Puppetmaster: A Guide by Orenwald

The Elvaan make incredibly potent Puppetmasters. The low Dexterity will slightly decrease accuracy and critical hit rate, and the abysmal 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! :)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

At Level 1 you will notice you have 2 Job Abilities: 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 "Abilities" 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 until 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.

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.

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 recommend 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.

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.