@ErikT Do please continue if you can as I am trying to figure this out.
You start off saying it doesnt make a difference, then say you actually need far more than the 79 point difference it makes.
If a person needs many points, how cant 79 more make a difference? I am looking for end game context. Will a person that has far more points spent, be far more useful end game raids and or PvP? And does this effect people being chosen for raids based on that difference?
I guess Iāll never understand F2P players. You guys are not paying for anything, yet complain about not having the bonuses of the people that do pay a sub. If you enjoy the game, pay the monthly sub, itās not that much.
@Epicmonies
Basically, these expertise points you get as a subbed player are NOT necessary, they are just a good start to make things faster at the beginning. Back when RotGS was released, no one had these starter points and had to farm AA EXP from doing normal mode dungeons.
These 79 expertise points are for the very basic important AA feats that you need in Khitai (well, you could spend them on other things first and āwasteā them but thats all up to you), rogues should learn Tainted Weapon and Finely Honed, healers should learn Steadfast Faith and a Heal AA and so on. With these ācoreā AA talents you can do Hard Mode dungeons, they are the ones where you get the very good epic gear (some sets are comparable to T4 like the scarlet circle gear for PoM / ToS).
To beat HM dungeons you only need one player with these feats, letās say you want to do the Monastery of Warmonks -> Reliquiary of Flame in hard mode, this means you need a rogue with Finely Honed, once you got at least one rogue with that feat in your group you are good to go, you could basically invite 1 good healer and one good tank (solo heal and solo tank is not that usual on the saga server but on Crom its very common) and 3 other rogues (letās say you play a rogue too without the important AA feats) and you could still do the dungeon easily even though 3 out of 4 rogues donāt have the AA perk that is needed.
There are no ārulesā, some mechanics can even be avoided completely even though you should have the AA talents, best example here is Palace of Yun Rau where healers normally need Steadfast Faith to remove a ruin effect but the ruin effect can also be removed if you run into some fire damage that randomly happens at 2 places.
And you know what? How about doing some normal mode dungeons before going to hard mode dungeons instantly? Thatās the way people had to do it back then too.
You canāt hit level 80 and instantly do end game content, you need to play for a while, understand you character on level 80, farm some gear, learn the dungeon mechanics and so on before you can participate in harder dungeons.
AAs will be needed in T4 and higher raids, but until you can participate in them you will need a lot of time to understand the game since in my opinion, the gameplay of dungeons changes drastically once you reach Khitai (and Dragonās Spine / unchained dungeons etc.), there are new mechanics that are different from tank and spank fights like in the āold worldā. Until you learned how to do these properly to go to T4 raids you will have gained enough AA EXP to get the important feats.
So in conclusion: You donāt necessarily need the perks as long as you can avoid the mechanic (in some dungeons) or got another player who already got the perks. You can easily farm the needed AA EXP for those feats even without premium, I got a lot of friends ingame that are F2P and still managed to get a completely full AA tree, I helped them and they helped me (which brings another point: this is a MMORPG, you kinda need to make friends at some point to achieve something in the endgame content). Farm some normal mode dungeons if you got a few friends already, invite other players that havenāt gotten their feats yet and would like to see these dungeons for the first time or join one of the big guilds, people there will help you in all regards and make end game content a lot easier too.
Really, donāt worry too much about the AA stuff, you will get it while you play (mostly on level 80), you will have the most important feats in no time, half of the AA tree is kinda useless for PvE anyways (all those resistances to stun and so on, almost never applies anywhere), once you got the important class feats (always depends on your archetype and class) you can start train the āimproving AA talentsā, like new combo attacks for Barbarians, special anti hate feats as Assassin and so on.
Thank you, was hoping someone would actually answer my question about how it would or would not effect end game content. the other guys typical elitist response had me thinking Funcom did basically shoot all new/returning players in the foot and was thinking I and my friends wasted our time coming back because nothing had changed over the years.
Now to decided on buying those expansions now, or later.
Rise of the Godslayer mostly becomes useful once you hit level 80 since all but one area are meant for level 80 players (you can go there earlier in the late 70s but it will be pretty hard since monsters there are level 81 - 85).
The Dragonās Spine expansion is useful only for level 80 when you got some decent gear (well, on the saga server you have T1 gear the moment you hit level 80 so you can go there instantly), you can get massive amounts of Marks of Acclaim (used to buy Khitai faction gear) but every monster there is level 85, dungeons there are for good geared people with hard mechanics, raids there are T5 and T6.
Rise of the Godslayer is a must have if you want to have more level 80 content, Dragonās Spine is good once you got enough of Khitai and itās dungeons (and you got some gear from there already) the Vanaheim Expansion on the other other hand isā¦ useless. Really, you can only use it to grind up to level 80 in a few hours if you want to but other than that it is just a mess, badly made, low rewards, long grind and on level 80 the epic rings you can buy there are overpriced and outclassed by the Raidfinder rings by a lot. Donāt buy it, but RotGS first, then Dragonās Spine if you want new stuff to do and thatās about all you need.
EDIT: I fogot about the Turan expansion, itās basically a level 50 - 55 leveling area with a group dungeon for level 80 and the T3.5 raid, also it got 2 solo dungeons that you can do in a hard version on level 80 to gain more stuff (like AA EXP and rare trophies which you need for Khitai gear too).
Sorry that I write so damn much but there is so much to explain (especially on level 80), I am thinking about creating some kind of post that is summing all these things up (with more detailed information and better explanation) but I got not enough time to do this right now.
Please, never apologize for TOO MUCH information lol. Thank you very much, this info is the difference between no longer playing and staying 
There is quite a lot you can do at level 80 that do not required the class specific perks whilst you are still earning them.
The tier 1, 2 and 3 raids do not require any AA perks - if someoneās raid advert says they do ā¦ well thatās probably part of their script they use for group/raid formation and they havenāt altered it when itās not necessary.
Solo dungeons of course. The Forgotten City in Gateway of Khitai will offer an āunchainedā version at level 80. Other solo dungeons in Rise of Godslayer and Coast of Ardashir (Turan) zones.
There are bunch of fast, fun fights inside the āHouse of Cromā dungeon that do not require AAs - these are the boss fights in the multi-group region of the dungeon (you can have upto 24 people, ie 4 groups of 6, per instance running about.) The gear that drops there is very nice blue items which are stronger than tier1 raid armour. This is one of the many dungeons that will give you rare trophys which can be used to buy purple khitai gear and/or potions + rez potions in Rise of the Godslayer (or purple gear in dragonspine/rings from Vanaheim pack.
It is also a nice way to get used to watching cast bars and for buffs on yourself that you have to react to if you havenāt done this as levelling up ā¦ this does become important in level 80 group and raid content.
(note: The Vile Nativity 6man inside this area DOES require some perks)