BLMs? SCHs? Who cares about such inferior jobs when you have... puppetmaster! /laugh
*FYI: looooong post of doom!*
You puny jobs don't realize the power locked within the tireless machines that can do your job better than you! With advantages such as unlimited MP, the ability to shed its hate once a minute, and the ability to cast while running, why settle for anything less?
If it's power you want, don't worry. A fully merited/decked out puppetmaster that knows what they're doing can have their automaton make veteran blms cry with jealousy in no time! First off, let's look at the costs to take pup to the max:
Costs of all attachments: dependent on server, but for Phoenix it would cost about 5-7 mil, with about 1 mil of it coming from economizer, a useful but not vital attachment. (consumes dark maneuvers into MP, but mainly useful for soloing when putting your automaton away to refill it's MP isn't always possible due to paralyze on master/damaged automaton/wanting to let activate go to 0 in case of emergency) The magic damage attachments would cost about 2 million or so tops, with tranquilizer and condenser being the two big ticket attachments.
Costs of food: nothing enhances the automatons power, so this is moot. You COULD use int food on the master to make ice maneuvers less burden, but you can easily reach the lowered burden threshold simply through a couple pieces of errant gear swapped in. So use whatever food you want, or not at all.
Costs of equipment: The only thing that actually would cost money at all for pet magic boosts, would be the Oberon's sainti, which goes for 90-100k on my server for 5 tries. One possible augment is pet: magic attack +1 to +4, (perhaps higher, as wiki has been woefully abandoned in up to date augments from fey weapon fights), but this could cost you millions and lots of effort in time to get maxed. As for the rest, they are all going to cost you time and luck, with one possible boost coming from moogle expansion body, and the rest coming from dynamis or random Tenshodo coffer rewards from various colored keys. Note that pet magic attack is a possible augment from FoV as well, but exceedingly rare.
Costs of merits: This one's actually pretty cheap. To max the automaton's magic potential, you need 5/5 automaton magic skill for access to fire and blizzard IV, and 5/5 optimization for 25 pet magic attack. So to max out the automatons magic, that's 1+2+3+4+5 and 3+4+5+5+5= 37 merits, or 370,000 EXP total. Not too bad, just 19 hours or so at 20k exp an hour meripo.
Costs to level pup to 75: this depends on you. However, keep this in mind. Pup is playing the game on expert mode. Pup requires 3 things in high amounts: skill, gear, and attachments; with a generous seasoning of sushi/marinara pizza+1. If you decide to half-*** in ANY of these, you can kiss your party invites goodbye, and say hello to the world of gimp. This job's base strengh is nearly 0... naked and unmerited, with no attachments, you're just a geek trying to punch an oversized tiger along with the robot version of a level 1 onion knight. The job's max potential however, is somewhere among the stars, and it's your job as a puppetmaster to bring it out.
That being said, keep this in mind about automaton nuking: it is not the best for every situation. Yes, the automaton can nuke well, but nuking is not all it does well, and on some targets it isn't the best option, when you have highly accurate/strong physical attacks and powerful healing capabilities up your sleeve as well. Well, the automaton anyways. >.>;
The main reason the automaton's nuking isn't the best for every situation comes mainly from one thing: it's low base INT stat. At a paltry 70 + 6 INT (without ABS-INT, which doesn't land on every HNM), the automaton's power doesn't come from a high INT and some magic attack bonus, but instead, from a GIGANTIC amount of magic attack bonus and direct damage boosts. Here's an idea:
(attachment numbers will be listed with 0 to 3 maneuvers, I.E 5/10/15/20 for 0/1/2/3 of the maneuver that activates it.)
Loudspeaker: (note, on high level monsters, this will generally be swapped out for tranquilizer instead for higher magic accuracy.)
this gives 5/10/15/20 magic attack bonus, and is activated by ice maneuvers.
Loudspeaker II: This gives 10/15/20/25 magic attack bonus to the automaton, and is activated by ice maneuvers.
Ice maker: This lovely gem gives 0/20%/40%/60% magic attack bonus boost (calculated after all other MAB boosts are factored in), and is activated by ice maneuvers. Note that ice maneuvers are all consumed after a nuke lands when this attachment is equipped. Think of this as a prism staff for the automaton on crack, but without the magic acc boost.
Tranquilizer: This wonderful item gives ?/?/?/? magic accuracy bonus, and is activated by ice maneuvers. The amount of accuracy is unknown, but the magic acc boost is rather huge. Oniwaka can land nukes on proto-ultima for full damage easily. (On one parse, out of 23 nukes in a rather short fight, one half resisted and the rest all landed for full.)
