I have added all this information to the current AA thread stickied at the top of the forum. All future updates to this information will be posted there. I just wanted to post it once as its own thread so you all knew where to go look for writeups on the new AAs.
Shadows AA
Above is a picture of a warden Shadows AA tree with zero points spent in any tree. As you can see there are AA spent requirements on the Priest, Druid, and Warden lines so this will be a limiting factor for those wardens who are leveling or are starting TSO not at the previous AA cap of 140.
Progression through the Shadows tree requires 10 points spent in the previous line to unlock the following. So you have to put 10 in general to put anything in priest, 10 in priest to put anything in druid, and so on. Each AA on the General, Priest, Druid, and Warden tree can take a maximum of 5 points. The end line abilities unlock and become available for purchase once you have spent 10 points in the tree it is in. The Priest and Druid end line abilities cost one point a piece to get and the Warden end line stance abilities cost two points a piece to get.
General
General tree is available to every character in the game so the AAs here are well... Very general and generic. 10 points MUST BE spent in General to unlock priest tree so you basically have to max at least 2 blocks in general or spread 10 points around the general AAs.
The pictures above show each general AA at rank one.
Below are brief descriptions of each AA in general.
Pet of the Gods - This AA enhances your deity pet. 5 points gives 50% casting speed and 50% more attribute bonus. This is pretty worthless on the whole and not recommended.
Bountiful Feast - This AA improves the duration of food / drink. 5 points gives 12.5% longer duration on food / drink. This AA will basically only save you coin in the long run and is not recommended.
Ample Harvest - This is a harvester's AA. This gives you a chance to double harvest. 5 points gives 15% chance to double harvest. I'm not quite sure exactly how this AA works because I haven't tried it but it seems it could be nice for tradeskillers / harvesters / alternate spec on mirror.
Hearty Constitution - This AA increases your characters maximum health. 5 points will increase your maximum health by 2.5%. This is one of the few general AAs that is useful for actual combat in game and is recommended on every spec.
Swift Journey - This AA increases your speed while on mount. 5 points will increase your mount speed by 10.0 (or 10% faster while mounted). This AA is not recommended due to the restriction on zones mounts are useful in. I would suggest taking the general out of combat run speed AA if you wanted to take some type of speed increaser from general.
Enhanced Mind - This AA increases your characters maximum power. 5 points will increase your maximum power by 2.5%. This is one of the few general AAs that is useful for actual combat in game, but wardens have no need for maximum power once we get our epic so you can opt to spend these 5 points elsewhere in general.
Swift Strides - This AA increases your out of combat runspeed. 5 points will increase your run speed by 5%. This AA is useful for general moving around in the game and stacks with spirit of the wolf fine so is a good alternative to Enhanced Mind once you get your epic weapon.
Swift Creation - This is a crafter's AA. 5 points will increase progress by 10%. I have no idea what that means or how this AA works. If anyone has had a chance to test it your feedback here would be appreciated. This AA looks like it would be a good choice for a mirror spec or for crafters.
Priest
Priest End Line
Priest tree is a tree that is available to all priest classes and has a good mix of defensive, healing, dps, and solo type of AA abilities.
Pictured above are the priest line AAs at rank one. Casting Expertise, Battle Prowess, and Sacred Follower are all given to you when you take the Litany of Combat AA so they are pictured seperately to show you what Litany of Combat is exactly.
Below are brief descriptions of each AA.
Litany of Combat - Is a DPS type AA. Taking Litany of Combat will grant you 3 new buffs. You can only run one of these buffs at a time. Each of the buffs is designed to buff a different type of dps. Casting Expertise gives base spell damage, extra critical spell damage, and hostile casting / reuse speed. Battle Prowess gives weapon damage bonus, double attack, and base combat art damage. Sacred Follower is mainly a buff for shaman dogs that give increases Str and Sta, weapon accuracy, and DPS to their dogs. This AA is great because it is flexible in allowing us to choose how we wish to buff our DPS and it allows to do so with casting or melee. With maxed Litany of Combat the buffs it gives are almost an entirely second DPS stance and can be extremely powerful when run combined with the DPS stance given at the warden end line. This is in my opinion an essential AA in every build because it gives the priest a way to run a full heal stance, a medium heal / dps stance, and a full dps stance and allows for better optimization of heals / dps mix. At 5 points in Litany of Combat Casting Expertise gives 15% casting / reuse on hostile spells, 5% base spell damage, and 5% critical spell multiplier. Battle Prowess gives 20 weapon damage bonus, 25% double attack, and 15% base combat art damage.
