CP Party Pets And Hybrid Sets

I made an excel to see what i gain/lose by going for 5% pet haste vs 3% crate for the master. I am still working on it, but for now it accounts for acc and most attachments. It only has the 3 main melee frames (ss/ss ve/ss and ve/ve)

1) difference between SS and SS/VE is basically 10 acc/racc/atk and 25 ratk, and ss will use 4 ranged shots per min, vs SS/VE using 2. So if you dont mind giving up 2 ranged attacks and gaining a pet that always melees, its definitly the option.
2) data based on fighting serac rabbits (target eva 1109)
3) Without target marker, you are basically floored on acc, with akamochi, you are at roughly 66% hit rate, and with shiromochi + target marker you are at 99% acc
4) Using this: 2 wind/1 thunder maneuver
(drum/tc1/tc2)(ts2/ts3)(target marker+ w/e)

AM3 up (taeon master set acc atk , ta, c. rate)
ss 38
vess 40
ve 45

Hybrid set am3up (acc/atk, ta, 25% pet haste)
ss 69 (+31 hits)
vess 71 (+31 hits)
ve 79 (+34 hits)


So basically, if you assume am3 always up (easy to maintain), shiromochi, and target marker, you have to ask is 15% crit rate for the master < 31-34 extra hits from the pet. I can't come to any conclusions yet, but i would assume, that for once, we wont be hurting our DPS too bad if we choose to go the hybrid route. As long as you maintain target marker + shiromochi. The second either of those isn't on, and you floor your acc, you might as well not even have a pet out for the 10 hits a minute it will land.

I still need to parse base dmg to get an actual dps number but the extra 2 ranged hits ss gets over ssve puts them at about even in total hits, but ssve will always melee (huge bonus). So for me, i will continue to use ssve for the ease of use.

Depending on avg weapon skill dmg and melee hit, ve might even beat out vess since it hits faster, harder, and has more acc (99% vs 95% with above setup)

That's awesome I'm really excited for your Automaton DPS spreadsheet, it will become a staple for gearing. Also I was wondering if maybe you knew whether bean daifuku was gear or magic haste... Or if you could test it for me? I'm really hoping its gear haste for pet.

2 of my 7 taeon sets are master/pet hybrids, i always choose DA over crit because crit doesn't grant extra tp like DA does, altho when pet's under AM3 crit might be prefered... In any case those sets are:

All Taeon set 1: Master: acc/att+20, automaton: DA+5, DT-4%

All Taeon set 2: master acc/att, automaton: haste+4-5/DA+5

Even with AM3 up, i still come up with 5DA > 4 crit for pet.

I can test bean daifuku, althought i suspect its magic. Should be fairly easy to test, 0% gear haste, tc1/tc2 +2 wind maneuvers = capped spell haste, so if there is any difference, it is due to food.

ill try to test it tonight. along with base dmg for melee hits. i suspect its based off melee skill.

Made a semi hybrid set on my Taeon. Mostly just TA +2, attack/acc, and pet haste +. But, h2h WS need an adjustment pretty bad.

Some preliminary numbers;

Base dmg on automaton seems dependent on skill:

ss/ss 104 (258)
ve/ss 113 (254)
ve/ve 120
meelee dmg (range dmg)

So with ra = ~2x dmg of a melee attack but causing jawait for 3s, in high haste situations ve/ss > ss/ss, but in low haste situations, ss/ss> ve/ss.

Basically, you have 15 seconds of not attacking vs 6 seconds of not attacking per minute. The more haste/DA you have the the more it favors ve/ss. 5 extra melee swings with 40% da/20% ta + w/e from gear (25%) makes it a pretty large lead.

All things said,
ve has the highest base dmg, acc/atk, and only loses ja due and id want to parse it to be sure but numerically its comming out on top, (more swings, higher base dmg,and only has to deal with ja delay due to shield bash 1 time per 3 minutes.

Here are the results, still havent figured for ws numbers yet so this is a straight up melee attack only numbers

Trivial Target
25% gear haste
tc1/2 with 2 wind maneuvers (43% magic haste)

25% da 20% crate
SS 220 215
SS/VE 238 228
VE 286 271

So for pet only dps gear, go for 25% da.


In 0 haste (no tc1 or 2, no gear haste) You can see the SS pulls ahead, but in high haste, it falls behind, this is due to the 3sec ja delay associated with RA.

