Attribute discussion

Alright, my work on profession overviews has bogged down due to my getting caught up not in what professions are but what they could be. I keep wanting to say "Aagh! [blank] should be doing this, but it's not, here's how to fix it". And one of the main culprits is the various attributes and attribute lines. Since one of the things we'll eventually like to have is some sort of attribute primer, I thought it might be beneficial to start a discussion about the attributes here. What are attributes doing, what could attributes be doing, and why?

Anyhow, I'll add more later but, to kick things off :

PRIMARY ONLY

Primary onlies get their own section because they’re that important. They’re one of the big reasons for profession selection. Of the six primary onlies the two I’d consider closest to “done” would be Energy Storage and Strenght which both provide interesting models for what a primary only should be. Of course, let’s decide what we want from a priamry only. First is the primary’s passive benefit. They each get one. We want something here that’s going to both a) fit the profession and b) actually be worth something in game. Next is the skill list (every primary only except SR has some) which is much harder to put into words. Skills obviously need to be good and balanced enough that people will consider using them but at the same time since you’ve limited the number of people who can use them you need to make sure they’re not too outstanding and therefore lmiting people to just the one choice of the profession/*, */profession choice.


Divine Favor : +3.2 hp healed on your target ally (ie somebody on your team) when you cast a Monk spell. Also linked to a bunch of mostly useless skills. DF is meh. Bland, unsexy skills combined with a narrow passive boost. It’s something you want desperately if you’re a healer – because it makes your healing a two attribute ability boosted by both - but can use as a dump stat for any other sort of Monk. It’s also rather restrictive in that it only applies to Monk skills. If it worked instead to be +hp whenever you cast a spell on an ally, that’s something different, letting your Monk branch out much more from their skill list, instead of relegating you to a one-profession build. Actually, I’d rather drop the +hp idea entirely and have DF be something more universal. The tripod that governs the cost analysis of any skill is energy cost, casting time, and recharge time. There are skills that affect all three but attributes only touch the first two. I say DF should be a percentile reduction in recharge times. The skills could also use work, but I’m at a loss as to just what you want here. You don’t want to create something like Strength, something that’s, if anything, too good, but you also want to have something that people will find interesing. To me, primary only skill lines should be very meta. They shoul be the skills that make your other skills better, the ones that plug interesting holes, but aren’t what you’ll be building around, so DF should be concentrating on making things like Divine Boon and Divine Spirit actually worthwhile.

Energy Storage: +3 maximum energy. Also a few extremely good skills. ES is one of the better primary attributes, as it’s long been. The passive bonus is extremely nice but it’s not one that requires you to max out ES in order to get anything out of it. It has a few extremely interesting and useful skills linked to it but nothing that means that anyone not a primary Elementalist doesn’t have a prayer of using the ele list right. I don’t like AoR being linked here because I don’t like self-healing being limited to primary onlies but it’s hard to see where else it could go. The other ES skills are just damn nice energy management, things that really fit with the idea and the implementation of ES. One thing I’d like to see is moving the Glyphs from unattributed to being tied to ES some way, probably by altering their duration (ie the time you can spend with one up before you use it. Something like 3...45 seconds) in order to flesh the line out a bit more.

Expertise: -5% energy cost when you use a preparation, attack skill, or trap. Also linked to a lot of nice Rangerly skils. It’s obvious Expertise has been molded around the Strength template but I think that’s a bit of a mistake. Unlike Strength and Warriors there’s more to the Ranger list that what it’s working for. It’s hard to see a primary Warrior without a weapon line but it’s not as hard to see a Ranger without Marksmanship. Expertise is really only best when synergized with that bow line and not as good with Beastmastery or even Survival. It converts bows into a two-attribute ability because of how it affects the balancing of a Ranger’s attack skill costs. Expertise is insanely good even as a passive only – I like Chuckles’s idea of frontloading so the progression isn’t linear but diminishes as you go, mostly to avoid what happens as you get past the 12 mark and hit higher ranks but also because 5% reduction is great – so you don’t need that broad a line. I’d rather see something like Energy Storage where a few, nice skills are tied to Expertise, rather than a full skill line.

Fast Casting: Somehow makes your casting faster (Anybody know how good it is exactly at the moment?). Also has the singular skill Mantra of Recovery. The passive benefit is nice, useful to anything you’re likely to do as a primary Mesmer, it’s just a matter of finding the balancing point. What this attribute really needs, though, is a few more skills, especially given the fact that Mesmers have both the ability to tolerate far more attributes in their builds than most other profession and they also have some of the largest skill lines. The Energy Storage model is what I’d like to see here. Nothing obscenely powerful, a few mantras, maybe something like Leech Signet. Then rename the attribute to something like Arcane Mastery rather than the flavorless Fast Casting.

Soul Reaping: +1 energy when something dies. Soul Reaping is, hands down, the worst primary only. Wonderful flavor, really fits the concept of a Necromancer but the implementation is flawed. Because the attribute is situational, it’s too prey to the different situations you can find yourself in. Its effects differ too much from mission to mission or from the Arena to Tombs or even from PvP to PvE. Even the passive benefit is less than perfect as it stands now. The main problem is that it’s too situationalI’d like something like +1.5 en per rank so that it can be of some use in PvP. But perhaps what’s really callled for is an overhaul of how exactly it works. Rather than flat energy, what if SR was a mini-Prodigy? Perhaps when something dies you get, say +4 energy regeneration for a number of seconds equal to your SR rank. The key difference being that multiple deaths don’t result in a massive influx of energy but merely in lengthening that duration a bit further. That’s 12 seconds of +4 at 12 or an extra +16 energy, so maybe the numbers need some tweaking.. Or, hell, maybe it could work to steal health every time you cast an offensive skill, making the sacrifices a nec has to work with much less a problem for a primary Necromancer. Either way, what the attribute really needs is some linked skills. Every other primary only has at least one lniked skill, SR has nothing, and it shows.

Strength: Armor penetration when you use an attack skill (+2%?). Also linked to a lot of skills. A nice passive bonus for a character that’s going to be using a lot of attack skills and a nicely rounded line of skills to pick from. The problem is what it does for someone not a primary Warrior. The Strength skills are often not just good but excellent. Not nifty things that help round out your character but things that will define what it is you’re doing. I want skills like Sprint, skills that are good unattributed but get only better when you pump them up rather than skills like Power Attack which are useless without high levels from a primary only.

