So far a little news has escaped from beta about the new AA's that are going to be released. This is an attempt to inform some of a disparity that is occurring that without feedback may very well make it live.

Critical Affliction AA - Level Required 65, gives a chance that each tick of a dot will do critical damage. 3 levels, costs are 5 10 15 for each of the levels.

According to parses this skill at level 3 looks like it will deliver between 6 and 7% chance for a critical tick.

There are 3 reasons that this is wrong if left untouched before release.

1. Level requirement: Direct Damage spell crit AA's can be purchased at level 55. Why make a DoT caster wait 10 more levels to earn critical dots?

2. AA cost- why do DoT casters have to pay over twice the amount of AA points for roughly the same percent chance to crit as a DD caster? Spell casting fury costs 12 AA to max, gives a 7% chance to crit vs 30 AA for a 7% chance to crit on a DoT.

3. AA structure - There are currently two sets of AA lines that allow a greater percent chance to crit and a third line of AA's if you are a wizard. For the non wizard DD caster you can earn for a total of 30 AA a reported 13% chance to crit. Lastly, a third AA line is reported to be introduced with GoD that allows for an even greater chance of crits on DD spells. DoT casters should be given the same type of AA's that allow for this type of progression.

Please note, I am not asking that DoT casters be given a greater chance to crit a dot for less AA. We have been waiting a long time for this, true - but that does not mean I expect more for less. I only wish for parity.

If you feel this is unfair, I urge you to email eqfeedback@soe.sony.com and let them know that DoT casters should have parity with DD casters in terms of cost, structure and utility of their AA lines.

For the argumentative I will include some of the oft repeated arguments against Critical Dots:

1. Critical Dots are overpowering and will unbalance the game!

A1: Critical Dots are already in GoD, obviously the devs don't think its unbalancing.
A2: Doubling the damage of a spell that takes 30 seconds to approximately 2 minutes is no more unbalancing/game breaking than a 2.3k nuke having its damage double in an instant.

2. Critical DoTs will do more damage since they are calculated per tick therefore they dont need the same % chance to crit as DD spells.

A: (This is lengthy) It does not matter if DoT crits are calculated on a per tick basis or a per cast basis.

Case 1 (Whole DoT spell crits)
If dot crits were calculated at the beginning of the cast, and the whole dot did critical damage:
[I'm making up this dot damage and duration for ease of math]

A 10 tick dot, that does 100pts each tick, 100 casts at 7% chance to crit =
93 dots dont crit = 930 ticks of 100 pts of damage = 93,000 points of damage
7 dots do crit = 70 ticks of 200 pts of damage = 14,000 pts of damage.

1000 ticks of damage (930 no crit + 70 crit) = 107,000 pts of damage.

Case 2 (Each tick calculated seperately)
1000 ticks of damage at 100pts of non crit damage times 7% chance to crit = 70 crit ticks of damage.
1000 ticks of damage (930 no crit + 70 crit) = 107,000 pts of damage.

Its the same either way.

Lets compare a DD spell:
Base spell damage is 1000, 7% chance to crit means in 100 casts you would get 7 crits.
(93 x 1000) = 93,000
(7 x 2000) = 14,000
Total = 107,000.
(The problem is for the same 30 AA points, DD spells have a base chance of 13% to crit vs a DoTs 7%).

Actually, I know myself I would prefer that crits be calculated on a per cast basis, but that is my personal preference. I am not going to fight that issue at all.

Read my post about AA inflation in the other thread.

As for getting a complete set of 4 or so AAs, DoT casters should consider ourselves lucky to get one at this point. What would you want to give up to get the other 3?

The disparity is undeniable, /agree. However, who knows how fast the AA will flow in GoD?

Why should one level 55 character have to spend 30 AA for the same utility as another level 55 character?

Exp inflation does not compensate for the cost of an AA that should have been in when Luclin came out.

