Arttributes
Arttribute Guide

Unlocking Your Inner Power: All You Ever Wanted to Know About Attributes (So You Don't Have to Ask)


In our first guide we mentioned attributes and how they made your character better. But how exactly? Attributes are what separates your character from every other character; even the ones that have the same exact professions and skills as you. Attributes do a lot of things, however you can generalize it to these three things:

Attributes provide a passive benefit. This means that no matter what you are doing the attribute is doing something for you. It makes your character better at a lot of things but it is up to you to determine what exactly that is. A good example of this would be the Mesmer attribute Fast Casting. As the name would imply this is an attribute that affects your casting speed. Every time you use a skill you are casting it and what Fast Casting does is to increase the speed at which you can use certain skills. Currently, it affects only spells, which are a specific type of skill, and what it does is to decrease the amount of time it takes to cast each skill by a set amount. You can see the casting time of each skill in its description but with Fast Casting you will be experiencing casting times that are a lot smaller. Although only primary Mesmers can have Fast Casting, it also affects spells from other professions: from Monk healing spells to the damage dealing spells of the Elementalist.

Attributes make your skills better. Such linking to skills is an active benefit. You are only going to get any use out of your attribute when you use the skills it improves. Otherwise, it is not doing anything for you. Skills will be made to do more damage, last longer, or any number of other things. What exactly an attribute does for a skill depends on the skill. In each skill description there will be some green text indicating what the linked attribute will affect. This green text will always reflect the values set by your current attribute score; increase or decrease the link attribute and the green text will update automatically. An example, of course, is Fire Magic, which is an Elementalist attribute. It affects only those skills linked to Fire Magic or the Fire line of skills. Those skills are things like Immolate which does between 10 and 22 damage (base of 10, plus 1 for each rank of Fire Magic you have) or Fire Attunement, a skill that reduces the cost of all Fire spells by 30% that lasts between 36 and 60 seconds (base of 36 seconds plus 2 seconds per rank of Fire Magic). If you have Fire Magic of 5 you will cast an Immolate that does 15 damage, and a Fire Attunement that lasts 46 seconds. Raise your Fire Magic to 6 and you will improve those values to 16 and 48 respectively. The skill Lightning Strike, which is linked to Air Magic not Fire Magic, will not be affected no matter what you do to Fire Magic.

One thing to note is that although many skills have logical progression of the benefit their linked attribute gives, others do not. Some skills will cut off so that raising your attribute past a certain level will not do anything for it. Others will scale unequally so that one rank in an attribute could give you 3 points of damage but the next only 1 point while the next gives 3 points again. The exact pattern of what happens depends on the skill and you should not automatically think raising an attribute will improve your skill even though it is safe to say that in general a higher attribute means a better skill.

Attributes can do both of the above. Some attributes have both an active and a passive bonus. An example of this would be the Warrior attribute Strength. Strength gives your attack skills 2% armor penetration per level making them cause more damage. But Strength is also linked to several skills and will make them perform better. A Strength attack skill is going to have the benefit of both Strength's armor penetration as well as increased damage from your Strength attribute. A Strength skill that is not an attack is still going to be improved by Strength. And a non-Strength attack skill is going to get that armor penetration but not any increased damage from Strength. As an example let's take the Warrior skills Galrath Slash, Power Attack, and Warrior's Cunning. Galrath Slash is an attack skill but it is not a Strength skill, it is linked to Swordsmanship instead. Power Attack is a Strength attack skill. Warrior's Cunning is a Strength skill that increases armor penetration. Galrath slash adds between 2 and 20 damage on a hit (remember what we said about skills that do not scale equally? Galrath Slash is an example). If you have Strength of 5 and Swordsmanship 0, it will have 10% armor penetration but it will still only add 2 damage; raising Strength to 6 will give it 2% more penetration but not more damage, you will have to raise Swordsmanship for that. Power Attack adds between 5 and 23 damage to your attack. So with a Strength of 5 you will do 12 additional damage and have 10% armor penetration. If you raise Strength to 6 you will do 14 damage with 12% armor penetration. Finally, Warrior's Cunning is just something interesting. It lasts between 5 and 29 seconds and gives you a base armor penetration of 24%, exactly what you would get from a rank of 12 in Strength. So, using it you can potentially double your armor penetration by using attack skills.



