneuver corresponding to their element. To turn on your Shock Absorber, you have to use an Earth Maneuver. Certain attachments have hidden recast times on them, so if you try to activate an attachment and it doesn't work, that might be the issue.

Active Maneuvers and Overloading
You are allowed to have 3 "maneuver" effect active at once. It can be 3 different effects (1 Fire, 1 Ice, and 1 thunder), or 3 of the same. (3 Fires!) Each effect has a duration of 60 seconds. If you have 3 effects active and you use a new maneuver, the OLDEST effect will be overwritten, so be warned. (The Oldest effect is the leftmost of the 3).

If you use the same element repeatedly you begin to run the risk of "overloading". An overload will remove all of your maneuvers, and stop you from using more. It will also nerf your Automaton pretty bad, so don't let it happen. you can decrease the odds of overloads by increasing the stat that corresponds with the given element (Fire=STR thunder=DEX wind=AGI water=MND ice=INT light=CHR. There is no stat for Dark). This is why an Elvaan will overload on ice maneuvers more than a taru, and more than with Fire Maneuvers.

There are 2 Items that reduce the odds of overloading, one is a Lv5 neck piece, and the other is your AF hands. Neither should be worn all the time. you can set you macro's first 2 lines to put on your Overload gear, line 3 is the maneuver, line 4 is a /wait 1, and lines 5 and 6 are your melee gear. It would look like this:


 * /equip neck "Buffoon's Collar"
 * /equip hands "Pup. Dastanas"
 * /ja "Fire Maneuver" 
 * /wait 1
 * /equip neck "Spike Necklace"
 * /equip hands "Battle Gloves"

There is no excuse to wear either time all the time, so don't. For the love of god... please don't.

Solo
While playing solo, the most important thing you can do is equip a "Damage Gauge" on your MAGE automaton (or the Harlequin automaton if you don't have the mage yet) and keep a light maneuver up at all times. This will force your pet to cure you if your HP drops below 50%. I wouldn't reccomend trying to solo w/ the other frames unless you're /DNC, you're really confident in your abilities, and you aren't fighting anything too much stronger than you. If you think you can do it though... More power to you! Remember, its your game, try to have fun with it.

Party Play
In a party as a Damage Dealer, your job is to deal as much damage as possible without pulling hate from your tank. Puppetmaster accomplishes this by splitting the damage in half. In a party BST tends to be 75:25, and DRG tends to be 85:15. PUP maintains a balance in the range of 40:60 to 60:40. with the damage split this way, you aren't looking at very many enmity issues, but you are still doing a TON of damage.

In a party you need to play a giant juggling act. You have to juggle keeping your automaton fighting near its peak potential through the use of maneuvers, but you have to do it in such a way that you never overload. In some parties this is easily accomplished by not using maneuvers when your party has downtime because its mage-heavy. It can become difficult if your puller is a fish-a-holic. Just play it by ear and you will eventually get the hang of it.

Some closing thoughts
I'm not going to go into a complicated list of gear, because there isn't much there. All I have to say is use your head and wear stuff that will actually help you. Just because you have a Seer's set +1 from leveling your Black Mage, doesn't mean you should wear it on PUP. Look at ALL of your options, and pick gear that will augment your ability to perform. if you have any more questions, hit me up on the Alexander Server. Good Luck!