[The PUP thread] Gearing paradigms

[Sechs]

I'd like to discuss and share opinions with other fellow PUPs or people with competence on PUP.
One of the most basic and most common questions since the dawn of time is:

Is it worth to equip this item with pet stats instead of this one with only master stats?

Given two types of items:

• Item A (master stats)
• Item B (master stats and automaton stats)

Obviously there is no discussion if item B has better stats even for the master (automaton part would just be icing on the cake in that situation).
The real question here, and it's a much more common one, is where you get some automaton stats at the cost of master's stats.
Is it never worth?
Can it be worth in some situations? If so can we define a simple model? How much +Automaton DPS% would we need to compensate a loss of Master DPS%? Can the ratio be 1:1 or does it have to be different?

First, let's define some possible and realistic situations of employment for the job. Feel free to add others if I missed something important:

1. Soloing stuff
2. Pet only
3. Small group
4. Big group (easy content)
5. Group (hard content)

I dunno if we should include very specific situations like petjobs-only PTs with a COR enhancing them. They sound cool in theory but I don't see much use for that, practically.
1) Is a situation where 99% of the times you're going to need a healer doll. RDM if you want more damage/utility and less healing, or WHM one if you want full heal focus.
2) Is a situation where you're tipically going to be alone. You could be with others too but it doesn't matter. You're gonna stay out of AoE range and have the automaton do the job. In situations like these gear has a difference relevance, for instance it doesn't matter what stats you put on the master. In these situations even lv75 gear (ACP body, Moogle head etc) is just as good as anything else, sometimes better actually.
3) and 4) are very similar situations, they could almost be the same group. In these situations you're going to have a real healer* so you won't need WHM doll. In 3) you have less than a full pt, in 4) you have more and, likely, slightly harder content. This also brings us to the obvious consequence that 4) is likely gonna bring more buffs than 3) hence the DPS % difference between Master and Doll should be smaller in 3) and bigger in 4)
For 5) I didn't discriminate between larger or small groups. What matters here is that content is really hard (in smaller group you'd have even less margin for errors, of course).

*Unless you want to heal your pt with your doll but it might not always be feasible

I see 1) as still very useful, even with trust NPCs out.
2) Is not really that relevant anymore, unless you want to afk reives or stuff like that. It's a bit of a niche use, especially now with Trust I feel it's less useful than in the past.
5) Is a type of content where I don't really see much space for PUP. Even with Divinator the doll would have serious issues in hitting the target or even just surviving to AoE damage. Keep in mind that normally the doll doesn't get affected by PT buffs like the master. For reference, I'm thinking about D or even more VD Ark Angels.
This leaves us with 3) and 4), where PUP can definitely find a meaningful spot among others.

Any other comment to add to this analysys?

[Sechs]

Waiting for input from other people, a small insight on the recently added Reforged AF and Reforged Relic

Foire set (reforged AF)

Spoiler: show

• Head => Alternative to Anwig Salade, without the DT-10%. For situations like 2) it makes no difference (might be worse), but it could be nice for mixed sets
• Body => As above, altough this is a much better piece for the Master than Head (but still nowhere close Thaumas). The 3% Pet haste is necessary to reach the 26% gear haste cap for Automaton, given the recent changes to Turbo Charger and TCII. For situations like 2), would this be better than a Mirke Wardecors with Att/Ratt+15, DA+2, Crit+2?
• Hands => They don't seem anything special, you could get 4% haste already with Pantin+2 (situation 2). With Regimen Gloves out these are even less important. They probably give an additional reduction on the burden, but do we really need it? I think they give the same +stat as the 109, NQ AF and AF+1
• Legs => These could be very very nice for situation 1. Additional MP means less ADD, the cure pot could mean not using Vivi Valve or less Light Maneuvers, and they also give Pet 3% Haste (1% less than Omodaka). These also have decent stats for the master, despite lacking att/acc.
• Feet => Possibly decent WS piece for Master (no att though). 3% Pet Haste (same as 109 though). Dunno if the repair+ is the same as the 109.

Pitre set (reforged relic)

Spoiler: show

• Head => Only regen+3 piece for Master, and nice regen/refresh for Automaton. The augment could be nice for automaton nuke sets (but who uses blm doll these days?). Doubt it can compensate the lack of 5% haste for the melee/ranged dolls. It looks basically like an idle/regen piece.
• Body => looks like a +1 version of Foire, at least master-wise. Altough 119 not out yet so hard to tell. The bonuses for Automaton look cool
• Hands => This is a tough choice, slightly lower stats for master, but basically it all revolves in 1% haste/Acc/racc/macc from Regimen, vs the Augment (+1-5% Crit rate). In situations 1-2-3 Acc shouldn't matter, so it's basically just 1% Haste vs 1-5% Crit
• Legs => Meh, could be useful for mage dolls but, again, who uses them these days?
• Feet => Just as above. Master wise it's the same as Fore but with 10 less acc.

