AA path Advice

[Vidyne]

Ended up getting pet crit5, now have 10 saved towards pet affinity...

Last time I got to 9 aa saved, I broke down and bought pet crit3/4/5

Hope I can stand it long enough to make it to pet affinity :)

Its hard not spending AAs.

[Tastian]

Yeah it is, but pet affinity more than most other AAs is something that once you have you start to notice and like even more.  The second a bard is in group you and you get song fading messages off your pet you remember it.  The second your pet is mystically cured or healed by group.  Seeing paragon fade off pet, seeing SV stick on pet well solo.  It's a lot of points and definitely not for everyone, but once you have it you just kinda notice it a lot.

[Caali]

I did Planar Power around 150AA. Coprolith has a post in here somewhere that explains the advantages of it, I'll link it if I come across it. I personally like it cause it is realtively cheap, 10AA for PP5, and has at least two useful effects, hp and attack boost. Neither is hugely significant but hey it's there. With LDoN augs, ornate armor, self buffs (and primal) I hit 305 in every melee stat, no effort required.

I have the same issue with saving, and I suspect it's widespread, I've started working towards Sinister Strike or Pet Affinity a dozen times but something else always beckons when I have a couple AA saved up.

[Vidyne]

Mend Companion + HM3
PP5
Run4
Pet Flurry3
Spell crit3
Healing Crits
Mental Clarity3
Weapon Affinity3
(in no order btw)

List never gets shorter btw*

*edit*
18/20, 2 to go!
erased innate resists til much later, like Tastian said(my resists max with bard in group so....., and it dont matter much on some of our raids atm)
erased melee crit6 til much later.
erased run5, and added run4(i might spend 5aa... to be faster than everyone else without sow for some reason... /shrug, but not 10, not yet)
(if get 103k drog(17k atm saved, like aa, i cant save money), then run5 will be like.... my 600th aa I spend)
Erased pet flurry5, added pet flurry3(reasonable)
Erased Sinister Strikes for now(later on... yea, but next 30aa or so.... or 40-50 even, I dont really REALLY think its going to help[Unless someone can plead a good case of just seeing like... 30 dmg more from offhand or so...  I just have many friends who said it was a waste and dont do til 250 or so])

For raids I do fine now, so im planning more for solo/group I guess.  I dont need more dps there... i need more utility, durability(spell crit + healing crit + lifetap), and just wanna finish making my kat a chainsaw.

[Tastian]

Looks like you are having fun and getting a lot done.  Only thing I'd note is that if you are looking at efficency in terms of dps gain to AA point spent sinister strikes is actually pretty high up the list.  It costs 15 to save up which is rough for some, but you are looking at ~3dps boost from just picking up that AA.  It's fun having maxed pet AA although the last rank of warder's alacrity is rough hehe.  And trust me the list does get shorter.  When you actually realize you are max'n innate int over innate str because your str is already capped anyways you have a pretty short list lol.  I've been trying to drag out my last 41 AAs for the past couple weeks because OoW got pushed back and it's driving me nuts atm lol.

[Vidyne]

Dang bro.

Youd think you get paid to work here :P
You give better support than SoE :)

Sinister I know is raw dps, but im ok with my dps now, I think its just time to really get the lifetap efficiency for soloing.  Death Row in PoJ as long as I get one mob right now, I can pull almost nonstop if I had.... another 20 regen?

Not sure what the regen equiv is for lifetaps and healing crits/etc...  just think increasing those should be next for me.

Mend companion because.... I really do see what others say now, theres not much "healing" to healing my warder now, and if I had a free heal every 9min, I could demem Healing of Sorsha, ................... forever.
Thats another spell slot, and that is valuable.  I have hotkey space, not spell slot space.  I really think I could.. that between the 240/tick regen from pet aug(or whatever it is, its tripled, think its 80/tick without) and a free HoS, that id never need to have HoS memmed.  I'll try it a while, but I think only soloing in BoT where I heal the pet a time or two  is where id need it.  LDoNs I only heal usually on a pull of 4 or 5.  Raids I dont heal, i just let him die, etc...

Mental Clarity3 because I still die occasionally on raids as when adds come and we are low on enchanters, and im a fully defensive beast, i grab 2-3 sometimes.. and sometimes slow doesnt stick, but its better me dying so that shaman_02 and mage_01 can land debuffs and slow and get it under control, than those two dying or a cleric dying.  For LDoN/group with a shaman or enchanter, I dont need any regen.  For LDoN where im tank, shaman, and enchanter, I need every bit I can get.  For raids where there is no shaman(albeit rare..mostly epic help)  I need all I can get.
Basically I can MA, haste, and CC.  I cant do all 3, just 2.  3 drains my mana heavily and is just a strain to do, especially with a chain pulling monk like we have :P

PP5, list is getting short, so finally put it on there.

Who knows... I might pick up the channeling line.
Grieg POed me a few nights ago when he interrupted my MGB para and I lost my MGB and just got the para.  That REALLY makes me mad.

[Tastian]

"Not sure what the regen equiv is for lifetaps and healing crits/etc... just think increasing those should be next for me. "

If you ran a 75hp lifetap main and a 50hp life tap off hand then at max dex you'd have ~20 regen from lifetaps.  With WA5 that goes to ~30hp regen.  Maxed AHG + AHA would boost that number up to ~41 regen.

With just a 50hp life tap main at max dex you get ~10 regen, 15 with WA5.  And ~20 with Maxed healing AAs.  

Pet mend is nice for that and I know lots that don't mem sorsha.

