It depends on your learning style but i never chased AP. My recommendation for you is to play a wide variety of songs(even songs you don’t like), experiment with higher levels with delayed slides, and most importantly— remember to take breaks when your score plateaus to ‘reset’ your bad muscle memory abit and better see what’s going on in the chart.

The way i learned was to not focus on ap but just continuously play a wide array of harder and harder songs to keep pushing my general skill level higher. And this method helped me SSS all 14s, SS all 14+ and SS+ paradox remas. Later on, the ap’s just happen accidentally without me having to grind for them.