It's a bit sad to see how reduntant these 2 sets became. The basic stats are more or less the same, with a couple of job specific enhancement here and there.

[dasva]

Does pet haste effect ranged attack delay for autos?

[Sechs]

No it doesn't. Well at least as far as I know.
It does affect the overall damage indirectly if you engage sharpshoot at close range. Faster melee hit > Faster TP gain > Faster Armor Piercer

[Psion]

Are soil belt and gorget better than other options for stringing pummel? Need to work on a build for it for tough fights, but i've been gone for years before coming back a couple months ago.

and along those lines, is a moonshade earring with tp bonus, paired with brutal, better for pummel than other options, or does the crit hit boost from the tp bonus not beat say, steelflash/bladeborn earring?

[Hitou]

If you're using Rancorous Mantle then Nefarious Collar is probably best bet for neck, if not then Rancor Collar. For belt I think a STR/VIT belt is better than ele since the fTP only affects the first hit, but I might be off base.

For earrings, 8 acc/att and 2% more double attack is probably better than what marginal + crit% 25 TP bonus gives but I might be wrong, I don't have TP bonus moonshade.

[Sechs]

Rancorous for back, and for the neck Nefarious will not always be the best. Gorget is a good option. Check spreadsheet with different targets to see the difference, if I recall Nefarius wasn't always the best choice (it probably was back in abyssea days).
As for the earring, it sure is better for Vsmite at least, I think it should be the same for Pummel as well, don't have it myself either (got refresh one)

[dasva]

No it doesn't. Well at least as far as I know.
It does affect the overall damage indirectly if you engage sharpshoot at close range. Faster melee hit > Faster TP gain > Faster Armor Piercer

Thought so. Just when you mentioned haste for ranged pet I was like wut. It just melees in that little time between shots where you'd be ja locked kinda like a ranger would in range right? Given the amount of meleeing could probably sacrifice some haste then

[dasva]

Rancorous for back, and for the neck Nefarious will not always be the best. Gorget is a good option. Check spreadsheet with different targets to see the difference, if I recall Nefarius wasn't always the best choice (it probably was back in abyssea days).
As for the earring, it sure is better for Vsmite at least, I think it should be the same for Pummel as well, don't have it myself either (got refresh one)

idk back in abyssea capping crit hit rate wasn't too hard. VS has slightly better nailed down crit rates so easy to test but iirc people were having troubles figuring out pummels crit rate because of odd dmgs or something.

That said assuming you put att on it as well it comes out to most likely 1-2 crit rate vs 8acc/4att 2DA. I'd assume DA would be somewhat less valuable on SP than VS given the 2 extra hits if you have any QA/TA and I'd imagine the QA belt is still pretty good for wsing

[TummieGaruda]

Can it be worth in some situations? If so can we define a simple model? How much +Automaton DPS% would we need to compensate a loss of Master DPS%? Can the ratio be 1:1 or does it have to be different?

This is possible, but it will be difficult because it will depend on attachments and number of maneuvers used.

For ranged auto, we know the base damage values for ranged attacks so we can somewhat focus our attention to stats we would like to increase. If I remember correctly every 10 ranged skill raises ranged based damage by 2, so in situations where you are comparing say Cirque Legs +2 vs something else, we can look to see if the +2 in base ranged damage will be better than pants that have better master stats depending on what you are fighting.

So with this, maybe a good starting point would be to list equipment sets that boost autos similar to how we have different sets for low to high accuracy and then compare them to the same sets for the master and see which ones give the better combined DPS.

[Toth]

I would say Pitre body is our best TP body on DC+ mobs when using Sharpshooter or Valoredge atm for the automaton bonuses. The +1 is going to be sexy. I use the Foire +1 body for SP and VS as well.

Just curious, is anyone using Valordege for figthing and see any comparable numbers to SS's possible output.

[shepardG]

From my use, SP transfers belt and gorget bonuses across all hits, similar to requeiscat does with sword.
I assume this was based on the back in the 75 cap days and pup had next to nothing going for it, that was SEs way of throwing it a bone.

[Prothescar]

Sounds unlikely

[shepardG]

Ughhh proth, your gonna make me dig my pup stuff out of storage arent you. I could have swore it did, but ill run some numbers maybe this weekend.

[Sechs]

From my use, SP transfers belt and gorget bonuses across all hits, similar to requeiscat does with sword.

I seriously doubt that, but at the same time it's true that elemental gorgets/belt are nice options for Pummel. I use them both because they came out winning over my other options. Caudata Belt would likely be better but PUP cannot equip it.

I would say Pitre body is our best TP body on DC+ mobs when using Sharpshooter or Valoredge atm for the automaton bonuses. The +1 is going to be sexy. I use the Foire +1 body for SP and VS as well.