Ally Revivification - This reduces the reuse of in combat resurrect spells by 12s per rank. This AA will change the reuse on Reincarnation, Nature's Touch, and Equinox. With 5 points into this AA you can reduce the reuse by 1 minute on each of those spells. This AA isnt really suggested to take because on most raids priests don't do very much rezzing.
Prayer of Healing - This AA directly enhances the Minor Bloom line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Sylvan Bloom). At 5 points this will improve the base heal amount of the spell by 10% and the critical heal amount by 15%. This means the spell heals for 10% more all the time and an extra 15% more when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals.
Protective Prayer - This AA enhances our group physical mitigation buff. With 5 points spent it will increase the mitigation provided by the buff by 15%. This AA is alright for solo players and for players who rarely have another priest in group but is not recommended for any regular raider or a warden who is regularly grouped with other priests. The warden group mitigation buff is weak compared to other classes who will basically ALWAYS run theirs so if the other priests take this AA then there is no need for us to take it also since the buffs do not stack and we will probably drop ours to run another wisdom buff anyways.
Secular Protection - This AA enhances our group heat / cold resistances buff. With 5 points spent it will increase the heat / cold resistances by 25%. This AA is not really recommended for anyone because extra spell resists amount to little or no gain on the average geared player.
Seal of Faith - This AA increases our shield effectiveness by 10% with 5 points spent. It is a good option for solo players who find themselves tanking a lot of content and needing that extra bit of avoidance. It is completely useless for most every other warden.
Supplication of the Fallen (Priest End Line) - It is basically what it says. It is an out of combat 24 man raid resurrect that will bring them back up with 100% health and 100% power. The spell has a ridiculously large effect radius so it is good for pulling dead people out from under mobs that are aggro. This ability costs one point and can be achieved once you have put 10 points into the priest line. It is not worth taking in my personal opinion because it applies revive sickness. Your raid still has to stand around and wait for the sickness to wear off and by the time it does you would have been able to regenerate to 100% health and power anyways. It saves relatively little time and is mainly just a fluff AA. If anything, it is only good for one priest in the raid and then there are much better things for us to put our points into so that one priest probably wouldn't be a warden.
Druid
Druid End Line
Druid tree is shared between wardens and furies. It is a little more druid specific as far as some of the bonuses and spell enhancements it offers. Like the other lines, it has a mix of both damage enhancements and healing enhancements.
Pictured above are the druid line AAs at rank one. I included a picture of an examine of an enhanced Aspect of the Forest (Minor Vigor spell line) to show you how many hit points are added to the spell per rank at level 80. The amount of hit points gained on the spell does not seem to scale by spell quality level meaning you will gain the same amount of hit points with the AA whether you have a master of the buff or not. The screen shot of Nature's Wrath was taken on my main in full healing gear with no base damage modifiers on so the damage values shown should be approximate for a raid / legendary geared warden.
Below are brief descriptions of each AA.
Elemental Mastery - This AA increases our heat and cold damage by 10% with 5 points spent. This AA does not seem to be profession based meaning it will affect literally EVERYTHING that does any heat or cold spell damage, spells, combat arts, and procs included. One thing worth nothing about this AA is the base cold damage does affect the cold damage portion of our dps stance Glacial Assault so it combos well in that regard.
Hierophant's Protection - This AA adds hit points to the Minor Vigor line (the t8 version is called Aspect of the Forest) of buff spells. The spell quality of the buff seems to have no impact on the amount of hit points gained so it doesn't matter if you have the master 1 or adept 1 version all that matters is which level of the spell you are using (i.e. the t8 buff will gain more hit points per rank than the t7 version). It will add 141 hit points per rank on the t8 variant of the spell so with 5 points spent the spell has 705 hit points added. This AA is really neither good or bad. If you are the kind to say, 'Forget dps I'm a healer' then this is probably an AA you will take. However, in my opinion, given the dps increases we have been allowed and the AAs we are given to do so with there are much better choices to invest points into. 705 hit points is not going to save anybody really so I feel points are best used elsewhere.
