Rate the Primary Attributes

^Title is pretty self explanitory.

Best to worst IMO (in terms of general usefulness, not linked skills)

Divine Favor - Extra healing: can't go wrong!
Soul Reaping - Excellent source of extra energy while in battle.
Expertise - Very useful for lots of expensive skills.
Energy Storage - More energy for those expensive spells.
Fast Casting - Great for those long casting ele and resurrection spells.
Critical Strikes - Not bad, not great. Works well with some R or W skills.
Leadership - Makes up for the 2 pip energy regeneration.
Spawning Power - Only ranger and necro secondaries can benefit from this primary, helps with protection spirits though.
Mysticisim - Health gain isn't that noticable, energy is just "meh".
Strength - Terrible . . . barely makes a difference in raw damage output.

That's just silly, though. When looking at the Primaries, you have to look at linked skills in order to judge them overall. Sure, some are terrific on their own, while others are pathetic. Generally the ones that are pathetic on their own have a ton of useful skills to make them worthwhile, while the ones that are great inherently, have very few skills, or at least very few useful ones.

The order you placed them in is pretty much how I'd judge them "on their own". Take a look at their linked skills, it's almost completely reveresed. Except Divine Favor, it's just plain good on both fronts. Oh yeah, Fast Casting I'd consider bad on both fronts. But that's just me.

Fast Casting can be useful, but it should be a simple higher chance of achieving half casting, that stacks with weapons, and don't give it diminishing returns, maybe.

dude theres no rating on them, sum primary may suck but skills under the primary can probly kik all other attris butt. peace

The best Primary Attribute would have to be Expertise due to how versatile it is. Secondary would be Soul Reaping, Energy on death=more energy to kill= more energy on death. Vise-versa for necro healers combined with rit spirits. Third is a tie between Mysticism and Critical Strikes for + energy for energy based killers

strength in itself sucks, but it does have a damn lot of useful skills for warrior.
divine favor is my favorite all-around though.

It also depends on whether you're looking at pve or pvp. In Pve, Soul reaping is much better for example, but in PvP Fast casting is much better than in Pve.

devine favor works for only 1 toon, MONK devine favor itself isnt that great only the popularity of the monk is

Here's my opinion, not considering the skills directly linked to the attributes even though that's something rare to happen.


Expertise - 10/10 - Allows Rangers to be Rangers, being an incredible energy management that doesn't even give you energy directly, and hey, you aren't even using a skill slot for that. Unfortunately, Ranger haters have to accept it's perfect, because it only does not affect skills you shouldn't be using anyway. And it synergizes with ALL ranger skills, affecting some skills from other professions comes as a bonus for me.

Critical Strikes - 9.7/10 - Works great as energy management and also is useful for damage, unfortunately, only as long as you're dealing criticals (ie: your target blocks a lot), no criticals and see you later Mrs. Energy, as Assassins usually require heavy energy usage.

Soul Reaping - 9.5/10 - Incredible energy management without using a single skill slot. Unfortunately, when there are no creatures dying, is a huge waste of atribute points.

Divine Favor - 9.3/10 - Completely sinergizes with every ally-targeted Monk spell. Unfortunately, Monks can use offensive spells and signets, which obviously do not profit from this attribute.

Energy Storage - 9/10 - Makes an Elementalist have an undeniable energy pool and allow Elementalists to survive with heavy Exhaustion. The problem is that it gives too much energy, and if you ever run low on energy, it will take a really long time to recover.

Fast Casting - 8.7/10 - Makes Mesmers virtually interruptible, and allows them to virtually interrupt anything. Doesn't synergize with Signets though.

Mysticism - 8.6/10 - Allows a Dervish to keep himself heavily enchanted in a way no other profession would be able to, unfortunately, if you are already at full energy, you won't benefit from it, except for the Health which will not save you from heavy degen or spikes, works really only as a health filler, but I think natural renegeration has already been created for that purpose. Dervishes energy pool is usually low for a 4-pip character.

Leadership - 8.5/10 - Paragons have 2 pips of energy regeneration, yet they can spam chants and shouts thanks to this attribute. Unfortunately, a lone Paragon is an energy-less Paragon.

Strength - 7/10 - Synergizes with attack skills only, and as a Warrior relies on attack skills, that's not bad. Maybe it would be better if it worked on attacks regardless or being used a skill or not. Unfortunately, it requires a high allocation in order to make a decent difference in the damage output.

Spawning Power - 6/10 - Only affects three types of skills: Nature Rituals, Binding Rituals and Animate Spells. The latter is not recommended because of the energy required. Ritualists have a lot of other skills besides Binding Rituals, don't you think?

Helllooo.. first of all you people are silly - when discussing the primaries you discuss the *bonus* primary is giving. NOT the linked skills OK? Comprehendo?

