AA catch up time

Let's assume next expansion sticks with the same template of no level increase, just more AAs.

Going from level 120 and auto-grant AAs, how long would it take to get 125 and max out AAs.

Would it be doable for a social person (meaning finds groups and does group missions) who plays about 10hrs a week, to achieve this goal within the next expansions life cycle?

Yes.

If you have Overseer running at full capacity, you can get from max in 120 to dinging 125 just from that in about 6 weeks... if you want to max out level 125 then let's say 8 weeks minimum, or within 3 to 4 months even at a more relaxed pace. But that can be done almost totally separate from your 10 hours a week of actually playing, so long as you can log in for at least a few minutes once or twice a day.

AA counts vary by class but if you assume that auto-grant to max is in the 35k-40k range, then even someone who averages just 100 AA per hour (and I'm choosing a very low round number just to make the math simple) during 10 hours playing per week, you'd be completely max AA well before a year is up.

Without overseer I think you'd need to take advantage of whichever of the Merc/Partisan/Hero bonuses from LS/ToL/ToV you haven't gotten yet, but I guess a bunch of the 2% rewards from collects and CoV/NoS quests would add up... plus whatever comes with the new expansion (which more likely will have the smaller 2% rewards). But who knows, maybe grinding regular XP in the new expansion will be feasible too.

Solid! Thanks.

I don't have overseer maxed out yet, so still getting the lovely .6-.75% per quest and still doing recruit missions. And with how work times out and what not, I'm running about half capacity on Overseer. So I'd say about 3% a level a day for right now, which even at the low rate still equates to the 120-125 in 5-6 months which is plenty of time.

Thanks for the response

I would say yes it is likely possible *BUT* it will require some ground work on your side.

Don't waste your time waiting around LFG.

Find which quests you can do, and what rewards they give, then plan to do the best of them daily.

Things like ToV: Griklor, CoV: Zlander, are things you might want cycle every day. They give good AA, item drops, and coin you can use to purchase type 5 augs.

it depends on the kind of people you are grouping with. Raid geared people who are pulling 50+ mobs at a time in LS? Or just the occasional mission?
Same time commitment can yield VERY different amounts of AAs

Since they (correctly) made the merc tasks in LS repeatable for XP/AA...like they used to be prior to RoS...it's doable. The AA, in particular, in LS *fly*. If you did just the full slate of merc tasks in all of the LS zones every night, you'd be max AA before you knew it. Supplement those tasks with Overseer, and going from 120 to max shouldn't be an issue. We can only hope that they keep this new (old) trend of repeatable tasks going in the next expansion.

Finding groups is a completely different issue. If you don't box or have some friends or guildmates that you group with regularly, it might be a little tough. The good news is, LS mobs are easy and depending on your class, you could probably solo them. Raiders are always killing mobs/running merc tasks to refill their AA almost every night on Drinal...it's probably like that on the rest of the servers as well. They'll probably let you tag along and soak up xp as they're destroy the zone.

A social person who plays 10 hours a week. Is that 10 hours of logged in time or 10 hours actually playing plus additional time social. Because most social folks I know spend 9/10 of their time socializing and 1/10 actually playing (if that).

The suggestions above are great though and assuming you are playing at least 5 of those 10 hours and doing it at least 3 days a week, you should be able to reach your goal.

So these go hand in hand in a reply. When I say "social", I mean I'm active in guild and chat and general. People are already getting used to me and responding. Given that, I ask for groups and start groups by letting folks know what my plan is for the session if anyone wants to join.

For the times I do not get offers to join or have people join me, it doesn't stop me. I still go grind it out. I'm not the type of person to just sit around and chat or log off if I can't find a group.

I mean I do let my dps dip a little when I'm actively chatting in guild/general/group but I don't treat EQ as a chat room

Let's see my math. Currently I am leveling up a few personas at 121 and 122. That means Achievements and Collectibles rewards are off the table, as those characters already have those. I need to earn experience by playing.
Here is my routine: Monday through Friday I come home after work and have about an hour of playtime before I walk my dog. I also log in for 20-30 mins in the morning before work to click Overseer tasks.
Every evening I run Final Figue mission and pop Lesson of the Devoted before the chest open.
Overall this routine yelds 16% daily of the level.
On weekends I do the mission twice for those personas, so it is about 22% of the level per day.
Altogether it is about 120% of the level per week and it takes under 4 weeks to go from 121 to 125 plus some.
Alternatively, one can get AA's as mission rewards and only use Overseer for leveling.
That would take 6 weeks to go from 121 to 125 and will earn 11400 AA's along the way and the full compliment of Tier 2 gear and type 7 augs with some Tier 3 weapons and visibles and most of Tier 5 augs.

Now, I have my own group, and you are saying you can make up a group of friends regularly. So it will be similar for you.

Even if it's not near as regular as you, those are quite reassuring numbers. Thank you for providing that!

AA's are earned at a very fast rate. I suggest a Gina/EQLP/audio trigger that triggers when you are max aa banked so you know to spend.
Otherwise, just go have some fun - hunter is a good thing to work at since various items like hunter (and killing named drops gear).

It's been exactly 4 weeks since my post on July 24th.
Today my 3rd persona has leveled up to 125, so my math is confirmed.

Currently about 25% into 120, so hoping to be about 10k AAs deep before Halloween!

Yes, your socialization time definitely yields exp at the same rate as killing mobs and doing quests.

It will be hard to max out your AA in a single expansion playing casually, especially if you are behind all the way back to CoV. It also depends a lot on class. SHD has way more AA to buy than BRD.

The most critical step in catching up on AAs is do not buy anything from the next auto-grant as the unlock approaches. If you don't play much, try to never buy anything from those lines unless you have to.

Simply sort your AA by expansion. Do not buy anything that says Claws of Veeshan unless you need to buy it. You could spend thousands of AA on focus AA you can survive without only to avoid getting them for free a few months later.

My strategy was about 3-4 months before the next autogrant unlock, I completely stopped buying anything from the previous expansion. I might have wanted to level up a certain spell focus, but instead I would pick one spell focus and carry it to 100%. Not using spell focus, instead of working on both combat agility and combat stability at the same time, I would just bring one as close to 100% as I could and let autogrant handle the other.

Playing the long game this way put me ahead several thousand AA each unlock and the cumulative benefit of doing this until I couldn't do it anymore was in the 10s of thousands I think.

Now it doesn't matter more my main anymore because I finally reached max, but I will be doing the same thing for my personas as I work on them.

Yeah this is my approach. There's a few AA's that will overlap with the CoV range now that i'm out of auto-grant range that'll definitely be worth getting now as it'll help speed things up, but for the most part there are things I can wait on. Like the CA/CS as I'm using my warder to tank and don't take hits often.

Like Companions Fort/Fury i'll still buy regardless, and i'll get a few of the focus AA lines done as well. It'll be easier next expansion since there isn't a level increase to deal with and i'll get a few more AAs through auto-grant