Empower or Maximize first?

[charmor]

When my favored soul reach lvl 12, together with BB I'll get my first damage boosting metamagic.

Favored souls have enhancements to decrease Empower costs, but is that really useful comparing to Maximize? I mean, really worth having a cheap Empower to get +50% damage boost, or the damage/sp ratio is just better with Maximize, even without enhancements?

I'll eventually have both Maximize and Empower, but for now I just would like suggestions about which to take first. And if the Empower enhancement line is worth the ap..

[nibel]

Sp-per-damage, Maximize is better than Empower. Maximize allow a bigger spike damage. Sometimes, that bigger spike damage is wasted damage (eg, the mob have 300 HP and you do 500 HP of damage. 200 damage wasted), but this is more frequent on low to mid levels (I would say.. until Vale on normal).

I would go with empower if you have the AP to get the enhancements.