300AA is the current maximum number of AAs you can have. Obviously, it'll be good for everyone to get to 300AA eventually, but AA gain slows down considerably as it gets up there, so shooting for that many as you level is probably unreasonable.
So it would be reasonable to have the slider set a bit higher if we're to reach that number (190/200). I was thinking about this last night that many of us have had the bar set to 30 (assume this is to assist us to level faster). Or we've had the bar set to 00 when we've been getting collections to raise us faster. While doing this gets us higher levels, it also suggests that our AA count will be behind. Is the logic (mine) flawed here? And if not, it means at some point, I (and perhaps others who started and are playing new toons) will need to compensate for this on the slider bar. Otherwise, we run the risk of having high level toons, but underpowered in class skills due to lower than normal AA skills.
You're right, Erindel. People will find they're significantly weaker than a similarly-geared toon of the same class if they try to do Velious content at less than 200AAs, so it will likely come back and bite people in the ass later. It's really not obvious how important AAs are until you're around level 75+, but the newer expansion content is all designed for people who were fairly far along in the previous content.
For example, when Velious came out, the AA cap was 250 (Velious itself raised it to 300). They assumed that most characters going into it would be fairly far along, toward the cap of 250, though, so the content is balanced around that.
Sentinel's Fate is definitely doable at around 150, though, since when SF came out the cap was only 200 (and the level cap was 80). AAs are a lot less important for earlier content, since they weren't added to the game until the cap was raised from level 70 to 80 with Kunark.
Thanks for the feedback. Means I should have at least a 100 AAs already and I'm seriously under that number at almost a level 56 toon. Looks like the 'ol slider bar needs to move severely to the right for a while.
If you're looking for decent ways to invest your AA points for solo'ing/raids, this website has a lot of number crunchers finding optimum builds per class http://www.eq2flames.com/class-discussion/
ONLY if all you're concerned about is the end game Raid spec sadly. Most of the class forums have nothing at all even remotely current for people still leveling up.
For instance in the EQ2flames Wizard forums all the specs are assuming that the player has capped Cast Speed, Recovery and Reuse from gear. As well the forum leader is listing 'odd' specs he is using that are based solely around gear sets only elite raiders can dream about.
SacDaddy's attempt at a leveling post references 3 posts, 1 from 2008, 1 that the author says is wrong and based on beta speculations, and one that was last updated for the SF expansion. The info may still be good, maybe not, regardless it is sadly dated, and some of the pics of AA layouts are a riot, the trees aren't even layed out in the current formats.
I'd agree with Paimon. You really need to look at the skill sets available under AA trees and determine what makes the most sense for your character and style of play. While it's nice to have end-game RAID specs posted, it's not particularly helpful if you're leveling a toon. It's hard enough just to get a group as a lower level player, much less be using an AA spec that is end-game specific. And, as Paimon pointed out, most of them are so dated, it's difficult to determine if they're even valid.
I started using some of those end game specs only to determine they weren't designed for a leveling player who's soloing. Apparently neither have some of the more frequent posters in EQII. In other words, "caveat emptor"
