Skills

Do skills improve with time? For example Charm Animal...does it get stronger as you level up? And the healing skills seem pretty feeble initially and take a while to recharge.

if you add points to it it will get better

you get points with levels to use but not simply leveling without using some of those 200 points

Your skills will only increase if you upgrade your attributes.
Every level you increase, you get 10 (I think) attribute points to distribute as you wish. For a ranger, if you want to increase your charm animal, you have to add points to your Beast Mastery (I think) attribute. When you purchase a skill, the number (casting time, damage amnt, healing amnt, etc.) affect by your attributes will be displayed as (#..#) the two #'s saying the lowest and highest number you will gain from upgrading your attributes.

5 points/level early on but they are revamping the distribution curve on the points so we will find out later what the final curve is

just to address the specific question, the "Charm animal" skill does not have any values in its description that scales with the attribute. the description of the beastmastery attribute leads me to believe that it is inherently tied to the amount of damage your pet can do, much like your weapons attribute is tied to how much damage you can do with that weapon -- if you have a lvl 4 sword attribute, you only do 50% of the damage listed on that sword for every swing.

another thing to consider is the level of the animal. in this particular case, assuming you charm the pet at its default level, it will get better over time without requiring you to invest in the beastmastery attribute. that pet will earn experience for itself and level on up to 20, much like any player would. as your increase in levels, it does increase its health and energy pool, and may also increase its attack power.

of course, pets are a special case. as everyone else said, skill effectiveness is mainly improved by raising the associated attribute level. however, your character level will also determine how much of that listed damage you will actually do. all of it is spelled out in ensign's game mechanics guide.

Really? I certainly hope so, but I'm curious as to the source of this information...

i believe it was an alpha but i cant remember which

Ah, The Nameless Alpha. My favorite source of rumors...

correct info below
which fits in with balancing nicely

still trying to find it btw

BUMP

i finally found it and the nameless shall be named along with the information


Freyas
Site Contributor
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Another change: with attribute points, when leveling up, you now get 5 per level from 1-10, 10 per level from 11-15, and 20 per level from 16-20. The way it used to be, you got 5 per level until 15, then 25 per level until 20. This makes it much nicer for level 11-15 characters, who can now afford to boost attributes more than once every 2-3 levels now!
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Freyas- Spirits of War

Do levels affect skills?
Yes, indeed. I refer to this: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...nics-id674.php
And more specifically:
Skill Damage

The vast majority of the time, you aren't just swinging away mindlessly with your weapon of choice, you're using skills to augment, replace, or just outright deal damage to your opponent. As a baseline, the amount of damage that you'll deal with a skill is listed in that skill's description - rounded to the nearest integer. But as we're beginning to see, attacks rarely deal their baseline damage - indeed, in the case of skills your character's level plays a role in how much damage you'll actually deal:

[Effective Damage] = [Skill Damage] × 2((3 × [Character Level] - 60) / 40)

Oh dear...I am afraid this game is going to be way beyond me. I went to Game Mechanics and it is all Greek to me. I guess I will just have to bumble along.
I am used to allocating skill points like you do in Diablo 2. This is way beyond that...and where do you find them to allocate them? I have a level 7 Ranger/Monk and I don't remember getting any skill points. If I am getting 5 per level where are they? Sorry to be such a noob.

You allocate attribute points, I think "H" is the attribute sheet. Just put points in whatever you feel is more important for your skills.

You don't have to worry about the math if you just want to play casually, the math is more for serious PvPers who want to optimize their characters.

go to the menu with
skills
customize ui
attributes

and click attributes which will show a list of arttibutes along with skill points and refund points

chek which attributes you wish to boost and allocate the points you have

if you wish to change it use a refund point to remove a level of the atribute and then reassign the points elsewhere

the refund points regenerate with leveling i think

it's actually relatively simple. Every level you automatically receive a number of attributes. You then pull up your attributes screen, choose the attribute you want to raise and choose how many points you want to raise it.

Most skills are tied to an attribute, so the higher your attribute is, the better that skill is. Some attributes effect other things such as Rangers expertise, Fast casting on ele and strength on a warrior.

Check out the New Player Center off of our main page and read the article on attributes. Spooky explains it rather well.