Levels vs AA and FAQs

[Caali]

Will change links in this as stuff gets moved over for...

Seen this so many times I've stopped counting. Thought it might be a good ideas to put down the pros and cons in one place for future readers.
I'm sure I'm going to miss some so please feel free to comment and I'll add them in.

Why should I do levels rather than AA?

New Spells - Pretty obvious advantage here. New spells will increase your ability to buff (e.g. increase your stats to give you more attack, hp, etc.),  give you an added ability (i.e. Chloroplast at 55), increase the strength of your pet (i.e. haste, max damage, etc.). For a complete list see Beastlord Spell Listing

New Abilities - Seen here http://www.eqbeastlord.com/bigchart.html by levelling you get increased damage bonus, regen, disciplines (protective spirit, beastial frenzy), improved damage table, increased resists to spells (somewhat level based)

New Pets - Mentionned above but really a key factor to us beastlords worth mentionning again. As you are able to summon new pets they gain hp, raise their max damage and get new abilities (i.e. shield, enrage). The turning point here seems to be the level 62 pet who is much improved over the earlier versions. Can be seen here http://www.beastlords.org/ward-body.php

To catch up to friends and/or guild - Pretty obvious here. If you need to be a minimum level to join a guild, or your friends are 10 levels ahead of you... Although this also works for AA, some guilds have minimum required AA as well.

Why should I do AAs before levels?

To stay in line with friends - If all your friends are 55 and you are 60 doing AAs will keep you within reasonable range of them while still improving your character. With LDoN out, keep in mind you can only adventure with charatcers plus or minus 7 levels.

To stay with loved content - By this I mean is you really really love killing shissars in the Grey then switching to AA is a way to improve yourself, without leaving those adorable snakes behind. You get the drift.

Play style - Solo vs. Grouping. Progressing in levels does limit your options about where you can solo. With the, well no-so recent, changes in the xp range soloing is much more viable at 65 then before, but some people maintain that to do places like Seb you're better off to switch to AA and hold a lower level.

LDoN - Because LDoN adventures are based on levels, at the very least, the more AA you have at any given level will increase your ''power" (range of abilities, ability to off tank, DPS) thereby increase the chances that your group will succeed in the adventure.

To balance your character -

1. Using AA to close the gap
Not everyone has access to the best equipment and by stopping to do AA you can close the gap i.e. Beastial Frenzy will increase your damage output without the need for new weapons, or Natural Durability will increase your hps. The best part is that these skills improve as your gear does so they are an investment in your future.

2. Spell Availability Another point to consider is the availabililty of spells 63 and beyond. If you cannot easily get spectral parchments and runes you may want to pause at 62 and collect some AA. 61 to 62 spells are pretty cheap in the bazaar on most servers but 63+ can get expensive. Some people insist even without the spells the levels are worth it, others suggest switching to AA while you acquire certain crucial spells (i.e. pet haste, 64 pet, etc.).

3. Gear If you are levelling quickly you may at some point outgrow your equipment and find it difficult to solo or that your weapon doesn't do as much damage as you would like. Switching to AA is an option that will allow you to strengthen you character, keeping the relative difficulty of the mobs constant, while you upgrade your gear (by farming pp or whatever).

The importance of each of these things is up to you to decide of course. This is not black and white either, you can do any mixture of xp and AA that suits you. Personally, I found it useful to do some AA before I hit 65. Try here for more info http://beastlords.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=347 or http://beastlords.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=118



General Info to answer FAQs

1. Spell Casting Reinforcement 3 does extended Paragon. Extended Enhancement items do NOT, as paragon is below the minimum required time needed to qualify. SCR also extends combat abilities like beastial fury and protective spirit.
2. Melee damage AA in descending order of increased DPS: Beastial Fury > Ambidexterity > Combat Fury for more info see http://www.eqbeastlord.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10827
3. In the long run, Combat Fury is a greater increase in DPS than Spell Casting Fury. http://beastlords.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=409
4. For info on DPS comparaison for GoD see here http://www.beastlords.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1516

[DiosT]

Good post :-)

*stickyness*

[Varlak]

Just rush your way up to lvl 70.