So each attribute does something good for you and you make that benefit better by raising the level of your attribute. You raise your attribute level by spending attribute points. By looking on the left side of your screen, clicking on the little button there and clicking through the tabs until you see one that talks about experience, fame, and so on, you will find your character tab. You can also just open it by pressing the H key. There, you’ll see a list of all your attributes. Next to them you will see numbers; those numbers are your current level or rank in that attribute. You will also see Attribute Points and something called Refund Points. Now, by the level of your attributes, if you have any attribute points, you will see arrows with numbers in them. The number is the number of attribute points you will need to get your attribute to the next level. As you go up in level your attributes cost more to raise. Here is the progression (Rank is the level of the attribute, Cost is the cost to gain that level from the previous level and Total is the total cost to go from a Rank of 0 to the Rank indicated):


Rank

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Cost

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

9

11

13

16

20

Total

1

3

6

10

15

21

28

37

48

61

77

97


Notice that it is not a level progression, it scales up quickly towards the end. Raising an attribute from 6 to 7 will cost you a logical 7 points. But to go from 7 to 8 will cost you 9 attribute points. And the gap grows the higher you go up. The amount of points it takes to go from 11 to 12, 20 attribute points, could also be used to take another attribute from 0 almost to 5 with some change left over. 12 is the maximum to which you can raise your attributes. Certain items can give you bonus attribute ranks and push you past that, so it is not unheard of to have attribute levels of 13 or 14 but you can't go any higher than 12 through spending attribute points.

So where do you get some of these attribute points we spoke of? The answer is that you will gain them as you play the game. Whenever you gain a character level you will be allocated 5 attributes points that you can either spend immediately, or save to spend later. You will also get rewarded with attribute points for completing completing certain tasks in the game. In total you will be able to earn a maximum of 200 attribute points. As you can see, that does mean you will not be able to raise every attribute to the maximum; you are going to have to pick and choose.

So what are those refund points we mentioned earlier?. Each refund point has the capacity to lower an attribute by one level and refund you the number of attribute points you spent to gain that level. It does not matter what level that attribute was at, it only costs 1 refund point to remove a level and regain your spent attribute points. You can then use those attribute points to raise another attribute or several attributes. So, as an example: you have 2 attribute points, 2 refund points, and one attribute at the 12th rank. You spend 1 refund point by clicking on the down arrow next to the attribute and you will go from 12 to 11 and gain 20 attribute points at the cost of 1 refund point. You will now have 21 Attribute Points, 1 Refund Point and an attribute at 11. You can spend those attribute points to raise some other attributes and you may end up with 0 Attribute Points, 1 Refund Point and attributes of 11, 6, and 1.

You will earn refund points from playing the game, too, just like attribute points. Whenever you complete a primary mission goal you will gain refund points. You can earn an unlimited amount of refund points over the life of your character, however you cannot have more than 10 at any one time. If you have 10 refund points already and complete a mission goal you will not earn any more refund points. Do not worry, however, because mission goals can be repeated and will give you refund points every time you complete them.

