BST cannot only equip some of the best Axes in the game; he can use them effectively with his A- skill and Quested Weapon Skills. BST also has access to rather rugged armor. This balanced out by a 15sec recast for Charm and 5min recast on Call Beast means a BST will always be ready for a fight! Easily winning this catagory.

While not an especially powerful fighter alone, a SNM has all the gear necessary to support his Spirits and Avatars. With many of them to choose from, recast time is hardly an issue and since the division between Rage and Ward. SMN always seems to have a useful action at his command.

At first his 20min Call Wyvern ability may seem harsh (previously 2 hours!), it is not without consideration to DRG’s substantial melee ability. DRG has access to a wide variety of end-game prestige armor, as well as phenomenal weapons and attacks, backed up by his A+ polearm skill.

PUP receives the worst qualities of DRG and SMN. In that the 20min Activate timer can ONLY be reset by using Deactivate at 100% Pet HP, and not having any melee gear to speak of until very late in the game. Where at this point has no effect coupled with PUP’s crippling C ranked Hand-to-Hand skill (It’s worth mentioning here that PUP’s Throwing skill is C+, but cannot equip anything worth throwing either for damage or with that low of skill). Unlike BST and DRG, a PUP without a pet is useless in the sense that he cannot contribute with melee; and unlike SMN, a PUP is useless without a pet because he lacks the MP pool to cure the party if subbing WHM. In short, a Puppetmaster without an Automaton by his side is nothing, and the recast for Activate does not reflect this.

The DRG flag quest is painless to the pocketbook, and the wyvern itself requires no upkeep or additional payments. It should be noted that the cost of DRG's personal armor is ignored by this category, as such costs are shared by all jobs with A- or higher weapon skill.

Once the tuning-fork quests are completed and the spirit pacts purchased, SMN has no following payments directly related to his pets; making it an easy runner-up to DRG.

Eventually all BST run into a place where there is simply nothing to charm. It is then; Jug pets and Rewards start eating away at a BST’s gil and this doesn’t stop from early game right through fighting gods and plumbing the depths of Dynamis and Einjarher.

PUP has a greatly misunderstood cost structure. First you are required to collect the materials for each frame you want to build; this alone can be very costly. Next you will want to equip attachments to your automaton; and not just ‘any’ attachments will do. Each frame has specific restrictions, allowances and idiosyncrasies. The attachments themselves currently run between a few hundred gil to a few hundred thousand, and there’s Fifty-Four of them to get! Back during the height of RMT controlled inflation; it was not uncommon to hear of a PUP spending over 13mil on his Frames + Attachments. Only to see their value depreciate considerably due to SEI’s ‘timely’ meddling.

For those that do not know, Attachments are less like equipment and more like spell scrolls. Except you can only attach up to twelve at a time and no more than three to seven of each elemental mark depending on the frame. So based on what you are doing at the time, you need to own that set of attachments; meaning you need to own ALL THE ATTACHMENTS!

On top of all these costs, you have the gradual gil-bleed of Automaton Oils, that run 1000 gil each, that is, unless you prefer not to Repair your Auto every 3min, in that case, you’ll have to wait 20min every time you take a scratch before you can act again in earnest.

It’s easy to see the advantage of SMN at end-game. Predator Claws, Hastega, Blink for everybody! And that’s just ONE Avatar! With capped skill a SMN can easily dish out some of the biggest hits in the game, not to mention cover the party with a wide variety of highly useful buffs.

So long as the DRG keeps his wyvern alive through all the AoE, he can absentmindedly swing away with his A+ polearm plus merits while his little friend piles on the chip damage and breaths de jour.

BST can struggle a bit at first, but well seasoned, the BST becomes a wrecking ball with H.Q. Jug pets and powerful skill chain contributions.

I will start with PUP’s complete lack of end-game gear: PUP gets no god gear and no abjurations. OK, stop right there I know what some of you are thinking, “PUP can equip Goliard, Usukane, Hope Staff and that new Mythic weapon ‘Kenkonken’, so eat it!” well, I say, “Big deal!”

Goliard adds nothing to PUP’s melee power nor adds anything to the automaton. Unless you plan on subbing a mage job, and going to town with your (at best) 450 MP; it has no end-game uses.

Usukane reads “MNK/SAM/NIN/PUP”, but may as well read “MNK/SAM/NIN/and PUP if you happen to have it, but don’t expect anybody to let you lot it if you don’t already have MNK, SAM or NIN leveled, merited and decked”. Also, as I mentioned before, PUP’s C H2H skill makes any melee gear useless unless it first addresses this deficiency. And by “useless” I do not mean “gimp” or “underpowered”, I mean “useless” as in it has no use. Not being able to land a punch or do more than 0 damage are the very definition of uselessness, no matter how “pimp” you look doing it. Oh and this set doesn’t help the Automaton either.

Hope Staff is baffling in its own right; there is no greater example of how little SEI regards PUP as a valid job. First, PUP has 0 staff skill, rendering the proposed Double Attack, doubly pointless. Furthermore, it requires you un equip the only truly essential gear that PUP uses: YOUR ANIMATOR!

Kenkonken is a colossal slap in the face to population PUP. Every other mythic weapon has an Enhances “Trait” effect except PUPs. I say this knowing full well Martial Arts is “Enhanced” by Kenkonken. But if you read the Delay on Kenkonken, it says +41; meaning that the delay is actually +21 due to the so-called Enhancement. It contradicts its own enhancement, thus negating it as even needing to be listed at all! Martial Arts only affects delay, it does not raise accuracy or attack power and both statistics are needed to build TP enough to use the QWS2 required to activate the Aftermath effects. You can just ignore these now, since Kenkonken obviously does not encourage a PUP to melee. The other listed effect reducing overload becomes the only conceivable reason to obtain this weapon, and even after that, is only worth the requirements of the mythic weapon quests if it completely prevents overloads from occurring.

It remains to be seen if Stringing Pummel is better than Dragon Kick.

Finally, I’ll say that I have found a very effective way to make PUP work in end-game conditions; however, I bump into PUP’s all the time that do not understand what it is I’m doing, so I’m going to assume it’s not a well-known technique and therefore I’ll refrain from describing it out of the fear that, while extremely slight, SEI may come to possess this information and use it to once again nurf PUP. If you happen to know what I'm talking about, keep it to yourself!

Perhaps PUP’s only true strength is the nearly endless configurations he can contort his automaton. Whatever type of situation a PUP enters, he has a head, frame and attachment set for it. It isn’t always useful, but there it is: a jack of all trades is a master of none.

Avatars and Spirits, selected like playing cards in a game of bridge, choose the best card to take the trick!

BST is somewhat limited by his selection, he must choose a monster that is local if he wants to charm; however, he may still call whatever Jug pet he wants.

DRG’s only options lie in his sub job selection, which is more often a selection based on what the DRG himself needs to do rather than the wyvern.