DPS
SS 93.9
SS/VE 72.4
VE 65.2


As far as which pet is best for CP parties (using serac rabbit)
Target marker is a must (none of the stabilizers are needed)
Shiromochi is a must (akamochi wont cap acc)
With aftermath 3 up

With taeon hybrid set (25% pet haste, ta/acc/atk for master)
SS 98.2
SS/VE 108.5
VE 135.4

Without taeon hybrid set (full master acc/atk/ta/crate or/whatever is best for 3rd aug)
SS 65.7
SS/VE 65.3
VE 76.0

So the dps gain from using 25% pet haste on cp mobs is roughly 60 dps for VE, so the dps lost from master must be < or = 60. Again this doesnt account for ws, or the -25% def down of armor shatter. Just melee hits.

	Hybrid	Master	Diff
SS	97.6	60.6	37.0
SS/VE	107.7	63.7	44.0
VE	136.4	76.6	59.8
Master	451	508	57

looking at melee dps only for master

On an IT CP farm mob, the loss from master is = gain from pet. If using VE pet.

Also i could be wrong but i am getting 7str/dex for 3rd augment beating 3%c/rate or 3% c dmg. (On serac rabbits aka cp mobs) To that end i see c.rate listed on the wiki augment page but no ranges listed so i assumed 3% for each, on cp mobs, str/dex > c rate > c dmg.

So yes, melee dmg alone you can use a pet hybrid set and not hurt your overall dps too much. Once you account for weapon skills it will obviously be slightly different.

But... why would you ever not want to account for WS? It's nice that pet hybrid set is no longer as much of a straight up liability, but it still looks to be stronger overall master+puppet from a DD perspective to simply gear for the master.

[also as noted in the attachments topic, while it doesn't really change the ultimate conclusion, these numbers don't appear to consider that using SS increases other players' DPS - including the master - due to Armor Shatterer's def down effect. So, SS will actually be stronger overall master+puppet than your numbers are showing.]

I'm not saying pet gear doesn't have its place, but that place seems to be more often in quirky lowman scenarios (like Nezha's interesting examples of Easy/Normal high tier battlefields). It's cool that we can do it, but unless those kinds of fights are your heavy focus with PUP, certainly a secondary concern to gearing the master first. i.e. if you're gonna make Taeon pieces, get your master TA+2%/Acc+Atk/whatever as first priority, do a second set of pet augmented ones later as you can.

i just got Pet: Tp bonus +400 what exactly does that mean? i start with 400? or?

Well the reason i wasn't accounting for ws is it took me a good long while to build the pet dd spread sheet.

1) Our top dd pet in 99% of situations is going to be ve/ss (ve head + ss body). On its own it slightly edges out SS/SS due to slightly higher acc on melee attacks which is where the bulk of tp comes from. Then armor shatter does 4.4k dmg very consistently, and VE (head + body) does between 1.3-2.5k, with no defense down bonus.

2) Its pretty irrelevant to consider the def down of armor shatter for several reasons.
First, it requires the mob to be alive for more than 1 tp round, which isnt realistic. On i113 content and lower you/your pet are usually capped (or close) to the pdif ratio of your atk/their defense.
Secondly, im lucky if my pet and I can both ws on the same mob.
Third, on 119+ content you will usually have a geo already applying def down and it is more potent.

So basically, if your soloing i119+ content, it might matter to consider the def down portion of it, but pretty much every where else you dont even need to account for it.

3) I agree totally on the pet gear thing and have been saying that. The question just arose, what would be better overall, 5% pet haste, or 7 str/dex for the master. The answer was of course, obviously if its master only content, str/dex will win (and be better if you have monk leveled as well), but 5% haste will actually increase your overal dps as long as you can deploy your pet and keep 2 wind maneuvers up (to cap its magic haste).

4) the problem Nezha's stories, is they require 1 ve pet with -pdt gear and 1 ss pet with dd gear. Since you basically have to pick -dt or +haste, it means you would need 3 sets of taeon, and for me that was too much. I made a pet only dd set and got 20acc/racc, 5% haste, 5% double attack/4% crit on every piece and was not able to even come close to killing avatars on easy without throwing dawn muslims at it, and i refuse to use /toss gill to beat things. I was able to duo them with a smn, but even then smn does 99% of the dmg on avatar fights.