WARRIOR (4)

Axe Mastery
Hammer Mastery
Swordsmanship
Tactics

RANGER (3)

Beastmastery
Marksmanship
Wilderness Survival

NECROMANCER (3)

Blood Magic
Curses
Death Magic

MONK (3)

Healing Prayers
Protection Prayers
Smiting Prayers

MESMER (3)

Domination Magic
Illusion Magic
Inspiration Magic

ELEMENTALIST (4)

Air Magic
Fire Magic
Earth Magic
Water Magic

The equation for Fast Casting is:

[cast time]*2^(-[attribute]/16)

It only affects the pre-effect part of the cast animation, not the aftereffect. Just about every spell in the game has an aftercast of .75 seconds, which Fast Cast won't help you with at all.

The attribute feels like it does a whole lot more than it actually does. It takes an attribute of 16 to get down to a halved casting speed, which makes that fairly unrealistic - but you can get a useful, 30% reduction in casting times at an attribute level of 8 - a natural 7 with a minor rune. Considering, again, that this doesn't affect the aftercast animation at all, it really isn't going to speed up your casting frequency much unless you're using skills with long cast times. It's decent, but unspectacular, something that's nice to have but hardly critical.

I'll be writing this into the next version of my Treatise, which I should have up by Monday. I have some more number crunching to do in the meantime.

Peace,
-CxE

Yeah, I know the equation, I'm just looking for an easy way of putting that into "You get [blank] per rank of this attribute".

Fast Casting is something that fluxtuates as to just how good it is. When it was first in, I hear tell that it was high nut, you just couldn't beat it (Or, to take a more skeptical view alphas were enamoured with the new toy and all flocked to it until it got rebalanced and more new toys were around to play with). Probably becaseu it influence the whole casting not just the activation stage. Just working with activation seems to make it good only for those caster duels where you need to get your spell off before the other guy. That's very useful to a Mesmer who's goign to rely on timing and interrupts, less useful to other casters so I don't really have a huge problem with it except for the fact that it's such a mystery to most people about exactly what it does. It's not as simple and easy to define as the other primary onlies. ES? You get 3 energy. Expertise? You knock soem energy off that bow skill. Fast Casting? Well, okay it makes you cast faster but here's what I mean by that blah blah blah.

You cast 4.4% faster per point in Fast Casting.


Expertise should use the same progression as Fast Casting, while I'm on the subject.


Peace,
-CxE

This is 1% now isn't it?

Strength isn't +% armor penetration, just %AP, i.e. it gives attacks a base armor peneration. So skills that say "this attack gives X% armor penetration (such as warrior's cunning) will override the passive strength bonus (assuming it is higher than the passive strength bonus, as the game just takes the highest one). Skills the give +% AP will be added on top of the strength penetration bonus.

And I'll agree with Charles that expertise needs to work the same way as FC. Marksmanship rangers may as well have an infinite amount of energy when they pump expertise over 12. It's impossible for them to actually run out of energy.

"Strength isn't +% armor penetration, just %AP, i.e. it gives attacks a base armor peneration. So skills that say "this attack gives X% armor penetration (such as warrior's cunning) will override the passive strength bonus (assuming it is higher than the passive strength bonus, as the game just takes the highest one). Skills the give +% AP will be added on top of the strength penetration bonus."

For that reason, Warrior's Cunning is unbelievable. You'll be hard pressed to find me not using that skill (24 seconds with 12 Strength or something like that?).


Saying Soul Reaping is the worst primary-only attribute, isn't bad at all. If the worst primary-only is getting 1-15 energy whenever something dies, I guess the attributes are doing nicely. If I wasn't using Interrupts or spells that needed Fast Casting on my Me/N, I would be N/Me in a heartbeat.

You say it's situational, I agree, too situational? no. It's a good attribute PvP, and a great attribute PvE.

I like the idea of making soul reaping give you energy regen instead of straight up energy. 4-6 regen sounds about right, and 1 second per rank in SR. That way the timer just resets when something dies, and it would not be overpowering in pve, but would give you near-constant high regen. In pvp you could get a good amount of regen even with just a few people dying. Sounds like a good way to smooth out the attribute without borking too much.

If you can go the +regen route, 4-6 pips for one second per level sounds about right. It keeps you from going nuts from death bombs in PvE, while letting you get the power up a bit in PvP.

Of course, it'll still suck in PvP. It's a fundamental problem - once people start dying, the battle has likely started to turn and a quick infusion of energy isn't going to change that. Sure, sometimes you'll have a battle where a couple people die on both sides and then Soul Reaping is decent, but that isn't very often. I'd much rather have my bonus up front in a reliable package I can plan around.

Peace,
-CxE

I'd say the only time you really NEED the extra energy is in those even battles. Like you said, it doesn't matter if its lopsided, your winning or losing already. But in an even battle, one a couple people go down you need that energy even more! It would make a necro/monk viable, because as people start dying its like you just got a shot of BiP. Nec/ele still wouldn't cut it, unless maybe if you stay with 10-15 energy spells. Another option to improve SR is to make it trigger over a larger range, the size of spell cast range or so.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Soul Reaping needs some skills or it's going to remain an also-ran. Having to spend all that AP to get 15 energy once the battle's already been decided just isn't going to cut it. Not when that's just enough to cast one Necro skill (Another way to go would be to rebalance all the nec skills to be a lot cheaper. I think they were originally balanced to take Soul Reaping into account. Necros could count on a lot of energy coming in so they didn't worry about it going out. Price something like Life Siphon at 10 or even 5 energy and Soul Reaping looks a lot better. It's still going to be insane in PvE, though and less than useful in PvP). Moving on...