The disparity is undeniable, /agree. However, who knows how fast the AA will flow in GoD?
1 AA per hour I think. Isn't that what average for a group in the Elementals?

If exp isn't good in GoD, grind them out in your old POP spots like the Elementals or BoT or wherever.

If exp isn't good in GoD, grind them out in your old POP spots like the Elementals or BoT or wherever.
What I meant was... if the flow is faster in GoD, then the large increase in cost would be completely justified. But otherwise, I agree with Agnol: the cost is high for Critical Affliction.

I suspect GoD AA xp flow will be at least as fast as PoP.

The flow of AA in PoP after more than a year of increased power for most characters is what I was basing my above statement on. I don't think GoD AAs will be faster than PoP AAs.

Another thing is, do the GoD AA in a certain order and you can speed up your PoP grinding as well.

Just for example, I'm alteration spec. Saving up AA for evok spec right now via secondary forte -- having evok specialized also is going to considerably speed up HoH quad/agro-hybrid kiting. With current AAs/items available to me it's, what, a 90 minute AA or so? Throw in secondary forte and suddenly it's an 80 to 85 minute AA. Hey, over 10, 20, 30 AAs, that adds up.

Your second spec is going to be capped at 100 with Secondary Forte. That's a 2.5% reduction in mana cost per cast. Not really worth 10 AA, in my opinion.

About the cost, I'm pretty sure all aa's in this expansion have an inflated cost and that is intended. This expansion is seems to again be geared towards the end game ppl who are running out of content. At that lvl a lot of ppl are running out of aa's b/c they can get them at a high rate b/c of pop's high exp rate and their ability to generally kill mobs quicker/more efficiently. If they were priced along older standards then ppl would have most of them within a month which would be kinda bleh... new content is like handing someone a rubix cube. It's meant to keep them busy. If the cube is half done when handed off and only takes a few twists before being solved it's not going to keep you busy.

The lvl req. I think too isa side effect of this being a new end game content expansion. Abilities are not balanced against old ones, they're designed as new ones. Just like pop offered progression at lvl 61+ and had that as a lvl req. for its aa this expansion is for progression at lvl 65 so that's the lvl req. for the aa there.

Critical Affliction looks a lot like Spell Casting Fury, for 2.5 the AA cost. Both end up around 7% at level 3. Is it worth it? Instead of comparing it to SCF, an AA available since Luclin, why not compare it with Fury of Magic Mastery? In that case, they're pretty much even.

So far, neither the AA nor the foci available have been even between DoTs and DDs. AAs go to DDs, but with 3 separate lines DoTs pick up more from focus items. Compare:
Affliction Efficiency (1-25% savings) with Mana Preservation (1-10%)
Affliction Haste (33% spell haste) with Spell Haste (15% spell haste)
Burning Affliction (1-20% bonus damage) with Improved Damage (1-20% bonus)
Extended Torment (10% bonus duration) has no counterpart.

Granted, DoT foci are rarer than DD foci, and a mage summoned earring can provide a 1-15% savings on DDs. Still, DoTs end up cheaper, faster casting, and have 2 different ways of improving damage output as opposed to just 1 for DDs.

i think that u need to remember that we are not the main Dot class and so an AA that affect Dot should be view with the primary class in mind, and i think that Soe are a little scared to put to much power in the hands a class that is already fighting for the title of the most powerfull class in EQ.

There are a lot of factors to consider here as to how useful the dot AAs will be. Someone could probably put down a page of mathematics on various factors and still not cover everything. The posts above have only covered half of it.

I will say though that the GoD AA costs do not seem balanced against the existing AA costs. It doesn't matter at all how fast AA can be collected. One set of AAs are overpriced for time spent acquiring them or one set are underpriced. By quoting the speed people can collect AAs you're only discussing whether GoD AAs are overpriced or PoP AAs underpriced. The AA sets should balance each other and both be reasonable for the time spent acquiring them.

Well, 10AA for 2.5% saving will be worth it, just because I have nothing else to spend it on really :P