What AAs to get before auto-grant?

I have leveled a shaman alt to 100, but it only has about 100AAs (the basic ones from POP era), so the question is what AAs should I grab while AA xp is high, before I turn on auto-grant?

I am not asking for specific AAs for shaman, but more about what AA lines can I skip, if I am going to be turning on auto-grant in a few days (as soon as I hit 1000AAs) and will be getting those AAs anyway for "free".

My understanding is that auto-grant gives you the same AAs that heroic characters get, that is almost all AAs up to and including Underfoot but nothing after that. Would that be correct?

So I would want to grab some ROF/COTF specific lines (assuming no prerequisites) before turning on auto-grant.

Would it be even more efficient to go to about 2000-3000AAs before turning on auto-grant?

That's right. I'll leave the rest of your questions for the (better informed) others.

Yes, if you want to maximize your speed of getting the toon up to snuff, get everything you want that isn't locked behind those older AA lines.

First of all I would say don't take auto grant at 1000 AA. Wait until around 4K AA's. That way you maximize your bonus. If you take auto grant right away, you will get a bunch of AA's that don't make a big difference to the core abilities of your class.

I would start here. Great discussion about the core abilities that will give you some guidance.

SCS would be the first if your a caster.

The noob multiplier on earned AA runs out at 4000, not 1000. To maximize the value of the auto-grant, you should purchase all of the AA that became available after Underfoot.

At the bottom of the AA window, you can filter available AA by expansion. Select House of Thule, clean it out; select Veil of Alaris, clean it out; RoF; CotF. You'll have a couple thousand spent when you exhaust those, because many are predicated on earlier AA lines, and still a couple thousand to earn under the noob multiplier.

As mentioned above, Spell Casting Subtlety and Tradeskill Masteries are not included in Auto-Grant, so they should be purchased as well.

Then you'll choose a couple deep, core lines of AA to buy out while the multiplier is running, perhaps Healing Adept/Boon/Gift. Maxing those will get you in the ballpark of the target 4000.

At which point you Enable Auto-Grant, gaining 4500ish further AA including a ton of utility things and significant head-starts on deep lines like damage, mana, and survival stuff. You will still have thousands to go to fill in "the hard way" (AAs ain't that hard)

Ignore everyone and just do the grant.... by waisting time trrying to get your AA;s with the bonus exp... unless you have a mage bot army that is giving you tons of AA's fast.. the time it takes to get 4k in AA;s then level would be better to just level with autogrant and keep going

He's already 100, read the OP

Thank you all for great suggestions! This is trickier the more you think about it.

Shaman is up to 300AAs I've been maxing SCS, Healing Adept, Boon and Gift after I maxed SCMastery4 and also SCReinforcement to 5.

SCM4 and SCR5 were easy choices to make, since I had already gotten SCM3 and SCR4 in POP era and SCM4 and SCR5 had a HOT requirement.

SCS is also a good choice to make if it is not auto-granted.

Here is the tricky part.
I am not so sure about Healing lines, since I imagine I would get most of those for "free".
So, let's take Healing Adept(source http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:Healing_Adept):

Healing Adept 12 is in Underfoot, so I would have to spend 2+4+6+2+4+6+3+6+9+10+11+12=75AA to get to the level that I get auto-granted anyways.
HA13-21 cost 12AA each so that is 9*12=108AA that I would have earn at some point.

I noticed that currently the shaman gets about 4x AA xp per kill than my main SK (with 10k AA) gets.

So at with the 4x AAXP (75+108)/4 < 108/1
Therefore it actually is worth it to max Healing Adept currently with cheap AA.

Even with 2x AAXP it would be worth it to max Healing Adept.
To be more precise solving for (75+108)/x=108 gives x=183/108=1.69(4), thus around 1.7x bonus it would stop making sense maxing Healing Adept from scratch.

I am reading that bonus is supposed to be linear sliding scale from 1000% at 0AA to 100%(ie no bonus) at 4500AA.
So does that mean that at 2250AA I would be getting 2x (ie 200%) bonus? After that I would have to start calculating pretty hard if I want to do the least work in game. :0

I did the grant. wizards get 5350 AAs at level 85, assuming no AAs to start. I kind of wish I hadn't, though. I'd gladly trade in

Bandage Wounds 5,
Battle Ready 3,
Combat Medic 5,
Delay Death 25,
Energetic Attunement 15,
First Aid 3,
Innate all stats and resists 15 (except cor resist, it doesn't grant that),
Innate Lung Capacity 6,
Innate See Invis 1,
Innate Regeneration 25,
Packrat 11,
Mastery of the Past 15,
Persistent Casting 9,
Arcane Whisper 3,
Call of Xuzl 14,
Dimensional Instability 1,
Extended Swarm 3,
Hastened Call of Xuzl 6,
Hastened Manaburn 6,
Hastened Mind Crash 5,
Nexus Gate,
Mana Blast/Blaze/Burn 1,
Mind Crash 12,
Volatile Mana Blaze 9
Ward of Destruction 5

for more of an AA xp bonus. Don't do Auto-Grant on your first toon.