As second, the OP is silly. Mysticism on of the worse primaries? What are you smoking dude? It's one of the best. I have beaten the game with Dervish, and i would advise you to actually try Dervish before saying Mysticism is useless. Actually, you dont even have to play it, you just have to gain more experience in the game.

I've seen a lot of threads like these, but never the one where primaries were so messed up as in yours. DF on #1 spot? What? Have you ever heard of expertise? And Spawning Power is the worse, it only benefits 3-4 spirits. In practice, because RLord got nerfed no one uses those few spirits, Spawning power is totally useless except in PvE sometimes, and even then..

IMO it's this way



Expertise
Divine Favor
Soul Reaping
Fast Casting
Critical Strikes
Leadership
Mysticism
Spawning Power
Strength

LOL why is strength so crap...so unfair cuz i love my warrior lol! They should make it better.

Expertist: 10/10 Best overall primary attribute, hands down
Critical Strikes : 8/10 Damage AND energy boost
Mysticism : 7/10 Health AND energy boost
Leadership : 7/10 What other attribute could you use a 5 energy skill that does something and GAIN energy while you use it
Soul Reaping : 6/8 Really great attribute if you make the build right
Devine Favor : 6/8 I may get bashed for this but its really kinda sucks, WOO i get a little extra healing, sure over the corse of 2-3 healing spells it makes up for itself but not that great
Energy Storage : 5/8 Not that great but it finds a its home on Elementalist

Strength, Fast Casting, Spawning are just kinda boosts, nothing really GAINED worth mentioning except a little edge

actually, my minion master is a primary rit because spawning power applies to all creations, including minions. she finished cantha and I even forgot to upgrade her noob (Shing Jae Island) armour...

Strenght, as bad as is, is 10x better than Spawning.

If I have to judge an attribute, here's the main factors, given a score of 1 to 3 for simplicity's sake:

How good are the inherent gains of the attribute, and how big an investment is required for them to be good (a high score means good gains, and that a high investment isn't always necessary):
Expertise 3
Divine Favor 2
Soul Reaping 1
Fast Casting 2
Critical Strikes 3
Leadership 2
Mysticism 1
Spawning Power 1
Strength 0
Energy Storage 1

How good are the skills tied to the attribute, and how useful are they with a low investment:
Expertise 3
Divine Favor 1
Soul Reaping 1
Fast Casting 1
Critical Strikes 2
Leadership 1
Mysticism 2 (excellent skills, but high investment needed)
Spawning Power 2
Strength 1
Energy Storage 0

How important is the attribute to its profession - how well does the profession function without it (a high score means that the attribute is important and the profession generally performs poorly without it. The scores are given according to builds that portray the profession's general purpose - healing/prot monks, archer rangers, support paragons etc. Not things like solo-trappers and illusionary weapon mesmers):
Expertise 3
Divine Favor 3
Soul Reaping 1
Fast Casting 2
Critical Strikes 2
Leadership 2
Mysticism 3
Spawning Power 1
Strength 0
Energy Storage 1

If I had to...

Expertise
Divine Favor
Critical Strikes
Mysticism
Leadership
Fast Casting
Soul Reaping
Energy Storage
Spawning Power
Strength

A couple of them are weird (Soul Reaping has a much higher value in PvE or if you build specifically around it, Spawning Power is basically useless unless you're playing a specific character) but for a rough measurement that list works.

Peace,
-CxE

I havn't used every proffesion so my input is limited

Soul Reaping
Fast Casting
Energy Storage
Strength

I will not rate all, but for me Spawning Power are clearly the worst, I was really disappointed with that attribute, because ALL primary attributes MUST work well with all secondary professions in some way.

About Strength, I think you must test more the damage before say it's the worst, ok? Armor Penetration is not a joke, specially versus low armor professions.

I always rate Primary Attributes as useful they are combined with ALL others attributes in game. So, I don't see how Leadership is useful at all if you are not using shots/chants, or Spawning Power if you are not "Spawning".

Example of SUPER useful primary attributes (in my point of view) are: Expertise, Fast Casting, Soul Reaping, and Energy Storage. I am not really sure what is the best of the best; It's really difficult to decide because this game is "balanced", three of my four best (Expertise, Soul Reaping, and Energy Storage) are energy management, and that is VERY important in this game.

The best for me is a tie: Soul Reaping, and Energy Storage.

Strength at 9.. is like +1-2 damage while using a skill. RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing incredible.. i suggest YOU do your research.

Strength is definately the worst... There are a few useful skills, but there are a lot of plain aweful skills, and it's inherent effect is a joke.

the best would, without any doubt, be expertise, after that it gets a lil tougher, but divine favour, critical strikes and energy storage (ok, maybe not for the "bigger energybar" effect, but for the linked skills) are all very nice. at the bottom you have spawning power, which seems rather .... lame :P

Strenght is the worst definetly, its only use was really for runners but now nobody does that anymore. It needs a buff big time.