Nature's Storm - This AA enhances directly the Cold Snap (t8 version called Velium Frost) line of spells. With 5 points spent it increases the base damage of the entire spell by 20% and adds an extra 8% damage more when you critical the spell. This AA also enhances the CA version Cold Slice properly. It is a sizeable and nice increase to our DOT but unless you are building a spec purely for DPS you probably will not take this AA. There are better AAs to put points into that affect many more spells than just one and offer more overall damage increase.
Untamed Winds - This AA directly enhances the Sylvan Wind line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Tide of Healing). At 5 points this will improve the base instant heal amount of the spell by 15% and the critical heal amount by 20%. This means the spell heals for 15% more on the first tick and an extra 20% more across the entire heal when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals.
Harmony of the Grove - This AA directly enhances the Regrowth line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Photosynthesis). At 5 points this will improve the base heal amount of the spell by 15% and the critical heal amount by 10%. This means the spell heals for 15% more all the time and an extra 10% more when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals.
Bladed Expertise - This AA is straight forward. It increases our melee double attack by 4% per rank. With 5 points spent you will gain 20% double attack. This AA goes well with the melee build and if you spec right using this AA and Litany of Combat you can reach 85% double attack without any gear or buffs.
Nature's Wrath (Druid End Line) - This is the druid end line. You must spend 10 points in the druid line to be able to purchase this. This ability costs only one point. Is it basically a new nuke / dot. It is an encounter based dot and will hit 6 mobs and given all the group encounters that I have seen in TSO it is a sizeable increase to our dps. One thing worth noting about this ability is it has a 50m casting range so can be cast from very far away and this ability can be cast while moving so its excellent for getting that little bit of damage going and getting a dot ticking while people are positioning and moving around. I recommend taking it because its an easy way to up our dps and a great increase given all the multiple mob encounters present in TSO.
Warden
Warden End Lines
Warden tree is the portion of the Shadow AAs that is obviously available exclusively to wardens. These AAs are supposed to further help define and shape the primary role of our class. This like all the other lines has a good mix of healing increases and dps increases. You must spend at least 10 points into the warden line to be able to purchase the two end line abilities. Each of them costs 2 points a piece to purchase so they cost more than the other end lines.
Below are brief descriptions of the warden line AAs and the end lines.
Elemental Storm - This AA enhances the debuff component of our Cold Snap (t8 version is called Velium Frost) line of spells. This AA correctly enhances the combat art variant Cold Slice as well. With 5 points invested it will increase the mitigation decrease applied by the spell by 25%. This AA really isn't worth taking for anyone. You will see little damage increase from your spells while soloing because of the extra debuff and on raids the mobs are already at or near debuff cap so that little bit of extra heat / cold we can debuff is negligable.
Critical Debilitation - This AA grants us a new buff that we can apply to one target in the group. The buff grants our target additional critical mitigation. Critical mitigation is a new statistic introduced in TSO to allow players to mitigate the also newly introduced mob crit mechanics. Basically, mobs can crit in TSO and this buff will help our target take less damage from the crits. We are the only priest in game that can buff this new statistic and it will be pretty key in learning new content that your raid force is not properly geared for yet. This is an AA I recommend to every warden as it is a new class defining type of ability.
Chilling Winds - This AA increases all of our profession based cold damage spells. It will affect Cold Snap (t8 Velium Frost), Cold (t8 Icefall), and Winds of Frost (t8 Winds of Permafrost) spell lines as well as the combat art variants of those spells (Cold Slice, Cold Strike, Whirl of Frost). With 5 points invested it will increase the base damage of all these abilities by 10%, it will increase the critical damage inflicted by these abilities by 15%, and it adds 15% extra chance to critically strike with these abilities. This AA is probably the best value per points invested as far as the DPS AAs are concerned and is suggested for any hybrid heal / dps spec and for every pure dps spec.
Elemental Barrier - This AA enhanced our Favor of the Untamed spell line (heat / cold ward). With 5 points invested it will increase the base ward about by 20% and increase the resistances bonus by 25%. This AA is neither really good or really bad. If you are the type of warden to not want to dps then this will definitely be one of the AAs you end up taking. I have seen a lot of elemental damage in TSO so this spell line will get use this expansion. I suggest this AA in any pure healing spec but it would probably get cut for any hybrid heal / dps spec.