Some more fuel for the fires, here's my thoughts on the problems and potential solutions to them for the Mesmer and Warrior attributes (If you'd like to see what I think of them as is, take a look at the Mesmer and Warrior profiles) :

MESMER

Mesmer has 66 skills spread across 3 skill lines. 67 across 4 if you include Fast Casting, that sounds a lot more resonable but Domination, Illusion, and Inspiration make up the bulk of that. To my mind, the ideal size of a skill line is around 15 skills. Given the average number of skills per profession is going to be around 75, that gives you 5 full skill lines per profession (You can play with the numbers a bit, too. One line gets 13, one line then gets 17. Or maybe you have 4 at 15 and the primary only at 10, leaving you 5 unattributed skills. Or 4 lines of about 17 skills with a primary line of 5 skills with 5 unattributed skill.). And those 15 skills give you enough skills to mix and match that you can develop a theme and create viables strategies within that line. It lets you create well-rounded lines with a variety of things to pick from because what you don't want are lines like the old Ranger's where you had a line for preps and a line for rituals and a line for animal calls requiring someone to dabble in a lot of lines to put something together. Rather, a well-rounded line allows someone to specialize within that line and igonre others *and* splash it to compliment some other line.

That said, Mesmers are meeting the requirement of having well-rounded lines, but they're doing it by only have 3 of them. That's not enough, that's too much diversity within each line, especially given the fact that Mesmers are a lot less likely to crank their attributes to the maximum. Unlike the aforementioned Ranger they don't need a 12 in Illusion to be effective. In fact, they mostly *don't* want to max so they can splash for something nifty. Why, then, do they have the fewest skill lines around? I'd like to see Fast Casting become a minor skill line along the Energy Storage model. Three or four really nice skills but nothing like a full fledged line. So, that means 70 or so skills left for everything else. I'm a fan of having a few general, unattributed skills lying around, so say 5 of those. That puts us around 65 skills which would work out to about the 20 odd skills for 3 lines we have now or 16~17 skills over 4 lines. And that's what Mesmer could use. 4 full skill lines. What I'd like to see is for Mesmer lines to become a bit more focused by having fewer skills per line, giving Mesmers more options so that splashing for each Mesmer line is less of an option while at the same time focusing those lines so that specializing in it becomes more of an option. Mesmers are always gong to have some attribute flexibility and that's a good thing but it shouldn't be as cut and dried as it is now. Therefore, 4 lines, each with a specific purpose is what I'd do.

There are 4 main things I see coming out of the Mesmer skill line : counters, disruption, defense, and damage. Damage is poor, though, and won't really flesh out a line. That doesn't fit with Mesmer, really, either, I don't want them to become a poor man's Elementalist with a line like Smiting Prayers. Defense is nice but it's not something to really build a line around. Look at how many people are keen on Tactics, a line that's purely defense isn't going to be a big draw. Disruption and counters are the opposite, they're too endemic to the Mesmer line meaning they're everywhere. Lines that focus on those would be lines with 30 or 40 skills.

So, let's get a bit creative and come up with something else. What about a line for anti-casters, a line for anti-Warrior/Ranger, a line for energy, and a line for meta-skills? Anti-caster and anti-melee/ranged are pretty common roles for a Mesmer and they're already well represented by Domination and Illusion respectively, they'd just need to be pared down a bit and shuffled around to be meaner and leaner. So is energy manipulation, although it's more spread around. Meta skills are those skills like Arcane Echo or Thievery that let a Mesmer bend the normal rules of the game, they'd need some tweaking to be linked effectively, but it would make for an interesting skill line, I think, but one that because of its utility wouldn't suffer from the Tactics problem.

So, Domination will get subtly shifted by concentrating on anti-caster. Illusion will get subtly shifted by concentrating on anti-melee. We'll revamp Inspiration to be the line that deals with eneryg, manipulating it, gaining it, stealing it, by moving any skill from those first two lines who's primary purpose is to gain or deny energy to Inspiration and cutting away some skills that would work better elsewhere - this might call for a name change to keep the flavor, call it Ether Mastery or Ethereal Magic or Insidious Magic. And then, I'd create a brand new skill line, call it Manipulation Magic, and toss in all the Arcane Echo, Aracne Mimicry, Mantra of Signets, Inspired Enchantments/Hexes that let a Mesmer cast skills they couldn't otherwise or play around with recharge time and things. I might even toss Mantra of Recovery in such a line. As well, the counter spells like Shatter Enchantment go here as well. Also, include the various skills that lock out skills like Diversion or Blackout or Unnatural Signet (Assuming, of course, it ever gets fixed) here, too, so the line includes a bit of offensive capabilities.

Domination - Domination Magic is fine as is but what it really needs is some trimming down. It's got 23 skills linked to it, that's about 5 or 6 too many. So, I'd define Domination as the anti-caster line. It's the line you go to to take down anyone casting a spell. Most of the skills there are useful for this now but I'd toss some of the more marginal skills out and into other lines (which are as big as Domination already on their own, that's why I want a 4th line). Things like Arcane Thievery and Blackout and Chaos Storm fit the idea of punishing casters but not as much as things like Power Leak, so I'd move them out of here. Domination becomes a line for interrupts and punishing spell casting, skill locks like Diversion and energy denial like Energy Burn go elsewhere. Perhaps even things like the counters for hexes and enchantments here, although that leaves the line a little threadbare.

Illusion - Again, a large line with 20 skills. At least we're not back in the days when half those skills were elite but it needs some trimming of the fat. If Domination's going to be the anti-caster line, then Illusion is going to be anti-fighter. It's going to be the line to go to when you're interested in stopping those Warriors and Rangers who aren't going to worry much about energy denial or spell interrupts. So, skills here are going to punish or prevent people from attacking as well as inflict some armor ignoring damage against those well-armored tanks. That's the main role but we'll also stick any sort of hexes that don't belong elsewhere here, so people taking Illusion aren't useless when not facing a Warrior or Ranger. So, again, move the more marginal skills out. Arcane Conundrum will fit great with anti-caster Domination. The Echos are just odd, put them aside. Some mantras fit well here because someone going after Warriors or Rangers will need some better protection, so I'd move, say, Physical Resistance here. Illusion becomes a line of annoyance, snaring people, DOTing people, hexing people, while buffing up the caster so they can last longer.