By lvl 70 AA goes faster. You have access to lots off good gear while doing EXP group ( nowadays a single group can loot better stuff then PoTime gear and trust me on this. )

The problem with AA is that you must et 6general AA and then 12 archtype AA to get the access to the real good AA.

maybe if you only solo and don't really want to group then AA might be an interesting way. But if you group a lot, using weak gear will just give you weak DPS. And with a bad weapon you need tons of AA to get a real DPS boost.

[Rith]

Just rush your way up to lvl 70.

By lvl 70 AA goes faster. You have access to lots off good gear while doing EXP group ( nowadays a single group can loot better stuff then PoTime gear and trust me on this. )

The problem with AA is that you must et 6general AA and then 12 archtype AA to get the access to the real good AA.

maybe if you only solo and don't really want to group then AA might be an interesting way. But if you group a lot, using weak gear will just give you weak DPS. And with a bad weapon you need tons of AA to get a real DPS boost.

That was kind of a lame response, sorry. 

In regards to the question, beastlords are a soloing class.  At 70 without aa's you are limited on where you can solo and still get decent exp.  Combined this with the fact that if you do not have pre-requisite AA's you just eliminated yourself from having a pet on raids.  In RSS if you don't have Paragon and have low DPS you start to look bad. 

In regards to the original question.  Level's can provide some advantages, but the AA's available as you level, if you were to only do 5 per level starting at say 55, you could meet everything you need to solo well, raid, and more by the time you hit 70. 

[Akinlore]

Personally I pushed the levels until I hit 65 (mainly so I could grp well with friends who play).

Then I switched to doing AA's, did some defensive, some offensive, some general stuuf (see magelo), and now I am pushing for lvl 70.

I may stop at 68 for a bit as I dont have any of my 69/70 spells as yet, to see if I can get any of them, or may push on for 70, as there are some nice items that you need to be lvl 70 for.

[Mukty]

well i wanted to originaly stop at 62 and work on AAs but i relized it's realy to high for the old zones i soloed in, and to low for the next levl of zones i can solo in....so i'll stop at 65 as well... this way my uber friend can get me in to MPG! hehe. but i do want to stop before 70 so i can still solo for AAs that way when i do eventuly get 70 i'll be able to solo then.

[Gxser]

path I took ,
reached level 51 went full AA until I got the 6 I needed for the first page
reached level 53 went full AA until I got the 12 needed for the second page
reached level 55 went full AA until I got 24 needed for the 3rd page (and new title :P)
reached level 60 I took my AA's to 100
reached level 62 I took my AA's to 200
reached level 65 (was max level at the time) went up over 700
reached level 70 (was max level at the time) went up over 1,100
reached level 75 and back to AA grind where Im almost maxed .

I would say with around 350-400 aa's soloing at 70 can be done for decent xp mobs , don't expect the best xp mobs or zones .

[maxawesome]

I'm not really sure what the devs were thinking making AA's scale to be about 1hr per AA @ level 70, and adjusting it AA gain at all other levels to that standard. They just released an expansion that takes us to max level of 75, and now one that's bringing that to level 80? Is that just under the assumption that everyone playing has been stagnating at max level for so long that it didn't matter their AA gain rate since they were at or approaching max aa's anyways?

How does that model at ALL help those who casually play the game and want to be able to work on AA's after maxxing level?

I can see a level 80 beastlord with no aa's being totally unable to solo level-appropriate content for any sort of meaningful aaxp.

I already see that at 72, and that is with 150aa's. When I re-rolled on FV, I specifically parked my bst at 65 so that I would always have DB content to solo for good aaxp. I haven't regretted that decision once.