Blissful Healing - This AA directly enhances the Minor Florescence line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Grand Florescence). At 5 points this will improve the base heal amount of the spell by 10% and the critical heal amount by 20%. This means the spell heals for 10% more all the time and an extra 20% more when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals.
Healing Winds - This AA directly enhances the Winds of Renewal line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Healstorm). At 5 points this will improve the overtime heal amount of the spell by 20% and the critical heal amount by 15%. This means the spell heals for 20% more on all ticks after the big front loaded first tick and an extra 15% more across the entire spell when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals.
Glacial Assault (Warden End Line) - This is the warden dps stance. This AA can not be run with Nature's Aura. Only one of our warden end line stances can be active at once. The screen shot of the ability shown in this thread was taken on my main in full heal gear so the damage shown in the screen shot is pretty close to what it would be for the average warden. The stance does 3 things for us basically. It increases our weapon damage bonus by 25, melee crit bonus by 10, and gives us an every time cold proc. Weapon damage bonus is basically a DPS mod on crack. It affects the base weapon damage and will simply make us hit much harder. When you combine the 25 weapon damage bonus from Glacial Assault with the 20 from Litany of Combat you will be hitting much much harder. The melee crit bonus means that our critical melee attacks will critical for more. 10 melee crit bonus basically makes our crit attacks are 10% bigger. The cold damage portion basically works just like dirge COB does. On every melee autoattack or combat art it will deal that damage. The Glacial Assault cold damage is considered a spell so the damage portion can be modified by items like the choker or mayong orb that affect base spell damage as well as the druid line Elemental Mastery AA. Also since it is a considered a spell attack, it will critical based on your spell crit and spell crit bonus mods so we still need to try to stay loaded up on spell crit. This stance, like the heal stance, has a penalty for being active. When you turn on Glacial Assault your heals lose 15% base heal amount and cast 15% slower. Overall this stance is a huge increase to our outgoing damage but due to the penalties it has you have to learn when you can and can not use it. Learn to adjust and alter your stance and buff setups mid fight as it will be common to do so in the new expansion.
Nature's Aura (Warden End Line) - This is the warden heal stance. This AA can not be run with Glacial Assault. Only one warden end line stances can be active at once. Also, while Nature's Aura is active the bonuses gained from any of the Litany of Combat buffs will suspend. This basically means that when you turn on Nature's Aura you are essentially engaging a pure heal mode. Most of the other key dps enhancing AAs suspend or can not be active at the same time as Nature's Aura. Nature's Aura increases the base heal of all healing spells (procs included) by 10% when active. It also increased your heal crit bonus by 5% which means you will critical for another extra 5% everytime you critical a heal. The stance also included 50% beneficial recovery speed which should help you spam heals faster when you are chain casting. It will take a tiny bit of time off between casts during that .5s that your spells are greyed out and can not cast. Its not a very great bonus (the recovery speed that is) but it is what the developers gave us. Hopefully we can get this changed in the future. The heal stance like the dps stance has penalties. While active Nature's Aura will decrease our base spell damage by 20% and increase our spell casting and reuse times by 15%. In case you were wondering, the penalty does not affect the damage on our combat arts but it does still affect the casting time and reuse time of the combat arts. This stance like the dps stance isnt meant to be run all the time. It is meant to be turned on during those pulls or fights where you just need that little extra bit of healing.
Shadow AA Summary
So you made it through all that information and perhaps you find yourself asking, well where does that leave us now? Well it leaves us with a whole variety of choices and options. The new AAs further define our DPS as predominantly melee, yet we still need some spell crit and spell mods because of the proc damage. They give us options and varying setups for differing situations. For a pure dps when you dont have to heal setup you could easily run Litany of Combat along with Glacial Assault. For applications where you want some dps, but still need to do some healing you can opt to run just Litany of Combat and run no stance. You will have zero penalties from either of the stances but yet retain all the base healing and other dps increases you gained from the other new AA. For applications where the damage is just too much you can swap to full heal stance and throw all dps out the window. The new AAs like the old AAs really depend on how you play your character and how you want to play the game. They are best used in conjunction with the old AAs though. I haven't had time to do so yet, but here in the near future I will post up some new AA setups and templates including the new Shadow AAs to give you all some ideas of how to combine the AAs between all 3 trees to get the most out of your character.
Warden - TSO AAs and YOU
