I'm not offering an opinion on tuners but I'm curious how you decided against EQT? Is it just having to get an Access Port?
Good friend of mine is a master tech for Audi, says he's seen more popped engines with EQT than any other tuner. That's coming from a person who works on VAG engines every day. Hard not to follow that advice.
The fuel quality in AZ is horrendous. I've sent logs out to Randy at Mountune who stated it was the worst gas he'd even seen for 91. Was closer to 87/89 equivalent. Not sure how big oil gets away with that. Stratified wasn't as bad, but still had to cut back on spark quite a bit to even things out. Eventually got to the point where the car was barely tuned. Marginal power gains for a full bolt on Stage 3 Focus ST. The only thing that helped was ethanol, or a couple gallons of race gas. This just wasn't feasible given how sparse those types of fuels are in my area for a street driven daily.
With that being said, I would pull 6 degrees of timing regularly... especially during the hot months. Even with a huge bar & plate intercooler, it barely made a difference when it was 110+ outside. Not much you can do when the ambient air is near ideal target charge temps. You just can't cool things down quickly enough. That's why I'm hesitant to tune again, and also the reason why I'm investigating different tuning companies. IE is in Utah, where the weather is very similar. Dry, hot, same altitude. Was thinking they may be a viable option so I started doing some research. That lead me to here, after not finding much.
I'm not against another tune with the AP, but I like to tinker. Monitoring parameters, trying to hit exact figures, constantly worried about negative corrections... etc. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole again. Given how complete the R is, I'd like to just set it and forget it. Flash a reliable tune and be done with it. I'm not chasing big power. But seeing the numbers on just a stage 1 tune is making it hard to hold back.