Channeling focus still doesn't work imo and if it does then it doesn't work enough to justify 2 points for every rank let alone 12 for all ranks.  Even persistant casting I've only seen work twice since about 3 weeks after GoD went live.  I can understand that the can't give a huge boost, but it's so small and so random that in something like the grieg fight you mentioned the odds of it having mattered are very slim.

[Toln]

Pet Affinity is a decent AA, but it sure does cost a lot.

It depends a lot on what you do though. A person who groups and raids a lot will get much more benefit from it than a person who mostly just solos.

I haven't done any real extensive parses, but i'd estimate that pet affinity with full raid buffs, including bard songs, gives the pet an extra 10-15dps on average.

Pet gets around 2k HP from raid buffs and a large boost in ATK, and also the benefits of any AE heals too.

If you have Protection of Calliav and a focused pet though, you should be able to keep your pet alive in the majority of lower end encounters until you get to the EPs without needing this AA.

So far the only parses on Pet crit/pet flurry AAs i've seen done yielded the following:
Mage pet with Pet crits5 Pet Flurry3 saw an approximate 9% dps increase.
Necro pet with Pet crits5 saw an approximate 3.5% dps increase.

For the sheer amount that both cost, 60AAs combined, and for the small amount of dps they provide, these wouldn't be at the top of my list for people to get.

[Tastian]

Just some random numbers from a couple old raids, I've got others, but these are pretty standard.

Max_pet means DPoC, full GoD pet AAs and pet affinity, bard in group, but not certain what % of time muse/riz is going.

Normal_pet means no DPoC focus, basic sorsha 77 max hit, no pet AAs at all including no pet affinity

LMM
Max_pet -  60.84dps  average hit 62
Normal_pet - 48.84dps average hit 54

Pyronis
Max_pet - 67.66dps average hit 67
Normal_pet - 53.24dps average hit 63

General_pushOver (druav, rotsword,whatever)
Max_pet 76.33 dps  average hit 73
Normal_pet 57.48 dps average hit 61

Charm bird
Max_pet 70.70 dps average hit 69
Normal_pet 52.44 dps average hit 59

Charm bird
Max_pet 59.21 dps average hit 67
Normal_pet 52.57 dps average hit 58

The real use of pet affinity though is something like this...
Sol Ro
Necro pet - 6k
Necro pet - 5k
Bst pet - 2k
Max_pet - 20k

On things with AEs where your pet is catching not only MGB heals, but paladin group heals AND radiant cures it's just amazing.  The pet doesn't gain nearly as much from attack as a PC, but it does help some, bard songs are amazing and simply having your pet still alive so his total damage is much higher is a truely great thing.  I used to burn pet mend on lots of different mobs, got pet affinity and now I don't even check pets life on most mobs.  Some big AEs you are still going to have to pet mend/PoC/etc, but there's no doubt that pet affinity greatly increases pets survivabillity on raids.

[Vidyne]

Dinged Pet affinity, now at 198aa with Healing Gift1  

Im thinking...   and the reason I always ask.. and tell my AAs here and worry so much, is... im not a perfect person... no one is, but for some reason, I always want my char to be the best he can at each lvl.   Yes... im one who would get to lvl 99 on an rpg in the first town....   Yes, im one who would find every secret in a game... or try to do crazy challenges...
For some reason... i wanna be perfect, do it all, etc... though I know I never can.

Anywho...

Just got healing gift1
Planning on(in this order):
Spell Casting Fury1
Mend Companion
(if I like mend) Hastened Mending3
Either... Healing gift 2-3 and AHG1-3 or Weapon Affinity 2 and 3
The one not gotten above

After that...
I may finish up Spell Casting Fury to complete(well... Weapon affinity 4 and 5 still to go) the Lifetap package, or get Mental Clarity2 and 3.

Ive thought alot.... and I think that ill wait til after all that, to go into the next set.

In no order:
Pet flurry2 and 3
Resists
PP5
Sinister Strikes
Healing Adept line
Weapon Affinity4 and 5

Then later on
Run4 and 5
Pet flurry 4 and 5
innate stats
etc...  every other aa


Basically, getting healing crit and spell crit, to see how I like them, and its only 2aa.  After that, all things are 4aa that I wanna get at that point.  If i save 4aa, ill probably be tempted to grab one more and try mend, so I will.  At that point... ill decide whether to go all out with mend, or work on healing/weapon affinity, then go all out with mend.

Something about crits intrigues me...   Something about proccing more intrigues me... or I would just get pet mend first.  I dunno :(

The PP5, i still dont feel is worth it at this point...  nor the Sinister strikes.
Mental Clarity I put off a little, because... Im not really going oom much... and when I am... im performing above my normal tasks... and I dont really like to do that too often, so having more mana would put me in that situation alot... I think.  Some days its fine, but some days... id just like to have a shaman haste and buff, while I worry about slowing and splitting mobs for offtanking.

Run5, I think im just going to save for a drog, and forget it.
Pet flurry3 or 5, I went back and looked at how often he flurries... and unless higher lvls make him flurry more, it just seems too expensive... and I think the healing and spell crits and such are better spent.

And... like i said.. I dunno why I post it here... and ask so many questions.  Just, I dont wanna screw up.  I know you cant.. but, its hard to explain.

[Tastian]

Plan looks pretty good man.  Nice to get some fun stuff.  Also picking up some utility in the form of mend companion.  The one thing I have to mention is that SCF is different than most AA skills.  Most give either the same gain per point or LESS gain per point.  SCF though get's better as it goes.  Rank 1 hardly crits in most people's eyes and even when it does a crit is only 33% more damage.  By rank 3 though you are crit'n 7% of the time and crits are double damage.