Ah, you say, now I know what attributes do and how to go about getting them but which attributes should I get? Unfortunately, there is no one clear answer. There is no one guide for each profession or even for a character role because attributes and the skills they represent are nearly as diverse as the professions that use them. What you want to do will determine what sort of attributes you will want to have, and there is no one true template of where to put your points. Remember, every profession has a primary attribute. That primary attribute is an attribute that you will have if you choose that profession as your primary. If you choose it as your secondary you will not have that primary attribute but you will have a different one from the profession that is your primary. That primary attribute is going to be one of the major distinguishing characteristics of your profession and your character so let's take a closer look at them:

Elementalist – Energy Storage: This is a simple one to understand, the results are readily apparent, and it is very useful. Every rank in Energy Storage adds 3 points of energy to your maximum energy supply. If you have Energy Storage of 5 you will have an additional 15 energy over and above your starting 30 energy, giving you a maximum energy of 45. There are items in the game to further raise your energy, so it is possible to raise your total energy supply to over 70. Elementalists need all that energy because their skills are the most costly, taken as a whole, in the game. Obviously, this is a great attribute for anyone that likes to have a lot of energy to cast skills with and, since that is just about everyone, it is a draw for every profession. Do not be fooled by the big number, though. All Energy Storage does is increase the maximum amount of energy you have, it does not decrease the cost of skills or cause that energy to come back faster. To use the FPS gun analogy you have the same gun as everyone else but you have a larger clip of ammunition. When you run out, you are just like everyone else; it is just going to take you longer to get there. Energy Storage also has a few skills linked to it but those skills are skills like Aura of Restoration, which heals you every time you cast a spell, that are extremely important to any Elementalist.

Mesmer – Fast Casting: We touched on this earlier but, again, it is something that is simple to understand, although the effects are a little harder to see right away. It lets you use your skills more quickly than other characters. It only affects those skills known as spells however there are a lot of spells in the game and Fast Casting affects most of them. Anything with a casting time is shortened by Fast Casting and that is any spell that is not cast instantly. The exact forumla for just how much Fast Casting reduces the casting time of a skill is tricky to pin down. What is known is that it is not linear. That is to say, as you increase ranks the per rank percentage it decreases your casting time goes down while the total still increases. At a rank of 5 you will see about a 20% decrease, by a rank of 8 about 30%, and by a rank of 12 your skills will be cast about 40% faster than normal. So, at a Fast Cast of 12 a spell that normally takes 5 seconds would take about 3 seconds to cast. That is a great thing to have when you need your spell to go off before someone else's does, or before that Warrior catches up to you. Fast Casting is something that any caster could use even if Warriors and Rangers don't find much use for it. Casting skills faster, of course, means you will be using energy faster. To use the FPS analogy again, Fast Casting gives you a machine gun while everyone else has a pistol. You can put out a lot more bullets but you will run out faster if you're not careful. Like many other attributes Fast Casting is also skill-linked. However, at the moment, it only has one skill, Mantra of Recovery, to its credit.

Monk – Divine Favor: This attribute is both linked and passive. For a passive bonus Divine Favor adds a healing of 4 hit points per rank every time you cast a Monk spell on an ally (including yourself). As an example, the Monk skill Orison of Healing heals for somewhere between ?? and ?? health, linked to the Monk’s attribute of Healing Prayers. Any character who is a member of the Monk profession can use that skill and will have access to the Healing Prayers attribute, so any Monk character could have a Healing Prayers of 12 and heal for ?? health. However, a primary Monk will also have Divine Favor and would add an additional 0 to 48 health to the Orison of Healing when casting that spell. If they had Divine Favor of 5 they would cast an Orison of Healing that would heal ??+20 health. Raise Divine Favor to 6 and they will heal for ??+24. This is true even of spells that are not heals, such as the Monk enchantment spell Holy Wrath, which is linked to Smiting Prayers. That skill is a buff which causes anyone who hurts you to take 25% to 67% (depending on attribute) of that damage in return. If a primary Monk with a Divine Favor of 5 were to cast that on an ally they would heal that ally for 20 health in addition to giving the benefit of Holy Wrath. Since it only works with Monk skills it doesn't do much for other professions. Divine Favor also has several skills linked to it. Some of these skills are extremely powerful, such as Divine Boon that works similarly to the attribute and stacks with the attribute bonus, Divine Spirit which reduces the cost of all Monk skills, and Divine Healing (sensing a pattern here?) which is an extremely powerful party-wide heal that you cannot cast very frequently. To use the FPS analogy, Divine Favor gives you a bonus whenever you use a health boost item.