Inspiration - As the line of self-healing and defense for a Mesmer Inspiration Magic suffers form the same problem that a lot of defensively oriented lines. It's nice and all but you don't want to specialize in it to the extent that you ignore other avenues. That healer on your team is going to be better than defending you than you'll ever be, so why bother? Fortunately, Mes are a lot more flexible with their AP than many other professions. They can afford to sink enough AP to get a 6 or an 8 here and that's all you'd need to make your Energy Tap or Power Drain effective. In changing around Inspiration, I'd focus less on defense and more on the energy aspect of things. Inspiration is the line you go to in order to play around with energy best. I'd move things like Energy Burn here, anything where the main point is to drain away energy, whether or not it's actually gained. While moving out ?. Inspiration becomes the line not just for energy gaining but for energy denial as well. It's where you go if you want to keep someone from acting by sapping away their energy. It also has the side benefit of including a bit of conditional damage with things like Chaos Storm and Energy Burn. That moves the line from being purely defensive to something else and I like that.


WARRIOR

Warrior is very close as far as skill lines go. The imbalances here have more to do with the inequalities betwen the various weapon types and the actual skills rather than anything structural. Tactics is a problem, though. It was originally concieved as a defensive skill line, a line of shouts and stances, and its suffered because of that.

It and Strength represent the largest skill lines in the Warrior list and I don't like that at all. The weapon lines are a bit thin. They have around 7 or 8 skills each that they're actually linked to. Even when you included those unattributed skills that require a certain weapon to use, like Disrupting Chop - which you might as well because to use such a skill you need an effective weapon of that type, to get an effective weapon you need to have high levels of the appropriate weapon attribute, even if the skill doesn't display any variables, then, raising that weapon attribute makes it better - they still have only around 11~13 skills. While Strength and Tactics have 18. Especially Strength is too large. It's a primary only line, that's 18 skills that non-primary Warriors are not going to be using effectively, reducing their options to 57 of the Warrior's 75 skills (some skills like Sprint are an exception, sure, but a seconary Warrior isn't getting the most out of that skill, no matter how good.). Considering the fact that playing as a Warrior also involves picking up a weapon, that's further restricting a character to a narrow range of skills out of all the skills they can be taking. Sword skills hold no interest for a Hamemr Warrior and never will, they might as well not exist. I'm not even going to get into the percentages of elite skills which further limits the options in each line but the weapon lines are narrow.

Tactics and Strength could stand to lose a few skills each which could be turned into weapon attribute skills. Dwarven Battle Stance, for example, requires a hammer. Why's that in Strength and not in Hammers? I don't see a good reason why not except to keep Strength as a hugely bloated line. Strength, to me, should be a line that's of good benefit to a primary Warrior but not exceptional. The juiciest skills should be elsewhere. So, I'd redefine Strength to be more of a defensive line. It's a line for primary Warriors and one of the main advantages of going primary Warrior is the armor, the abilitiy to tank. So, Strength should be a line that helps them out. It's a line more for Dolyak Signet and Endure Pain not so much for Warrior's Cunning and Power Attack. Tactics needs work, too, and a lot of skills moved out of Strength can find a new home there while at the same time several skills from Tactics can be moved to individual weapon lines to fill those out.

Axe Mastery - Axes are the most disruptive weapon. So, they get skills that are going to increase their disruption. "Fear Me!" works as energy denial, it can go here, for example.

Hammer Mastery - The big problem with hammers is the swing rate. They're slower than the other weapons and that hurts when they deal with the general adrenal skills. It takes them longer for adrenal skills from Tactics or Strength or Un-Linked to recharge. So, perhaps keep Hammer adrenal hits the same but allow hammers to gain a bit more adrenal charge per each hit, enough so that a hammer war and an axe war swinging away will charge, say, Defy Pain in the same amount of time, not the same amount of hits. Beyond that, Hammers are kings of interuption. They get skills that help them interrupt, like Dwarven Battle Stance.

Swordsmanship - Damage. Swords are the big damage dealers, skills that pump up that DPS go here. Along with things like Riposte.

Tactics - Here's where I start making big changes. Tactics as a defensive line is forgetable. So, I'd convert Tactics from a defensive line to a line with some defense that does something else. If Strength represents the brute force aspect of a Warrior, then Tactics can represent the sly and sneaky aspects of a trained combatant. Put it this way, Strength is the line of Hercules, Tactics the line of Ulysses, they're both Warriors, but they're going to beat you in a different way. A recognition that it takes more than just whacking someone with a weapon to get ahead that you need to have feints and guile and all the rest. Part of that is protecting yourself, yes, but part of it is harming your opponent. After all, they can't hurt you when they're clutching their ankle in pain because you just shattered it. That gives Tactics an "other". It's not going to be a line for sheer damage, you'll look to the weapon lines for that, but it does become a line to go to for disruption, for a shifty trick that's going to give you an edge. So, skills that don't deal damage outright but will otherwise hurt your opponent belong here. The Skull Cracks and Disrupting Blows of the Warrior's list belong here. And some stances can be shuffled off to other lines where they can perhaps be more desirable when someone doesn't have to splash into another line in order to make them useful.

I'm still not real happy with the way the ranger skill tree is laid out personally even though they're rather powerful right now.

There are skills in mark that should be in expertise and similar problems in other attributes. Everything just feels like it was shotgunned into the ranger and right now inside of PvP I see no reason not to make Exp and Mark your top two attributes with your third coming from your secondary profession and nothing every below 12 in expertise.

If I run a 12 or higher in expertise with read the wind I seem to be able to launch a ton of skills and never ever run out of energy.

There needs to be a ton more work put into making survival and beast mastery better.

I would have rather had that energy a couple seconds before they died. Energy up front I can use to help decide which way the battle turns. Energy once the battle has turned? Too little, too late.

Peace,
-CxE

Huh. I thought it was less. It seemed to be when I was playing a nec/war, anyway, but that was back around the WPE, so it could well have changed since then. Radar range sounds about right. But the underlying flaws are still there.

Right. I'm not suggesting something on the order of Strength's or even Divine Flavor's line, but a good 5~8 skills tied to Soul Reaping. Tie it to Rend Enchantments, making it decrease the health hit on a Monk enchantmental removal, or Blood Is Power (that's if you actually flip the health hit around or make it sensible somehow, you don't want to punish people for having high SR the way they are for high Blood. That reminds me, heh, you'll probably see the Nec out of me next...) or Verata's Aura or things like that. Simple utility skills that are either going to be so niche that they only benefit a primary Necro - like Aura of Restoration - or that progress in such a manner that they can be taken with a SR 0 - the Sprint model, in so many words.