With this attachment, resists will be very few for the vast majority of mobs, with a few exceptions. Mainly I found Kirin to be a pain with resists, because 4-5 other blms are nuking with wind as well and the resist patch kicks in. With Oniwaka nuking alone before (while kiter was building hate and adds were being killed), he had no resist issues. As soon as the other blms joined in, it was impossible to land for full damage. The only other pissy mob I've found so far is Stonewall from the Grauberg fey weapon fight, who resists quite a bit on top of his damage taken down effect, but again I'm nuking with another blm, which skews it slightly. Even so, magic does quite nice, as Oni parsed highest on the fight.
Stealth Screen: gives -10/-20/-30/-40 enmity, activated with water maneuvers. Nice to have to help avoid pulling hate, but not a big deal most of the time due to automaton hate shedding.
Mana Channeler: sacrifices magic recast time for magic attack bonus. The recast time is increased by 5/10/15/20 seconds, and magic attack bonus granted is 10/20/30/40, activated by water maneuvers.
Optic Fiber: Increases all other % based attachments by 10/20%/25%/30%, activated by light maneuvers.
Condenser: This wonderful item does not give a boost to damage at all... instead it will consume a water maneuver to prevent an overload from another maneuver (note: it does not prevent overload from water maneuvers. lol) It also seems to reset the burden of that maneuver to slightly below threshold, so you can often squeeze another maneuver safely after it stops an overload, sometimes two. It also works if the water maneuver will be pushed away by a fourth maneuver, I.E. ice ice water, a third ice to push the oldest (water) maneuver out. The water maneuver will still prevent overload on the newest ice, even though it will be overwritten.
With this in mind, you're looking at:
70 INT + 6 INT from 3 ice maneuvers with AF gloves, sometimes +14~ from ABS-INT by the time you got 3 ice maneuvers up if it lands.
A large boost to magic accuracy
+25 MAB from loudspeaker II
+10 MAB from mana channeler
2+1 (3) MAB from Optic Fiber
-10 + -1 (optic fiber) enmity
+60% MAB from ice maker
so 1.38 x 160% = 2.20, or uh... wouldn't that be 120 magic attack bonus?
for lower stuff where you're not worried about magic accuracy, you can swap tranquilizer for loudspeaker I for 20 (+2 from optic fiber) MAB, or 1.60 x 160% = 2.56, or 156 magic attack bonus. :3
Now, for those who want some screenies, here we are:
These tests were done on tundra tigers in beaucedine glacier. For some reason I don't have any screenshots of higher stuff. -_-; But oh well, this first is base damage without abs-int or burn on the mob, nor day/weather bonuses. (the bottom one, first two blizzard IVs are from single ice weather boredom while waiting for it to clear up)
This is with burn and abs-int, but no weather bonuses(bottom one again):
This is with only double weather bonus(bottom again, the random aero III was on a tiger pet while I was bored waiting around for weather...automatons don't overnuke, hence the lower tier):
When potions attack!
This is with abs int, burn, and double ice weather bonus:
You may weep now.
As far as gear/attachments goes, I used the following attachments: Ice maker, Loudspeaker II, Loudspeaker, Optic fiber, Mana tank, Mana tank II, stealth screen, mana channeler, mana conserver, turbo charger, steam jacket, condenser.
For gear, I used a mirke with pet: magic acc/attack bonus +7, puppetry dastanas +1 for reduced overload/+2 int per maneuver instead of +1, buffoon's collar (signed by Ramidus cause hes my awesome friend!) to reduce overload, a sapphire earring with pet: magic acc +1, a brocade obi with pet: magic acc +2, pantin churidars (+5 pet magic acc), and pantin babouches (+5 pet magic att). Oh, and turbo animator.
In gear, this gives me a total of +12 pet magic att bonus, and +15 pet magic acc. Keep in mind there's more to get, but it's luck dependant and mine hasn't been kind to me yet. I can still get up to +10 pet magic accuracy from colored key rewards, and up to +10 pet magic attack bonus from the same, though some occupy the same slot, so it's a trade off.
Oh yes, we can fire off a full powered nuke every 30-40ish seconds, or a 1 ice and 3 ice nuke every minute. We can fire off spells even faster with mana booster and discarding the ice maker/mana chaneler, getting recast down to 16 or so seconds (8.25 of which are used up while the automaton is casting a spell, so about 8 seconds for it to start casting again after it fires a spell off. This weakens nukes considerably, but puts out a lot of them. The only problem is that automatons use aspir once a minute if it falls below 75% of max MP, provided the monster has an MP pool and it senses it won't resist, so this is more useful on monsters that are dark elemental based like diabolos, or don't possess any MP.
Happy casting! :3
(TD; LR version: read the whole thing, or Oniwaka will one shot you with his mighty Blizzard IV of doom.)