Necromancer – Soul Reaping: This one is a little hard to explain but once you see it in action you will be both impressed and awed. What it does is to give you energy every time something dies nearby. Anything. That includes monsters, pets, minions, members of the other team(s), or even members of your own party; it does not matter what dies, you still get energy when that death occurs. For every rank of Soul Reaping you will gain 1 energy when a creature dies. If you have Soul Reaping of 5 you'll get 5 energy every time something dies. You can see that because a primary Necromancer is going to have somewhere around 30 energy you do not need all that much Soul Reaping to make sure that you have a constant stream of energy as long as you can ensure a constant stream of death and destruction. The exact range that this attribute can reach to is unknown, however a good guide is that you have to be in the general vicinity (combat range) to get that energy boost. Soul Reaping is a great attribute for anyone who is going to want a lot of energy when they are in a fight and that is nearly everyone. To use the FPS analogy, Soul Reaping makes all your enemies drop extra supplies for you; you do not even need to go and pick them up, shoot someone and get your clip refilled. Soul Reaping does not have any skills linked to it at the time of writing.

Ranger – Expertise : An attribute that is deceptively simple. All it does is make your skills cost less to cast. However, it does not reduce the cost by all that much per rank. It reduces the cost of a skill by 5% per level of Expertise. So a skill that costs 100 energy (don't worry, none do) would cost 95 energy if you had Expertise of 1. With Expertise of 5 you will have a 25% reduction to the cost of your skills. You can, with enough ranks in Expertise, eventually cut the cost of your skills in half. Sounds great doesn't it? Who wouldn't like to have their skills cost less? Here is where it gets tricky because like Fast Casting, Expertise only affects certain skills. Unlike Fast Casting the range of skills it affects is pretty small. Specifically it only works with attack skills, preparation skills and trap skills. Attack skills are any skill that uses your normal weapon in an attack, although as a skill it does something more than just your standard attack, and only Rangers, Warriors and Monks have them. Monks do not have many and Warriors have very low cost (sometimes no cost but that is something to get into elsewhere) attacks. Even Rangers do not have all that many attack skills either, less than a third of all Ranger skills or about 20 out of 75 are attack skills. Preparations and traps are skills that only a Ranger can use. While it is a very good thing, especially for a primary Ranger who will have less energy than casters, it is a very narrow attribute. To use the FPS analogy, Expertise lets you use less of your clip. If someone else fires three bullets in a burst, you will fire the same amount but only use up two bullets from your clip; but only when you use the right weapon.

Warrior - Strength : Another attribute that is both active and passive. Strength works like Expertise in that it only affects attack skills. What it does is to give any attack skill armor penetration of 2% per rank of Strength. A character with a Strength of 5 will have attack skills with 10% armor penetration. What armor penetration does is to ignore a certain percent of your opponent's armor, making it so that they have less protection and thus you will do more damage to them. If someone has 50 points of armor and you have 10% armor penetration, they will have 10% less armor - 45 points worth. The formula that determines how much your armor reduces damage by is not currently available, however as a general guide adding 40 points of armour to your current armor will cut the damage you take by 50%. Your attack skills will be better with more Strength even if you cannot see exactly how much better. Strength is an attribute that does not have much appeal to anyone else beyond a Ranger but it is very good for a Warrior that wants to cause damage. And if you are playing a primary Warrior that is probably what you want to do. In addition to making those attack skills better, and the Warrior skill list is filled with attack skills, Strength is also linked to a variety of skills. Some of these are more attack skills like Power Attack which adds damage to your next attack, but others are just things that any Warrior is glad of like Sprint that lets you run faster for a brief time. To use the FPS analogy, Strength gives you armor piercing bullets.