Probably why I didn't do it like that. Basically, I slim down Illusions and Dominations, tweak Inspiration, and create a new line with the left-overs, and leave the rest to Fast Casting and unattributed.

Domination - anti-caster. The line of interrupts, spells, and hexes that either prevent someone from spell casting or punish them for casting. Exactly what it is now except you lose the oddities like Blackout and those skills on the margins like Shatter Enchantment.

Illusion - anti-melee. The line of DOT, conditionaal, armor-ignoring damage, and the skills that keep someone snared, or otherwise from attacking as well as those that let you survive in close combat. Much like what it is now but you dump the weird things like Arcane Echo and U-Sig and gain a few mantras.

Inspiration - energy manipulation. The line of the energy gaining, energy draining, energy sapping skills. It's overhauled to be something other than what it is now but it's not all that different. It keeps things like Ether Feast, Energy Tap and most of its mantras but it gains some things like Energy Burn in exchange for giving up things like Inspired Enchantments.

*Manipulation* - rule breaking and countering. The line of the skill copies, skill locks, and enchantment/hex removal. It picks up the things that don't quite fit with the core role of the other lines and wraps them up in a line people can take solely to get the Echo or Inspired/Manipulated Enchantment but can also use to put together a decent build by iteself. It's not going to blow anyone away with damage or energy denial by itself but it's going to be a pain to deal with proactive and reactive counters like Diversion, Blackout, and Shatter Hex.

Well, there will always be FOTM buids. Especially when there's a big change to the way things work. People flock to novelty. But how is that any different that the IW builds that popped up a month or two ago? It happens and it's not like characters couldn't use any of the skills I'd put together under inspiration at the same time anyway, I'm not tweaking any skills (Now, Unnatural Signet, Arcane Echo and the like, I'll tweak those plenty, given the chance, but most skills dealing with energy are okay) just the associated attributes. Power Leak stays under Domination becaues it's more about shutting down a caster as an interrupt, although you can make a case either way. Power Drain stays with Inspiratoin because it's more a conditional version of Energy Tap which is the protoypical Inspiration skills. The others I'd move over, like Energy Burn or Signet of Weariness, aren't that efficient, they're just different ways of doing what skills in Inspiration already do. Energy Burn is just an Ether Feast that deals damage instead of heals you, and so on. The drastic change is to limit the number of skills per line, the shuffling between Domination, Illusion, and Inspiration are small tweaks to streamline things and provide a few more options and possibilities than there are now. The goal is to get a solid conceptual base for 4 lines for a Mesmer and then to pick and chose until they're filled up and the lines are already pretty close to that, it's mostly a matter of what do you take from each line and what do you do with it once it's gone.

The fundamental problem with Tactics, and to a lesser extent Survival, is that they're clearly third stringers. Every Warrior needs his weapon attribute pumped up significantly, and Strength, like a good primary-only, is something that every Warrior wants. Tactics is competing for the 3rd attribute slot with every other attribute in the game, and that just isn't a battle it's going to win - so Tactics, realistically, is a fourth attribute on a four attribute build.

So the real goal here is to give Tactics enough to convince a Warrior to switch from, say, 11/10/10 to 10/10/9/7, to splash in a couple of key skills.

I don't think that Tactics has any thematic problems. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it being a defensive attribute. But it does have a couple of glaring problems:

1) It overlaps with Strength too much. Strength has to be better head to head - it is a primary only, after all - but with the amount of overlap the two have there's little reason to take both.

2) Most of the skills just plain suck for a Warrior. Seriously, the attribute is full of stances that last maybe 10 seconds with 60 second cooldowns, and end if you attack or use a skill. What Warrior in his right mind is going to bother with something like that? A skill line is only as good as its skills, and Tactics skills, frankly, stink.

What Tactics needs to distinguish itself from Strength, to have its own set of effects that Warriors would want - and they need to be priced aggressively. Otherwise we're just going to keep passing the line up.


Why aren't there more secondary Warriors? Mostly because it requires you to divide yourself up too much. Maybe you could go Primary Only / Primary Line / Hammers if you wanted to be pretty focused, but Hammers stink so that isn't really an option. Swords or Axes? Then you're looking at Primary Only / Skill / Weapon / Tactics. Maybe you can drop Tactics if you want to just run around with a weapon and a focus, but is running into melee range in your pajamas really what you want to do?

Then you just have the properties of Warriors that you give up. Heavy armor is what lets you wade into the middle of the enemy and not get flattened in a few seconds - I won't give it up lightly. Then you have the way that melee weapon damage scales. Remember that it is exponential to 12, so you do lose a ton of potential if you just stop at level 10. Having to put a 12 in your secondary attribute is a *huge* downside to any potential secondary class, seriously cutting into your options.


Tactics just needs to find a place. There are people who want it - Monks who want defensive buffs, Mesmer/Warriors who want the skills for IW - but you need to make the line attractive enough to get people to divide up their attributes more. Right now, that just isn't happening.

Peace,
-CxE

A few comments on Divine Favor.

It's true that DF is not as generic and as useful as other primary attributes, but it's currently the only reason one should go primary monk for a healer. Without a healing oriented DF, being a primary monk would be pointless.

It would be far better to pick primary elementalist for the larger energy pool + energy management skills, or primary mesmer for the fast casting ability, or even primary necro for the energy influx. Moreover as a non primary monk, you somewhat remove the big target circle painted on your forehead.

The whole monk profession is currently restricted to a healing job. Few monks are not healing oriented. IMO, the real issue with DF is that it's symptomatic of the whole profession narrowness.

Well, I'd rather it had a legitimate shot at being that 3rd attribute - in other words, a pure Warrior build just like a pure DF/Healing/Protection Monk should be viable - but, yeah, I'd settle for it making it as 4th. Warriors generally only use 3 attributes anyway, there should be more diversity in creating your character than that, and creating sensible opportunities for a 4 attribute Warrior isn't a bad way at all.

