Greetings! I just got the urge to play EverQuest again and I wanted to ask you all some simple questions and maybe get some feedback as to what would be the most viable coming into the game currently. First, there has been a few posts about Gold Members getting up to Underfoot AAs to help speed things along, but then I saw some posts that this is only for Heroic Characters. Do you to purchase a Heroic Character in order to receive this benefit? I believe I saw this with some Dev posts back in Feb 14 when they were also talking about nerfing swarming and Headshot. Second, I was curious how everyone feels about the current state of box/group content. When I was playing was back in Rain of Fear era and it was pretty much about just pure kill speed; pulling mobs and dropping them fast. Is this still the case? Third, for some reason I have the desire to play a Wizard. I was thinking SK/Wiz/Healer Merc/Wiz Merc for my solo/small group setup. But then I saw some posts that Mage pets are crazy strong right now to the point where they're better then only the best geared tanks. Is this really true? If it is I feel like it would be better to just run Mage/Wiz/Healer Merc/Wiz Merc and just tear through mobs. How good is Wizard/Enchanter/Tank/Wiz Merc? Thank you for your time and see you all soon! Aanmer
All characters benefit from the auto-grant, not just Heroic Characters. There is an autogrant check box in your AA window, that you click on to opt into the auto-grant. If you do that, the next time you log in, you will be granted whatever AAs qualify.
Any characters that a subscriber wishes to can benefit from the auto-grant. It is not free to everyone. It is not, though, explicitly tied to the Heroic service. The Heroic service can get you the auto-grant without being a subscriber.
Mage pets are undergoing some changes on the higher end (level 85+) and other pets as well - weakening some pets, making some others stronger. Some changes are on live servers now, though possibly more might come (we don't know as balance is a slow process sometimes). There was some things wrong in the code that made mage pets almost gods compared to other player tanks and mercenary tanks, so that's where some of these retuning started.
Regarding the AA auto-grant, what you probably read was that Heroic Characters [HC] (regardless of the buyers subscription status) get all the AAs auto-granted to them that the auto-grant feature will give to subscribers; however if the buyer is a subscriber the HC will also gain a number of progression AAs, primarily the Trials of Mata Muram and 4/5 of the DoN AAs which is something the Auto-grant feature does NOT do.