That is a lot of information and that is only about 1/5th of all the attributes in the game. However, don't panic, most other attributes are no where near as complex as the primary-only attributes. And most other attributes are not a decisive reason to pick one profession over another. These standard attributes you will get whether you pick Elementalist/Necromancer or Necromancer/Elementalist, however only the former is getting Energy Storage. In fact, that primary attribute is just about the only difference that will matter in the longer run when making that choice because as casters Necromancers and Elementalists will start with the same general armor and energy (unless you have Energy Storage, of course, and that is the whole point) so the choice between them is really which primary attribute you want. Because of that, primary attributes are generally very powerful and very useful although they are not all equal. Standard attributes, on the other hand, do not have passive benefits, as a rule. Those that do are attributes that have linked skills and provide a minor benefit like Strength or Divine Favor. Let's take a quick look at the other attributes:

Elementalist - Air Magic, Earth Magic, Fire Magic, and Water Magic: As you can tell, they are all about an Elementalists magic spells. You will be able to find wands or staves linked to these attributes as you play, giving you a ranged weapon, but the real point is the skills they are linked to. We will not review all of them in detail as the Elementalist skill lines are pretty similar and are, obviously, based around those four elements.

Air skills are the best at dealing damage to a single target, having high damage skills that are quick and cheap to cast, the majority of those are based on lightning damage and lightning damage has a base armor penetration of 25%, as well as some good secondary effects such as Blindness.

Earth is the most defensive of the lines having several good enchantments (think buffs, skills that improve a character for a while) that you can cast on yourself or others, such as skills called Wards that provide a defensive bonus in a set area for a time. There are very serviceable damage dealing skills here, too.

Fire is the line where you will find the biggest and hardest hitting skills, skills with great AoE (Area of Effect) and DOT (Damage Over Time) effects, although the skill set is light on other types of skills.

Water has skills that deal less damage than the other lines but those skills tend to be snares (they work to slow or trap your target making them easier to hit) and Water also has the most Hexes (think debuffs, skills that debilitate the enemy for a time), making it good for indirect damage.

Mesmer - Domination, Illusion, and Inspiration: The Mesmer is a subtle class, as you might be able to tell from their attributes, one that works by twisting the rules of the game in their favor or by preventing others from doing what they want. You will be able to find wands or staves linked some of those attributes as you play, giving you a ranged weapon to use, but the real point is the skills they are linked to. Mesmer skill lines are large because although they have the same number of skills as other professions they have one less attribute, so there is a lot of variety in each one. The Mesmer is a caster, though, and they are mostly full of spells although most of those spells are not the sort of direct damage you will see elsewhere.

Domination is about hurting the enemy but as it is used by Mesmer it is not as direct as throwing damage at the enemy. Domination mostly involves spells that drain the opponent's energy and hexes that stop them from spell casting.

Illusion is about trickery and misdirection. It involves a lot of hexes, hexes that are especially damaging to melee opponents like Warriors, and also a selection of defensive spells.

Inspiration is the most self-centered of the Mesmer lines focusing on spells that increase the casters energy, or defensive skills like mantras that protect the caster.

Monk - Healing Prayers, Protection Prayers, and Smiting Prayers: You were expecting something holy from the religious profession and their attributes should not disappoint. You will be able to find wands and staves linked to Smiting Prayers, which will give you a weapon. Smiting and the other attributes are also linked to skills. Like Mesmers, Monks have only three standard attributes but of all the professions they have the most general skills, skills that are not linked to any attribute, so their skill lines are more comparable in size to a profession with four standard attributes rather than one with three.

Healing is a line for, well, healing. It has got spells and enchantments devoted to keeping yourself and the rest of your team alive.

Protection is for protecting. It has various spells and enchantments devoted to stopping attacks or decreasing their damage and it also has skills that are for negating various condition (think status ailments, skills that cause you to suffer from some effect for a limited time).

Smiting is similar to an Elementalist line. It has some damage dealing spells as well as enchantments and hexes designed to increase damage.