Except for the fact that defensive attributes are a problem in and of themselves. GW is a team game, defense can be handled by other characters. Taking a line like Tactics which is purely defensive means you're giving up on other, broader lines. A War/Nec can use Blood and gain the self-healing and defense along with something else. A War/Mon can take Protection or Healing and not only be able to defend themselves but others. A War/Ele can take Earth and get nukes to go along with their buffs. And so on. All Tactics gives you is that defense and little else. Why select that when there are broader and more versitile lines available?

And, yes, that's even in a world where stances are actually playable as opposed to their current state of being to costly for too little. 5 or 10 energy is huge to a Warrior and while you don't want characters to be completely protected indefinitily being protected for, say, 10 seconds out of 60, of the time isn't enough to get people to sign up. End on skill is an evil mechanism, too, and one that should go the way of the dodo because it means that while you're defending yourself you can't do much of anything else. Stances cancel each other, what's the big harm in letting someone use Poewr Attack or Orison or Armor of Earth while they're using a stance?

I'd argue the opposite. DF is the reason why no one plays a non-primary Monk as a healer. It turns healing into a two-attribute ability, just like a Warrior swingng a weapon or a Ranger plucking a bow. The difference being that healing is not all a Monk can and should do, while using a bow or a weapon are fundamental to a Ranger or Warrior (And event then the two-attribute dynamic is hurtful. We've discussed the Warrior's problems with Tactics and that's largely due to the fact that it needs to be important past Strength and Weapon. But Rangers are Primary/Weapon - Expertise and Marksmanship - and something else, too. Survival and Beastmastery are as much of also-rans as Tactics is). DF doesn't hold anything to captivate a Smiter or someone worried about pre-emptive defense such as with a Protection Monks defensive buffs. But it also means that everyone but a primary Monk just isn't as efficient at healing.

And it's really efficiency that matters when you're healing. You're trying to outrace damage so you can apply the same lessons and calculations that apply to damage to healing. Ensign does it on his DPS table, for one. A Monk with DF is just like a Warrior or Ranger with a damage buff. They get both higher burst healing and more healing over the long run for the same energy cost. No */Monk can keep up with them. They lose both the sprint and the marathon. The advantage of a Mesmer/Monk is Fast Casting but that's not that important on the relatively fast Monk spells. And the advantage of Elmos and Necmos is more energy to cast longer, but energy management skills like Blood is Power fairly well neutralize that advantage.

It's not just that DF restricts Monks to healing. It's that it also restricts everyone else from doing so, too.

I guess this gets down to how your view the professions, though. Whether you see a profession as just a skill list to be mixed and matched or whether each profession is something unique and distinct. I tend towards the first view. There are six professions but there are 30 classes. Mon/Mes and Mes/Mon are as distinct as Mon/Mes and Mon/Ele. A primary profession is less important to your character than that the combination of secondary and primary. It gives you a spin and flavor but what's more important is the skills you use and how you put them together. It's not being a primary Monk that's important to being a healer. It's being a Monk, period. It's just a matter of style and how your combination can be effective. Primary benefits should be structured to give a twist to the normal rules giving each class a different look and feel but were they to be removed the character would still be able to function because the primary is just subtly influencing things, not driving them.

The later view holds that Mon/Mes is not as different from Mon/Ele as it is from Mes/Mon. It's the primary profession that's the most important factor to your character - there aren't 30 classes there are 5 interesting ways of going about playing the 6 classes. Each profession has a distinct role that's modified by the secondary that's coupled with it but it's that primary's role that's going to remain dominant no matter what you do. If you're not a primary Monk you don't have much buisness being a healer, healing is the domain of the primary Monk and little else. Primary benefits are set up to make sure each profession remains separate and distinct, if you removed them a character would simply be a homogenous collection of skills no different from any other character.

Call it nature versus nuture. Is what your character is determined on that character creation screen, leaving just the interpretation up to you, or through the skills and AP you acquire as you adventure? I much prefer the ability to make my own character as I go asthe world where everyone does so is much more interestting, diverse, and dynamic. I want to be able to, if I want, decide oen day to respec my Monk/Warrior froma healing machine to a smiting dervish, for example, in the world where the Flavor of the Month is not the latest spin on bulding a better healer but is that Monks are suddenly the melee option of choice.

I simply can't keep up with your typing speed and eloquence, so please forgive this short reply.

The real issue with DF is that it's symptomatic of the whole profession narrowness.

Basically barring a couple of good skills, smitting cannot compare with similar damage attributes. Divine is mostly healing oriented and protection only has handful of interesting skills. So far 80% of monk related characters are healers. Simply because as it stands protection/smitting are not exciting and healing is safer and more reliable.

DF is not the core of this problem. IMO the real problem is that it's quite hard to play a strong non-healing monk and it's impossible to play a non-monk healer. Deliberately or not, this profession has been limited to do the healing duty. If you change DF for something more generic, you must change a lot of monk skills first.

Protection monks look good no matter what thype of game you're playing. No matter how good a healer is, he can't keep up with a heavy focus fire. Protection monks can do that with relative ease, and they're a lot more energy efficient going about it.

Blackace beat me to it (bastard). Protection Monks with Divine Favor are excellent. Protection skills are solid and with Divine Favor they heal, too - ultimately preventing a whole lot more damage than a Healing skill will restore. Mend Condition heals only 10 less than an Orison and knocks off a condition - Reversal of Fortune can hand out even bigger life swings and it casts absurdly fast (.25 seconds). Shielding Hands is a Healing Hands that can't return life but triggers on every type of damage, and you have Shield of Imbalance just sitting there waiting to be abused.

It isn't as straightforward as the Word/Orison/Breeze Monk, but it's solid.

Divine Favor is an incredibly boring attribute, typecasting all Monks as healers - if you don't want to be healing or protecting or otherwise playing defense, use the other primary.

I'm still in favor of giving the Monk a watered down version of Expertise (progression like Fast Casting) and changing Expertise into something that reduces cooldowns, but it might be a bit late for that at this point.

Peace,
-CxE

Agreed ... any build I try and make for a healer has usually 1 maintainable enhancement, 1-2 timed damage mitigating enhancements and healing ...

Can't imagine why anyone would want to make a pure healing prayers monk

What maintainable enchantment do you run on a healer? I don't think any of them are worth the pip.