I do understand that hybrids probably get a LOT more out of it, though. It doesn't grant "4k AAs", it grants most "relevant" AAs for the class up to level 85; given that hybrids have to keep up with both melee AND casting AAs, I wager they get a lot MORE out of it. I might run a test and see just how much.

My bad, they get 4350 AAs. It's too late for me to edit that, apparently :/

Just wanted to point out the bold part. Now, if you were to do it again, I do not believe anything would hve changed except receiving fewer AA if player earned AA where put into the selected AA Abilities. Remember, Heroic Toons are Auto-granted AA.

Monk - 4063AA
Bard - 4700AA
Mage - 4614AA
Chanter - 4635AA
Wiz - 4350AA

The only reason to wait to cash in on the Auto granted AA would be to take advantage of the AA bonus one gets when their total AA are below a specific # (2500 iirc) and bank as many as possible, wait til 95/100, put earned AA in abilities that would not be auto-granted (AA earned w/bonus). On the other end of stick, if the toon is your main how weak will that toon be until you decide to hit the Auto-grant on your all access account? Who will be pulling the weight for the almost no AA toon?

What one does will depend on how is the character being developed, be it solo/molo, boxing other toons, tank/hybrid/healer/caster classes, ranked in order I believe would be most pressed for AA's asap to better survive/advance.

I agree, if this were a main, it would make sense to get auto-grant earlier. I know that friends heroic shaman got around 5200AA.

As it is a heal and buff alt, I am already happy at 500AA, the AA gain before 1000 is really fast indeed.

My initial plan was to go All-access at 1000AA and then do the auto-grant, but I think I will grab some 2000AAs and then go for the grant.

I didn't take Heroic, though. Just auto-granted to 85.

If I hadn't, I wouldn't have those AAs at 88 (where I am now), and I'd have to grind out and buy the stuff I have that I'd want to keep... but it'd go quickly, and I'd still have plenty of AAxp bonus left after to get more of what I want/need.

It'd be trading immediate gratification for making the long grind shorter.

And, really, who needs bandaging AAs, innate stats, water breathing, see invis, packrat and a few more measly points of hp regen in the 85+ game, anyways? The rest I chose because they're useless or borderline useless to a wiz, specifically. None of them are worth the AAs spent to get them. It's all junk that just makes your AAxp bonus vanish.

Before you auto-grant at least max out your AA's for healing and dot damage dps. Look for AA lines that need a lot of AA's to max out after level 85 and get those.

(nods) Good discussion. The reason I posted is for others who may or will be thinking/wondering the same thing, and it depends really on if it is a main or alt, or will become a main once a specific goal has been reached and how they plan on getting there.

So many of the 85 and under AA's are fluff, yes. Priests do not need Int, casters do not need Wis, melees do not need Charisma, and no one needs Bind Wound.

However, a great deal of the 85 and under AA's are bread and butter, as well. Combat Agility, Combat Stability, Healing Adept, Healing Gift, Spell Casting Fury, Destructive Fury, Destructive Cascade, the list varies by class but goes on and on.

You are seriously gimping a character, main or 100th alt, if you go to 100 with no AA's and then try to focus on 86 and higher AA's before getting the grant.

Realistically speaking, you would need to get a number of the granted AA's before you can buy the 86+ AA's. This would cut into the Low AA Bonus. If it takes 1000 AA's to get two or three of the many AA bread and butter lines to the point you can start getting those specific 86+ AA's, yes, you do get those specific 86+ AA lines faster. You are still gimping your character, because of those many other bread and butter AA lines that you ignored in order to get that two or three lines to max are still at zero. Activated Class AA's (the ones least likely to require an 85 or lower prerequisite) still depend upon many of the bread and butter AA's, to get their best effect. To use a class I'm more familiar with, you could take a Ranger to 100, without getting any of the Spell Casting Fury or Scout's Mastery of Fire/Ice lines, and expect Imbued Ferocity to help, and it will. It will help even MORE after you get those other AA's!

The point being, AA's are generally interrelated. The things passive AA's do affect how well activated AA's work. You could take a shaman to 100, but if you never bothered to get Spell Casting Reinforcement AA's, any AA that does its work by buff (say, a HoT AA, or a self-only AA that boosts your combat ability) will be seriously weakened by not having its "full" duration. Canni AA's require a lot of hit points. Sure, you will survive its activation, but without the healing AA's and HP AA's, you'll come closer to death than you otherwise would, and take more of the mana you just restored to heal yourself than you otherwise would have.

Again, it's already done. The level 100 character already exists, says so in the OP. Another person who didn't read

You will need prereq AAs, and the sooner you get them the more they benefit you in the long run, and as mentioned above by roth, they allow access to AAs further up the line.

When you are running against mobs with a lot of HPs you don't want to be dragging out an encounter with a mob because you risk running out of your resources, eg, Mana, Discs/Endurance, and ultimately your own HPs.

Also if there are other mobs roaming or repops this adds to your headaches. Its best to get the AAs that will assist you to dispatch a mob in the shortest time possible, and get the AAs with the largest benefit in the long run.