Means that if you're wearing that piece when your automaton uses a WS - which still requires 1000+ tp - the WS will get an extra 400tp for purposes of calculating its damage. WS are capped at 3000tp (as in, if your pet has 3000tp and does a WS, wearing TP Bonus +400 gear won't make it act like a 3400tp WS).


Totally understood, and you got some useful data. Just wanted to be sure nobody reading this got wrong impressions about the meaning applied to actual non-testing gameplay situations.


Fair enough when you're talking about mobs that die in a WS or two, but it's a consideration if you're ever able to fight NMs that live long enough to matter.

As for GEO def down (if you have a GEO along), as far as I know that's separate from the "Defense Down" effect from Armor Shatterer and they stack. There is no known cap on overall Defense Down, the only limitation is that "same type" defense down effects don't stack (see some discussion at: http://de.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/29127/random-question-thread-ffxi-related/275/#2627636). The different buckets are:

1) "Defense Down": this is where Armor Shatterer (and other player "lowers defense" WS like Tachi: Ageha, Armor Break, etc.) reside, along with DRG's Angon, and BLU's Tourbillion (which is still hard to land on anything that matters even with recent changes)

2) Indi- or Geo- spell defense down effect

3) "Dia" spell effect (enhanced by COR Light Shot)

4) "Sluggish Daze" effect from DNC Box Step

Now, all that being said... the practical issue is that Sharpshot (with present automaton defense considerations) tends to die a lot more easily on things that "matter" enough to live long enough to truly benefit from the WS effect. Even considering benefit to party, VE/VE might do better in those situations just by virtue of staying alive and continually doing slower and steadier damage (though if you're able to manage fairly regular Armor Shatterer on stuff that doesn't die instantly, even if SS itself falls a little short of VE, SS might cause higher overall DPS for the entire alliance).

Armor Shatterer's best scenario would be for the theoretical strong NM that lives for several minutes and doesn't have many particularly nasty AoE attacks to kill your puppet. I don't know which NM that is though ;)

I'll admit I haven't really spent much time toying with slightly more defensive attachment setups for SS though, since the new attachments were added. Might be satisfactory to keep the little guy alive more and keep blasting away with those WS like good ol Colibri SS parties.


Seems like we more or less agree on the general idea here. Thanks for the testing too, interesting to see the specific comparison of STR/DEX versus Pet Haste augments.

I'm not really inclined to make PUP-specific pieces when my player-focused Taeon gear works for all of my jobs (I also play MNK THF DNC BLU NIN COR RUN...) and pet stuff wouldn't help them a bit. If a pet set was WAY better for PUP I'd do it, but I don't see enough difference to justify the cost and inventory space.

We'll see how things go with Empy reforge and potential for cheaper Skirmish stones in the future though (and maybe a Wardrobe II lol), I might end up making some automaton stuff.

I hear you about the wardrobe II

Taeon dd set
taeon ws set (one str/dex one str/vit cause Stringing pummel )
taeon pet only tank set
taeon pet only dd set
taeon hybrid set

etc... etc

Then theres my geo...
fast cast
nuke
pdt/pet regen/pet dt
healing


My real question is why cant all pet stuff be 'augment2' or something, and not take away from the potential master stats. At this point in the game, all high end pet gear armor should just have pet haste/acc/atk/stats as well as the regular stats.

This is EXACTLY what I'm hoping for with reforged Empy set, by the way. And it seems quite reasonable to expect that at least Empy head/hands/legs will indeed have strong master and pet DD stats, so we'll see.

It's also another reason I've been reluctant to bother with pet Taeon stuff for now knowing that Empy reforge is here so soon. If nothing else, maybe Empy will completely overshadow Taeon in 2-3 slots and mean less augments to toy with.

Wont touch it to much but here is the skinny:
1) I made a pet dps spread sheet similar to the ones already there for pup that works with the regular one so you can see if you give up 40 dps from the master, but the pet gains 150 dps, its better overall to use the pet option if you can keep the pet alive and swinging. General consensus was that pet haste on the third augment (acc/atk + triple attack + pet haste) was the optimal set of augments if you can keep your pet alive and with maneuvers.

2) Pet crit/DA only come into play in pet only sets, in which case you want acc/atk (pet) + haste (pet) + either DA or CRIT (pet) and depending on what your fighting they are about even honestly. If you go to trivial mobs crit wins if you go to high end mobs da wins...but its only by a few points.