returning 105 sk, don't remember much

hi, anyone have any info they could toss my way with spell lineups, easy to attain gear ETC?

I was reading through patch notes, seems there are a lot of changes. Could anyone please bring me up to speed. I have mostly raid gear from COTF and then played some TDS but not much.

I looked through the forums didn't seem to see anything for the past few pages. Says I'm sitting at about 17k aa, not sure how that is, I logged on with about 1.6k AA.

Thanks in advance

Gear (especially group) got a massive bump both in TBM and EoK.
The easy path now is to do a mission or two in TBM, which will unlock gear and augs on a vendor in plane of health. The currency is tradeable so a friend or bazaar can help you there once it's buyable.
You'll want it for the stat augs anyway until you can reliably do enough EoK missions to get the currency for the slightly better ones.

EoK gear often rots, I see it being called out all the time especially in frontier mountains. (we've been in the expansion for a year, even alts don't need the gear now)

You may or may not want to keep a focus effect or two from CoTF (dodge/parry?) but that's debatable. CoTF is pretty ancient (but group gear still lacks the good melee related mods).

TBM and EoK were both non-level cap expansions, so your core spells will be the same as they were in TDS with a few special case ones like you normally get in a non-level increase expansion.
(I can't help ya with that though, I'm not an SK)

This thread is a pretty good breakdown of another tank's journey from CotF gear to conquering EoK:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/finally-moving-on-from-cotf.237553/

I don't think it has any useful info on how to play a modern SK though.

Don't bother, this game is garbage. Between rampant afk botting, unstable servers, and perfunctory class changes which giveth then taketh away (endless game of 2 steps forward, one backward), there's not much left here.

Don't listen to this guy, Bristlebane at least has almost no afk botting and is pretty stable. Additionally all old MMOs should have only perfunctory class changes.

With Cotf raid gear, you should be able to tank stuff in Lceanium or Frontier mountains, (with help) and eventually be able to replace most of your cotf gear with EoK group gear...which is much better. (better, except for the focuses on the raid gear)

If you pay for a subscription, you will get about 10,000 'free' AAs, which is what probably happened and you didn't realize it when you logged in. Autogrant AAs.

No worries! Jump on in and start killing and you will be OK!

Appreciate the advice, I haven't ventured into eok yet. I'm confused about the ac displayed, I have about 4500 seems to be much lower than before. I know I need to find more trophies etc.

Yes, that explains the AA.

I threw a bunch of lifetaps in spells for my lineup.

AC was changed only in how it is displayed. If your larger stat is 4500, then you are doing OK for having only cotf gear. You will be able to tank TBM and t1 eok group stuff reasonably well.

Also, what is the best way to get aa now I still need some

If you can hang in EoK, it has the best rate of XP. If you can't, Gribbles in Dead Hills is pretty good.