There never really was a rule about it. Some individual imms had a thing about it. Others didn't care.

Now I would say it is largely an irrelevance BUT what matters is probably whether you are rping properly or largely ignoring rp to rank up. If it seems like empowerment was an afterthought and something you only cared about when you needed it, that could prove an issue. If you were seeking empowerment but your imm just wasn't able to catch up with you for a couple of weeks, I'd be surprised if you had an issue.

Fwiw most empowered chars I've had ranked past their empowerment. Only one ever had issues and I don't think that was because of the ranking up.

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