Focus AAs only working on the newest spells until you get (AA Max Rank-1) really makes leveling feel disjointed and unrewarding. Gaining levels is supposed to make your character feel stronger, but Focus AA design makes it feel weaker. It’s not an enjoyable user experience to get new spells that are weaker than previous versions, until you grind out the required AA. There’s already precedence in design back to Luclin era that AAs impact all level ranges of the spell line. Please consider adjusting the Focus AA tab to work by spell line and each rank just adding the % increase. People that maintain a max level/AA character(s) won’t really notice this annoyance in design but it’s glaringly obvious to anyone leveling a new character or a returning player.
The entire leveling process needs to get looked at closely for the next level increase expansions. If it were up to me I'd do level increases every ~4 expansions instead of every ~2. So much dev time is spent +1ing a bunch of stuff that players don't really care about and treat as a chore anyway. To your point about Focus AAs, that's part of the problem. I don't even bother memming any of the new spells until I hit level cap and get a bunch of AAs, the increase is typically so small that it's not worth the effort as I level up. The new spells should work with the max rank of the previous Focus AAs, even if it means devs have to do more work to change the focus AAs (If it's too much work, stop increasing the levels every couple of years!). Gear is the other big part of the problem. I posted about this in https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ment-sabotages-eqs-core-gameplay-loop.280257/ but the tldr is that some players with group gear get a bunch of gear upgrades they can't use until they are basically done with the expansion.
You can keep asking (as others have done since RoS when folks realized the new focus aas have their drawbacks). But at this point it is an intentional design decision by the developers. Now that EoK aas can be autogranted, it's not as bad as it was when leveling. I think the developers might be more inclined to make the new focus aas like gear focus. Purchase a "current" focus aa and it will work with all previous spells and the next level higher one. So you would eventually have to work on the focus aas if going to current max, but you wouldn't be as screwed.
100% agree with everything above. Another issue with the Focus tab is the naming convention can be confusing to a returning player. For example: Enchanter - Focus: Drown 1: Increase Base Spell Effectiveness by 37% 2: Limit Spells: Drown 3: Limit Spells: Strangulate 4: Limit Spells: Pulmonary Grip 5: Limit Spells: Throttling Grip This passive ability increases the base damage of your Drown, Strangulate, Pulmonary Grip, and Throttling Grip spells by 37%. If you get to level 120 without leveling this Focus outside of autogrant you see the focus name "Drown" and without searching Alla, Raidloot, etc. it is unclear that certain focuses are even ones you need. On my Cleric I remember there was a couple Focus AA I didn't get for a long time because I didn't know it applied to the spells I was using.
I actually didnt level this Focus when I did the other ones because I was like "oh, I dont have whatever Drown is" Then I was looking up something else on raidloot and noticed... fml.
Theres been lots of discussion on that part. When the focus AAs were introduced, the way I remember it is they were looking to be used during non-level increase expansions so that we would get a power bump and so they wouldn't have to itemize a whole new set of spells. I don't know why they decided to keep increasing those AAs over level increasing expansions as we are already getting power increase from the new spells and it's made things harder for players and maybe harder on balancing spells too. Would have made sense something like this: level increase - > new spells, 5% upgrade over last expac non-level increase -> new focus on last level expac spells, 5% upgrade on power level increase -> new spells, 5% upgrade on power over previous level spells + focus non-level increase -> new focus on last level expac spells, 5% upgrade on power
Yeah that scheme makes way more sense. Introducing focus AA upgrades and spells in the same content pack is a nuisance to the player.
That is exactly how they started off. As a means to bump spells a little during non level cap expansions. But like everything in EQ someone else takes over, someone forgets, someone likes to make it harder to balance and they start turning 6 knobs all at once and guess what will happen. Part of mage power balance is due to Storm of Many focus sitting at something like 80% compared to most nukes at 37%. All while its base power is already equal or greater than anything in game in a raid.
Except at 120, you have to work through the TBL, ToV and CoV AAs to get them to impact the 120 spells. I think it takes somewhere around 300-400 AA per spell to get them to work with your current spell. You do the same or more damage with the 115 spell for less mana than you do the 120 spell. It's less bad than before EoK autogrant, but it is still quite terrible.
The focus AA not affecting new spells needs to be addressed before next lvl increase. Put it on your 2023 Roadmap if it's not gonna get addressed in 2022. Aside: AA progression for some classes is terrible (wizards vs SK, for example). Wizards are done with anything useful in about 4k AA over autogrant. SK can continue to meaningfully improve through 15k AA over autogrant. Doesn't have to be equal, but feels bad for the classes that have no longer term AA progression options.
One is possibly the worst class in the game and the other is possibly the best class in the game. The AA disparity is probably more of a reflection of class design itself than the AA allocations.
Mostly it has to do with classes having a combination of healing and damage abilities (hybrid or hybrid adjacent). Low AA: Bard (Yes they have healing and damage abilities but they aren't a real class so it doesn't count) Zerker Cleric Chanter Monk Rogue Warrior Wizard High AA: BL Druid Mage Necro Pally Ranger SK Shaman From best to worst you have Warrior with about 44600AA total and Shaman with 67900AA
I've never played a wizard but getting AAs on my cleric box was pretty funny. I think I entered the "marginal gain" phase after a few hundred post-autogrant AAs. Meanwhile my mage, beastlord, shaman, etc are making improvements after 10k AAs.
Yep, cleric also terrible bad in AA progression. I know they asked about ways to improve cleric (especially in group game) a year ago. Wonder what the status of that is.
This 100% !!! Getting 'new and shiny' spells that are WEAKER than the old spells they are replacing sucks! An 'upgraded' spell should be at least as effective as the spell it is replacing, including focuses, bonuses, etc that the 'old' spell has.
Just dont parse em. Blindly accept that its new so MUST be better! You will feel better about things then.
It is a pretty bad thing for new spells to be outright worse without ranks. Imagine if all melee weapons were worthless in a new level-increasing expansion until certain AAs are bought. Casters face level restrictions melee and bards don't have to deal with, and I don't think that makes sense.
Just do what I do..... I'm so horribly behind in AAs, I only have one line on each char maxed out, the others are all wherever auto-grant leaves 'em. So, new spell is always better Bonus points: Druid, SK, Mage... which lines do I have maxed out?
Just talking focus lines here, so companion's fortification and fury don't count. You did get it with the first guess: Spear. Though, looking at it, I also have Hastened Raging Servant maxed on the mage, but that's only 4 ranks, so wasn't really one of the lines I was talking about.