Foire+1 is equal/slightlybehind to Manibozho Body (R15 STR), which is kinda a shame considering the latter is a 110 ilevel item. But still, that's how it is. Foire+1 Would win in a situation where you're att and acc capped and the higher mods would bring it above. Pitre+1 might become the best option indeed. But then again the same could happen in 2 months with Cirque+3. It's gonna have similar stats, most likely (acc/att and stats vomit).
As for "best body on DC+ mobs when using Sharp or Valor" I don't really get what you mean, maybe you could explain further?
Because damagewise I still think a Mirke Wardecors might give better numbers than Pitre Body (DA+2, Crit+2, Att/Ratt+15).
Regardless, Foire+1's Haste+3 should beat both in terms of Pet DPS. (and you need it to reach the 26% pet haste cap anyway)

Just curious, is anyone using Valordege for figthing and see any comparable numbers to SS's possible output.

Unlikely because of the huge difference in WS damage. Even with a crit build and AM3 I think the Armor piercer spam from Sharpshoot would still win. Of course Sharpshoot is a bit more annoying to mantain if the target moves. In which case you could probably use a Sharpbody/Valorhead setup? Maybe...

This is possible, but it will be difficult because it will depend on attachments and number of maneuvers used.

Again, I think it depends on the type of situation you're in. That's why I bothered to define different situations in the first post.
In 1) I don't know if it's worth it, possibly. In 5) it's not possible imho, and not worth it either. But PUP would hardly find a spot in those situations anyway.
In 4) I don't think it's possible. All those buffs would bring the master's damage too high, at which point hindering it to increase an unbuffed's pet damage wouldn't be beneficial.
In 3) it might be possible and convenient too, and that's exactely the kind of scenario where I think PUP can be an excellent and versatile job.

For ranged auto, we know the base damage values for ranged attacks so we can somewhat focus our attention to stats we would like to increase.

You can do that but you don't really have a lot of choice. There's a single piece buffing auto skill atm, and hardly any relevant piece buffing automaton's stats (Omodaka legs). And the amounts are so small that with a Divinator equipped you wonder if +3STR would even make a difference at all, to make an example.

I think for both Sharpshoot and Valoredge the main thing to focus on atm is pet Haste. Now that the things changed with Turbo Charger, our goal should be to get as close as possible to 26% Pet Haste.
Someone might correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that's the most important stat.
After Accuracy of course but that should NOT be an issue with Divinator, if we exclude situations like 5) (could be an issue on 4), partially maybe)

First thing I want to do when I get back home is use the /checkparam on my automaton to see how much accuracy exactely we get from Scope (zero, 1, 2, and 3 maneuvers) and how much -acc we get from Drum Magazine.
I wanna see if Scope overcompensates or isn't enough to compensate the loss from Drum, and how this changes according to the number of maneuvers.
(altough this might not be the right moment to do these tests... didn't SE say that there currently is a cap of +30 acc on pets and that they're gonna fix it on March? Or were they talking just about BST and SMN?)

So with this, maybe a good starting point would be to list equipment sets that boost autos similar to how we have different sets for low to high accuracy and then compare them to the same sets for the master and see which ones give the better combined DPS.

It's easy to do that. We can exclude pre-Adoulin gear because those items would be relevant only in situations like 2).
For everything else we want something that's "up-to-date" and the only pieces currently in-game that offer both master AND automaton stats which are relevant are the Foire set, the Pitre set and Regimen Gloves.
(and Delve H2H if we wanna stretch it).
I already made a list of Pitre/Foire in my second post, feel free to add your comments of course.

Thought so. Just when you mentioned haste for ranged pet I was like wut. It just melees in that little time between shots where you'd be ja locked kinda like a ranger would in range right? Given the amount of meleeing could probably sacrifice some haste then

I'm not sure what you meant to say with this post.
English is not my mother language... could you please attempt to rephrase it or something lol? I can grasp something out of it but I'm not sure about your overall point lol

[Toth]

Foire+1 is equal/slightlybehind to Manibozho Body (R15 STR), which is kinda a shame considering the latter is a 110 ilevel item. But still, that's how it is. Foire+1 Would win in a situation where you're att and acc capped and the higher mods would bring it above. Pitre+1 might become the best option indeed. But then again the same could happen in 2 months with Cirque+3. It's gonna have similar stats, most likely (acc/att and stats vomit).
As for "best body on DC+ mobs when using Sharp or Valor" I don't really get what you mean, maybe you could explain further?
Because damagewise I still think a Mirke Wardecors might give better numbers than Pitre Body (DA+2, Crit+2, Att/Ratt+15).
Regardless, Foire+1's Haste+3 should beat both in terms of Pet DPS. (and you need it to reach the 26% pet haste cap anyway)


Unlikely because of the huge difference in WS damage. Even with a crit build and AM3 I think the Armor piercer spam from Sharpshoot would still win. Of course Sharpshoot is a bit more annoying to mantain if the target moves. In which case you could probably use a Sharpbody/Valorhead setup? Maybe...