The pure healing prayers Monks are holdovers from the end of last year, when the Divine/Healing Monk, and the ElMo healer were in vogue. Straight Monks took advantage of deep Healing and Divine Favor attributes to flesh out their skill lines quickly and efficiently, without need to dip into other attributes. The ElMo was powered by new, abusive energy gain enchantments, Ether Prodigy and Ether Renewal, which effectively gave them infinite energy. Combined with 10 energy Heal Others and Infuse Health, they didn't miss Divine Favor too much.

Things have changed a lot since then. Divine Boon and Divine Intervention, old staples of the primary Monk, got nerfed into oblivion. Healing Hands, your one stop solution to focus fire, got hit with the elite tag and has been relegated to the trash heap. For the Elmo, the loss of Ether Prodigy and Ether Renewal as powerful, long term energy solutions forced them to try to make up for inefficiency with energy capacity, a battle they eventually lost.

Simply put, while a Healing Monk during the WPE could take Word of Healing, Orison of Healing, Healing Breeze, Healing Hands, Divine Intervention, and Divine Boon - 6 skills - before even having to think about where else to go. Now, nothing is obvious beyond the Word / Orison / Breeze trio, which earned their spot via synergy with Divine Favor, not raw power. Divine Favor is a shell with only one unimpressive skill worth considering: Signet of Devotion. New Monks have to spread out to keep their power up, and that's why you see the three attribute builds creeping their way in - Shielding Hands, Mend Condition, and the like are now important pieces of the Monk puzzle. Monk players are generally the slowest to react to change - I know many who brag about their immunity to changes and flavor of the month fads - but they come around eventually. Time and competition fix everything.

Peace,
-CxE

Opposing players have also started to learn how to effectively deal with a healer. The sorts of traps and counters to prevent raw healing or overwhelm it are by now well known (For example, that pure Healing Monk is going down in flames if they get Power Blocked) forcing Monks to branch out a bit. It's a Red Queen race, just like a good metagame should be.

That said, Protection's long been overlooked by most (And I'll cop to playing a Prodigy/Renewal Elmo way back when but that's because I'm a sucker for the FOtM. I'm not interested in innovation but in refinement. I want to make something that works *better* rather than try to start from scratch. Wouldn't be caught dead in an Elmo now.) so it's nice to see that it's starting to get some attention. But my question is in why it's been overlooked. Is it that people just haven't clued into it or that there's some sort of bias due to existing notions about how the game works? That there's something structurally wrong with it, some problem with its skills? Or that DF nudges most people into Healing?

I'm starting to realize how much I haved missed in the Protection attribute. The skills you mentioned were on top my protection list but I just hadn't seen why they would be as good as healing. Timing, recent skill updates, meta game, anti focus. You got me into thinking quite a lot.

I really am the padawan here.

2/3 beta days a month. I'm not going to improve much. Oh well...

The reason I didn't turn on to protection earlier is that I didn't really understand the interactions between Protection and Divine Favor. It felt, for whatever reason, like Divine Favor supercharged Healing, but Protection just got a little bonus. The reality of the situation is that the difference between Orison of Healing and Reversal of Fortune is just the difference between those two skills - Divine Favor affects both equally. I know, it's obvious when I say it like that - hand me my duh award - but understanding that really frees you up to look at other skills. Orison of Healing is your standard for the Healing line, and really it isn't all that good - decent, neccessary, sure, but not particularly outstanding. Reversal of Fortune will generally heal just a little bit less than an Orison, and it can potentially stop even more - in addition to casting faster. Mends have a great amount of healing attached to them and knock out a condition. Shielding Hands is solid.

What do you have to give up to get these? Very little, actually. Compare your standard, 12/12 Divine/Healing (13/14 with minor runes and a hat) monk to an 11/10/10 (12/12/11 with runes and hat) three liner, when casting an Orison:

2 Line Monk: 75.73 (14 Orison) + 41.6 (13 Divine Favor) = 117 Healing per Orison
3 Line Monk: 67.2 (12 Orison) + 38.4 (12 Divine Favor) = 106 Healing per Orison

So by giving yourself access to solid protection spells like RoF, Mend, and Shielding Hands, you cost yourself just 9.4% of your raw healing effectiveness from Orison. Is that a good trade? I certainly think so, as the higher quality skills you get access to more than make up the difference.

Peace,
-CxE

I wasn't hiding Blackace, I was just wondering when you were all going to catch up to me.

I'm happy to see protection getting its props in some manner. There really isn't any reason to sleep on it, and Shielding Hands is solid. Anyone who fought a Dolyak Rider should have realized that. With Healing Hands essentially out of the picture, it should be a no brainer. And if HH wasn't elite, you'd just bring 'em both, because they're both great spells.

That's a solid core of six skills I've been running the last 2 BWEs, with just enough flexibility for whatever situation you're going to face. Lots of Mesmers? Bring Remove Hex. Have good energy management? Bring Healing Seed (if you can find it.) Or find an attributeless skill from your secondary profession to throw in as well.

That's going to be the real trick, finding a secondary profession that adds something to the monk.

I myself discovered last BWE that my maturing MonkMes needed some attributes in Protection, despite my tendency to go more for the Healing Line. (I obviously have not had the time or the will to devote as much thought to the subject as some have, but I had still noticed the need) I must say this conversation has persuaded me to try something a little different with him, and I'll be at least bumping up the Protection somewhat, and taking a couple more of those skills with me.

I think the maintainable enh that work are very situational as a healer but some of them can work very well ....

But ... for Maintainable enh... this is what I think works.

Life Bond (This worked better on an El/Mo that was often not targeted in the same way as most pure monks - biggest issue is that it only reduces physical damage)
Essence Bond I think will work for any Monk and is an effective skill
Others:
Life Barrier (this is used by support chars not the primary monks)
Vital blessing (again better not used by the primary healers though)

Personally, I still think an El/Mo may work ... but the skills used are not those that I would consider for a primary monk, but the tactics of the El/Mo differ from those of the Mo Primary. I tested one of these out and I found the biggest strength was being ignored as a "caster" that wasn't doing damage. I often used infuse health to distribute large chunks of health to team mates and would follow this up with heal area if I needed health quickly or needed to infuse someone else. I think if you can be ignored (positioned well) then things like life Bond can be used very effectively.

