Focus AAs being tied to a specific spell versus the spell line makes leveling feel awkward, and subsequent AA grinding at cap feel distant. Should you stop at 105 and grind out the focus tab, or stop at 110 to grind again, or push to 115 to stick with the rest of player base in ToV. The current design makes it such that a person would need over 4000 AAs at 115 to see any effect from the Focus AA. I think it would be a benefit to everyone, if the focus AAs changed to benefit all spells of that spell line and each subsequent rank increased the damage added. Also, it's frustrating to level to the new cap, and not having the thousands of AAs already spent not effect the new spells.
Focus aa are extra damage. I look at them more as a Min / Max effect. If your leveling fine then X% of extra damage is not going to make ore break you. On a New raid your pushing every bit of DPS you can so that that extra X% is needed. So to answer your question I would push to 115. The AA you will open up in other area will add more to you then spending the time to grind out the focus just to out level it and have to do it again.
Viewing those AAs as a raid only concept is flawed and trunks off a larger part of the community. The game is about having fun progressing your character and the current AA and leveling progression path doesn’t maintain a continuous path of progression. Buying 12 ranks out of 13 for an AA line to start effecting your current spells doesn’t feel like it tracks with the overall design philosophy.
You should look at what you use do you need to Update what Focus each level and what one should be 1st ,2nd or last at max level. Ask you class channel in the game or server-wide. Some peeps play classes a certain way so look at your AA and spells you use.
You have 40k-ish aa to get as a class. 10K of those are junk aa ( well maybe not junk but not going to make or break game play.) TS aa as an example. Another 10k is Focus aa and of those most people I know only use half ( for example as a bst i jave a focus line for my pet hot. that I never use. The Point is the other 20K of AA is going to do more for some one leveling then the focus aa
You both are missing the point and are focusing on advice versus design concept. I already maxed the crew I run, what I’m attempting to open to discussion is the design behind the Focus AA tab. You can take an enchanter for example, there’s only 3 spell lines plus the synergy that I would consider essential, Mind Rift, Mind Twist, and Strangulate. The AAs shouldn’t be structured in their current system. Imagine, having to buy the latest ranks for Destructive Fury before It worked for 111-115 spells. The AA should work for the entire spell line, such that the first rank works for 105,110,115, 120, etc and then subsequent ranks increase the effect. It shouldn’t be structured such that a player has to spend 1200 AA for each line to get the benefit at max level (12/13 ranks available at 113), so you’re looking 3600 AA plus AAs from the synergy. Level increase expansions shouldn’t feel as if you’re losing abilities you already purchased. Leveling to 115 is all about being able to get back the abilities you were already using, but a slightly upgraded version. Next year when EoK autogrants, it’ll mostly alleviate the issue for Live servers, but it’s something that will continue to compound.
I was a little disappointed to see I would lose my current focus % if I switched to the new spells before getting the next AA rank. If you already had the AA line maxed it's not as bad but still a pita. You have to spend 100 AA's per spell or you lose all previous effort put into that AA line once you upgrade the spell. It would of been nice if I could upgrade the spells without losing the previous increase amount.
Related topic - https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/spell-focus-aa.261975/#post-3853603
Some of the AA can be skipped, but it is definitely hard to catch up. I came back during RoS so it wasn't that bad, but now what I am leveling a mage box I can see how this issue is compounding in ToV. Using my enchanter lines... On beguilers synergy I nuke with drift and slash, so it is necessary for someone to buy 1100 AA for synergy to be used with standard nuking. Tying it to drift is another 200 AA, but since we nuke with both spells I am saying 1100. Continuing into the other focus AA, but speaking of the same spells.. Mindslash is 27798 and mind drift is 38309 Given that the max rank for slash is 20% before moving to drift, that means that slash is still only worth 33357. (please don't get all crazy if my numbers are slightly off, like 18% not 20% the point is still valid) Meaning that even once the focuses are maxed for RoS, ToV spells will still place higher damage. There is a huge advantage for using RoS spells still, because of the GoM AA and such the mana efficiency will keep them useful in some occasions, but the DPS with AA is still lower than the ToV spell without AA. Anyway what I am trying to get at is this... The best thing for a returning player to do is to level. Autogrant is sufficient in most cases and in almost all cases using the newest spells and leveling for the latest armor will be of a greater benefit than holding back to get a few AA of marginal benefit. That means that as players start obtaining AA, they have a huge uphill climb for each step. Synergy for example takes 1100AA to be usable at 115 (using the 110 spell). The focuses need about 800AA each to work with our 111+ DoT/nuke spells to be useful in ToV (113, 114, 115, 115). This means that for each spell, like Drift, a returning ENC has to buy about 800AA (I say "about" because I didn't add up each of the pre-100AA/purchase ranks) for it to affect Drift at all. Since Drift is better than Slash, it is still going to be the preferred spell. Having to buy about 800AA and then suddenly getting a 22% boost is not very good game balance.