Necromancer - Blood Magic, Curses, and Death Magic: Necromancer is the profession that tries to make things miserable for the other side so it is not surprising that their attributes reflect their vicious nature. You will find wands and staves linked to some of those attributes giving you a ranged weapon. Like the Mesmer the Necromancer has only three general attributes, so they have very large and diverse skill lines.

Blood Magic is the self-centered Necromancer line. It has spells and hexes that will steal health from the target and give it to the caster, as well as enchantments that make other Necromancer skills better and skills that let you shift around health and energy to other members of your team.

Curses is a line of hexes, skills that are going to hurt your target in some way but won't be causing damage by themselves.

Death Magic is the line where you'll find the spells that will directly damage your opponent. Death is also the Necromancer's pet line as it is what you will be using to summon minions or monsters under your control from dead bodies.

Ranger - Beastmastery, Marksmanship, and Wilderness Survival: You can see the focus on nature in the attribute names, the Ranger is a hunter and a protector of the wilds. Marksmanship is what you will use for any bow you find as you play, giving you a powerful ranged weapon. Beastmastery is the Ranger's pet attribute, a skill lets you charm one animal at a time to adventure with you, and the Beastmastery attribute will make that animal do more damage when it attacks. The Ranger is a jack-of-all-trades profession and that is reflected in their skill lines.

Beastmastery is the pet line as it has skills that make your pet better, although it some defensive skills too.

Marksmanship is where you will find most of the attack skills a Ranger and these skills that use a bow are where you will find ways of causing damage or otherwise hurting your foe.

Wilderness Survival is where you will find skills that make your attacks better, adding poison to attacks for example, as well as defensive skills and trap skills. You will also find the Nature Rituals, powerful global enchantments that affect everyone on a map for a short time.

Warrior - Axe Mastery, Hammer Mastery, and Swordsmanship, Tactics: The Warrior is a master of melee combat and that is reflected in their attributes. Axe Mastery, Hammer Mastery, and Swordsmanship make you better with the various axes, hammers, and swords you will find while Tactics is needed to get the most out of your shields. Each of those attributes has a skill line to enable you to get the most impact when fighting. For the three weapons those lines are mostly attack skills but you can only use those skills when using the respective weapon. You cannot use a skill from the Sword line while using a Hammer or a Wand, for example.

Axe Mastery is the line for those who want to cause the most amount of damage in the shortest amount of time.

Hammer Mastery is a line for disabling your opponent with a number of conditions. Hammers cause the most damage of any weapon but are two handed, so you cannot use a shield, and they have a slower attack speed. The skills reflect a hammer warriors need for more protection.

Swordsmanship is the line for quick damage as the sword is the weapon that can attack the fastest.

Tactics is a defensive line without attack skills but it offers many defensive skills, usually stances,and several skills known as shouts that can help you out.



And there you have it. Attributes are what makes your character different both by changing things about your character and by changing things about their skills. What professions you have chosen will determine your attributes but beyond that the only person who will determine what your attributes are is you. You can set them however you want and you should be using them to the best advantage by raising attributes for the skills you have and finding skills for the attributes you have been raising. While you do not have to have any ranks in an attribute to use a skill linked to it, in every case that skill will be better with more ranks in that skill and some skills even have a chance to fail unless you have a certain amount of that attribute. Because you are limited in just how much you can raise your attributes you will have to pick and choose which attributes you want to focus on. It is possible to have a few ranks in each of your attributes but you will be better off having a few that are much higher rather than a lot than are at low levels.

Effective use of your attributes will make for a character that is better at what you want to do and hopefully you now know enough to make wise choices about just what attributes you want. But, as always, do not be afraid to experiment. Refund points are there so that you can change your attributes later on if you decide to go with different skills or even if you have aimply made a mistake. You can redo your attributes however you like provided you keep finding refund points, so give it some thought but do not worry about making your attributes "perfect" or ending up with a "gimped" character.