Foire+1 does have a very high VIT booster for SP though. And just to clarify Schs, when I mean DC+ mobs, I mean the body to wear when fighting them for both master benefit (more attack and accuracy) and automaton benefit (attack, accuracy and store TP for faster WSing). Maybe I can amend to T mobs and above?

[dasva]

I'm not sure what you meant to say with this post.
English is not my mother language... could you please attempt to rephrase it or something lol? I can grasp something out of it but I'm not sure about your overall point lol

Haste is less important if you spend most of your time shooting or ws

[Sechs]

Maybe I can amend to T mobs and above?

No need to make amends lol
But the difference between Foire+1 and Thaumas for TPing is really big, Since Thaumas too has +acc, to make Foire+1 really better you would need to be fighting something where the acc difference (roughly 22) starts mattering. All those MA stats on Thaumas are insane...
Specifically, maybe on stuff into Outer Ra'Kaznar? Some of the VT mobs there are pretty evasive. Also they do a lot of damage, another thing for which Foire's additional DEF/VIT would prov to be useful, and likely better than Otronif body NQ.
Yes, in a situation like that I can see Foire body being on par/better.


Anyway, some Racc tests with Checkparam now.
I was on naked PUP, no gear and no attachment equipped unless specified. Capped Ranged skill and 5/5 skill merits.
Did two main tests, one with "Animator" and one with "Divinator"

Animator tests

Spoiler: show

• Basic Racc: 459
• Racc with Scope: 469, 483, 496, 510 (0, 1, 2, 3 maneuvers)
• Racc with Scope and Optic Fiber (wind): 470, 485, 499, 514 (0, 1, 2, 3w) -
• Racc with Scope and Optitc Fiber (light): 471, 471, 472 (1, 2, 3l) - 487, 488, 502 (1w 1l, 1w 2l, 2w 1l)
• Racc with Drum Magazine: 444, 433, 416, 395
• Racc with Drum Magazine and Optic Fiber: 444, 433, 411, 390 (0, 1, 2, 3w) - 406, 428, 444 (1l 2w, 2l 1w, 3l)
• Racc with Drum Magazine and Scope: 454, 453, 446, 435 (I was expecting: 454, 457, 453, 446 adding/subtracting static values to the basic value of 459)
• Racc with Drum, Scope and Optic: 455, 463, 444, 434 (0, 1, 2, 3w) - 442, 453, 457 (2w 1l, 1w 2l, 3l)

Divinator tests

Spoiler: show

• Base Racc: 759
• Racc with Scope: 770, 784, 799, 814
• Racc with Scope and Optic Fiber (divinator, wind m): 771, 786, 803, 818
• Racc with Scope and Optic Fiber (divinator, light m): 772, 772, 773 (1, 2, 3 light) - 789, 790, 806 (1w 1l, 1w, 2l, 2w 1l)
• Racc with Drum Magazine (divinator)743, 730, 712, 688

Maybe someone wants to come to some interesting conclusion?
Some things I noticed:

• Seems like Scope gives a static increase but with some sort of approximation somewhere?
• Optic Fiber does not only increase the beneficial effects, but the negative ones too (Drum Magazine's -racc)
• Divinator's % increase gets applied before the racc bonus from Scope
• Values in this post from Camate seem wrong, unless there have been successive fixes to Scope which I forgot about.
  If those are wrong wonder how many other are...
• Didn't bother to do detailed calculation but it seems Divinator uses a % based increase for each stat? Even if I didn't list them the amounts added were different: 300 to racc, 301 to att, 365 to ratt, 293 to racc etc, doubt it uses different static amounts for each different stat?
• Scope does NOT compensate from the racc loss you get from Drum Magazine, and Optic Fiber, in that specific circumstance, makes things even worse (granted it's a pretty negligible difference)

This is exciting, anybody else wants to test more attachments? :D

[Sechs]

Haste is less important if you spend most of your time shooting or ws

Yes but there is a pretty big delay between ranged shots, reduced by Drum Magazine (and wind maneuvers accordingly).
The melee hits in between ranged shots is not just some very rare and random melee hits, it's a lot of hits, especially when you factor DA from augments and/or Coiler. In the end it makes quite a bit difference in how fast Sharpshoot can reach the right amount of TP and shoot Armor Piercer.

[Byrthnoth]

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/114...=1#post6033508

Frames have different "ratings" like monsters do for attack, defense, ranged accuracy, ranged attack, etc. These ratings determine the multiplier applied to whatever the base stat amount is. I haven't worked out what they are (and might not), but take a look at the above attachments that are supposed to have static potency and notice that they don't.