Btw, can anyone make this into a poll?

Care to explain how strength is bad? 1% armor penetration for each lvl...is gg

1% damage when you deal 9 damage, hmm 12 hits later "OH A +1 Damage!"

at that rate a monk could negate 384 swings with just devine favor of 10 (just the 32 healing)

i'm assuming you're trolling. but i'll pretend you aren't.
-it's base armor penetration, it doesn't stack with other base armor penetration (penetrating blow, etc.)
-the armor penetration affects base damage, and not +damage, eg. executionner's does ~30 base and +30 from the skill, the AP affects the ~30 base.
-use the calcs on the main site, you'll see how trashy it is.
-if rush and sprint weren't in there, 80% of warriors (who are worth a damn) woudl dump strength.

I don't think I can rate them. They're all useful in their unique ways.

Oh man, how could I forget spawning power affects minions? My main is a Rt/N for godsake.

Oh, and Servant of Kali: I've played Dervish, didn't find it that useful, but you've played the whole game through with a D so I'll take your word for it. The energy is good but the health just seems a little lacking.

Expertise
Divine Favor
Critical Strikes
Leadership
Soul Reaping
Mysticism
Fast Casting
Energy Storage
Spawning Power
Strength

Can fiddle around with the list a little depending on the situation, but Expertise stays at the top and Strength at the bottom, with DF remaining in a high position and ES somewhat low.

Seems like a coomon trend is emerging..Expertise and divine rate highly and poor old strength is toosed out like your common wammo

Ya, i mean the +1% armor penetration is really weak, and the skills are really pathetic too. A good indication of this is really how many efficient warriors there are in pvp right now...and the answer is not many.

I've drank far toomuch wine lol

Strength is fairly lame but without it threre would be no runners..no runners means having to level to 20 to get decent armor

Energy Storage is in no way energy management.

Soul Reaping
Expertise
----------
Divine Favour
Leadership
Fast Casting
Critical Strikes
Mysticism
----------
Energy Storage
Strength
Spawning Power


I kind of broke them down in three tiers, because I think there are bigger gaps between the tiers, the bottom tier being the attributes that are simply not worth the points unless you're using linked skills (or meeting the req on your shield, in case of strength).

Looking through the thread, I think I need to explain why I put SR as #1, because it seems nobody agrees with me. SR doesn't perform consistently, like most other attributes, but it's the most abusable one and the only attribute that ever got a nerf (mysticism in beta doesn't really count... because it was a beta), precisely because SR was abused. In other words, if you build to make SR perform consistently (i.e. spirit spam, minions), it blows anything else out of the water.

The best ones I think are Divine Favour, Soul Reaping, Leadership and Energy Storage.

Don't really see why expertise is liked so much as I've never had any use for it, but I suppose if you use a lot of high energy ranger skills its usefull.

I would agree that strength is not much good and niether is spawning power.

I admit I didn't think much of Soul Reaping when I was a newb but you realise how good it is when you get more exp.

I agree mostly, but I would change a few things. I would switch energy storage with fast casting, because to me the only reason I would take a mesmer primary is to get 16 points or w/e in an attribute, and not for fast casting. Energy Storage is much better, I mean would you rather have 90 energy or be able to cast something in 1 second rather than 2? (I know its situational but I am talking for majority of cases.)

But ya, the bottom three of my revised list look like that, except strenght is on the bottom and spawning power is next to last.

I don't mean to flame here, but do you even play GW? First it was "it's not a PvP game", now you don't see any use in Expertise? 5 energy skills being 2-3, 10 energy skills for 4, 25 energy skills costing 12-ish? Yeah, that's an attribute I'm avoiding for sure.

(Since people's sarcasm detectors tend to be faulty around here, the last line in the above paragraph was sarcastic.)

nah, if they improve strength u will see a bunch of casters complaining how the got choped in dust.

Only newb casters get owned by melee.

First of all, this does not simply translate to 1% more damage. There's a lot of problems with stacking, how damage bonuses work, and the biggest one: this only works with attack skills. How big a percentage of your warrior's attacks are actual skills? I bet it's probably not much more than 50%, especially in the beginning of a fight before you build up adrenaline. If this had been 1% more damage on any attack, it would have been good (possibly too good), but alas it is useless save for a select few builds who use the skills or Sentinel's armor.

I fail to see how you've never had use for possibly the best energy management tool in the game. Take a look at the chart on http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Expertise and see the immense reduction in energy cost that you get to most of your skills. Even a modest investment of 8 points means that you save roughly 30% energy on your ranger skills. This is not some conditional enchantment that you have to re-cast all the time, this is a permanent, non-removable gain. Add to that the large amount of useful skills tied to the attribute: Throw Dirt, Whirling Defense, Trapper's Speed and several others. There's a reason why almost every ranger build in existence runs with 10+ expertise.