While I agree that changing the aaxp model from the "equiv exp to level 51" model is a good step in the right direction, but I fail to see how it extends to levels above 70. Maybe they should continually increase the model limit such that aaxp gain rate reflects 1hr per aa @ highest level (in the case of the next expansion, level 80). At least that would allow those of us still coming up to catch up on aa's to some extent in the 70s and make the grind to 80 more flexible (read: I won't HAVE to have a group to see decent exp).

/rant off

That said, I'm loving being parked at 65 and racking up aa's. But then, I never raid, and play only casually lately. That's why I moved to FV...so I can still have raid gear without the huge time sink.

[sicshift]

thats why i parked my dru bot at 66, but i couldnt leave him there for long. i want new spells and such. plus with teh lvl difference, atleast one of the char will always be out of the 5 lvl mob margin. the new aa system sucks

[hokarz]

The new aa system only sucks if you wait until 60+ to start working on aa's. Start working on them when they become available and the later ones come much easier. Of course, that slows your leveling down quite a bit. The way the aa system is now, is how it should have been from the start. There is no advantage to gaining levels before aa's, but there is a marked advantage to doing aa's when they become available

[maxawesome]

The new aa system only sucks if you wait until 60+ to start working on aa's. Start working on them when they become available and the later ones come much easier. Of course, that slows your leveling down quite a bit. The way the aa system is now, is how it should have been from the start. There is no advantage to gaining levels before aa's, but there is a marked advantage to doing aa's when they become available

I agree to an extent, but honestly, the difference between my aaxp gain in the mid to high 60s and at 70+ is night and day, primarily because at 70+, anything that is DB to me is about 3x-4x as difficult and yield less exp. This is all speaking about solo killing, btw.

They make a pretty big assumption that if you get a certain ratio of aa's per level, even if it is on an increasing (non-linear) scale, that aa gain will be somewhat steady from 51 to 80. The only way I see this working is if I stop to gain the initial 6 to 9aas at level 51, and then triple or quadruple that at each level-restricted tier (so another 27 to 36aa's at 55, totalling 45aa, another 108 to 144aa's at 59, totalling 189aa, and so on). Else, I just can't see how player power could keep pace with mob difficulty.

I recognize that gear plays a big factor, but honestly, it seems like aa's have lost their lustre given that you have to have on the order of 500+ (and that's 500 hours of pure grinding @ level 70 supposedly) in order to solo effectively past 70.

[Denti]

At the moment it is pretty good to stop leveling at 51 and do some AAs, they come extremely fast. My zerker did between 4 to 6 an hour in AC (well, semi-solo, my bst healed him). Now at 56 after i made the first 140 AAs its only 3 to 4 AAs an hour. It is of course even better if you have a monk, chanter or bard to level, FD, FM or charm are extremely powerfull PL tools.

[Purrpaws]

If levelling a new character I agree with the previous posters, it's wise to start AA's well earlier than in the past. I mean I have just come back to EQ after 3 years since I was last a regular player and I have tried to push for levels only to find that I am very weak for my level. Part of that is definitely due to wearing Planes of Power and LDON gear but at level 72 and 138 AA's I don't have the power to solo dark blues. Heck, 2 light blues at a time can be a serious challenge in newer zones. I am currently levelling a magician in Droga, and I have realized that I should get some AA's before it's too late, and the content gets significantly tougher.

Purrpaws, 72 Beastlord
Kpop, 59 Magician   

[Panthur]

I noticed lv 80 aa exp in a group really bites. 3-5% on  kill where it used to be 7-9ish%. At least in fortress mechawhatsits. Soloing lesser level mobs = about the same rate. Any idea on a good p[lace to grind if your not factioning, questing yadya yada? lol.

[Kanan]

I was slow, mostly cuz I was moving right at release, on leveling to 80 from 75.  I'm still only 77, and just barely atm.  I will say that I intend to grind out 6 AA when I hit 78 to get focused para.  Then I'll finish leveling.  But that's cuz of how powerful I think the focused is as an AA.