I like Mesmer/Monk and Necro/Monk support characters, certainly. Your attributes are amicible to being spread around, so you just play like a pure Necro or Mesmer support/hate character but you can toss up Reversal of Fortune or Shielding Hands - maybe even Shield of Imbalance - in a pinch. Protection is well suited for emergency duty, and a ~10 attribute is more than you need to make use of Protection skills.

It's a bit trickier on a pure Monk when you're trying to heal, though. Healing and Divine Favor are entirely about working together to make your healing absurdly energy and time efficient, and dividing up your attributes starts to seriously cut into that. Dropping down to 12/12 even feels like I'm pushing it at times. You want to add in a bit of Protection so you have to get that up to a reasonable level, say, 9-10. That leaves you, at best, with a level 6 attribute to play with on your secondary.

In addition Healing builds are incredibly demanding of skill bar space. You're starting with Word, Orison, Breeze, for core heals, and probably grabbing Reversal of Fortune and Shielding Hands as well. Then you have all the situationsals, like Signet of Devotion for siege battles, Mend Condition, Healing Seed, Guardian, Remove Hex. Plus we aren't even running a Res yet. Even when you start whittling it down to just the core stuff that you need you're hard pressed to find room for more than 1-2 skills from a secondary profession.

Piling on top of that, Monks are a class that are incredibly energy hungry without any good management options - hence the popularity of Blood is Power. Good teams are throwing damage at you fast enough that you're just trying to keep up with 5 energy heals and preventative measures, and even though you're a lot more efficient you're trying to counter the output of 2-3 enemies on your own and that breaks you eventually.

*Plus* your opponents usually gun for you from the start, meaning that you get to be doing all of this while being a consistent focus fire target.


So what you have to work with for your secondary is no more than a level 6 attribute, 1-2 skill slots, very little energy, and even less time. What do you put there?

A few options:

Warrior: Sprint, Deflect Arrows
Ranger: Serpent's Quickness, Storm Chaser, Charm Animal
Mesmer: Power Drain, Inspired Hex
Elementalist: Glyph of Lesser Energy, Armor of Earth, Wards

I'm really unimpressed with the Mesmer options right now. Inspiration is nice and all but I just don't want to devote the attribute points to it. Elementalist skills devour energy and have long casting times, which keep them from being too effective - and you have very little to Glyph.

Storm Chaser is potentially nice still as a speed buff you can pump, but at 10 energy I'm hesitant to take it. Serpent's Quickness is also tempting but the 50% health drawback is pretty harsh when you're a character who's getting focused frequently.

I think that right now Monk/Warrior is the best for the pure healer. Sprint is still good for 8 seconds to create some separation from any Warriors on you, and Deflect Arrows is excellent in the current, Ranger-dominated metagame. You also get access to a shield, which is outstanding when you're getting focused - remember that equipping a focus doesn't matter in the slightest until you need the energy it provides, until then you're better off with a shield.

In the long run, none of these seem too appealing. You're really just after a narrow subset of skills to fill in your bar, and there aren't any secondary attributes that just jump out as lines that are going to give you the kinds of effects that you want - the two front runners right now are Tactics and Survival, two of the least coherent attributes in the game. Any thoughts about what works best as a healer's secondary? For such a straightforward problem it sure is hard to answer.

Peace,
-CxE

I really want to try out melandru's resilience, looks like a good defensive/energy regen option.

My favorite secondary for a monk is definately Mesmer for the Inspiration line. While you don't have as many options for defense, you do gain the great energy-management skills from the inspiration line which allow you to output a far larger amount of healing. Unfortunately, especially for inexperienced players, the more powerful of these skills, notably power drain and leech signet can be rather difficult to use effectively.

I do give a vote for elementalist secondary for the defensive capabilities of the Earth line. While you could use Warrior or Ranger secondary's for the stances, the problem with stances is that they give a short-term boost, and after it wears off, you have a long recharge time before you can use the stance again. Probably the most effective defensive skill that you could choose is Armor of Earth. This will prevent running away from the damage, but with a decent amount in the attribute, you can easily get nearly a 40 AL boost, which will halve the damage that you take from every attack. Those warriors doing 40 damage per hit will instead be doing 20, which is far more manageable- Healing Breeze will be able to neutralize one warrior at this point, and your orisons will be able to cancel out the damage dealt to you much more easily. Kinetic armor can be nice, as you'll generally be casting spells often enough to keep it active, but the downside is that it only helps against physical damage, meaning that any conjures or elemental weapons will still be hitting you for normal damage.

Necromancer can be an okay secondary, but more for odd builds than standard healing/protection setups. Using the blood line, you can choose skills to help out your self-healing, and if you're willing to use your elite slot on it, Offering of Blood can give you a nice boost of energy. However, I'd definately think twice about choosing a Necromancer as your secondary for a healer.

As for maintained enchantments, they are not very attractive for healers, as you'll generally be the focus of attacks instead of other members of your party, and the decreased energy regeneration really cuts into the healing you can do. Divine Boon can be useful in situations, but I find that it's too energy-hungry to be used most of the time. It's mostly a way to give you more bang-for-your-buck at the cost of extra energy- if you're in a setup where you need to give huge heals, and don't expect to have to maintain it for long, it might have it's uses. Most of the protective enchantments that are maintained are more useful for secondary monks- a warrior using adrenal skills and maintaining one or two Life Barriers can be very helpful to the team, as warriors don't tend to be picked on much, meaning the drawback of ending when you're under 1/2 life isn't much of an issue, and reducing the damage on your healers by 1/2 can help significantly. In general, Life Barrier is probably about the best elite skill I could think of for a W/Mo, and it can be used with no investment in Protection Prayers, leaving more attribute points for your damage attributes. Others, such as Life Bond, Life Attunement, or even Vital Blessing get honoralbe mention as very nice things you can throw on your healers to help keep them alive. If you're wanting to boost your healers effectiveness, you could always choose Balthazar's Spirit as well- getting one energy whenever they take damage(2 per attack if the enemy is using conjures) can basically give your healers infinite mana when they are being focused, letting them keep up a steady stream of healing without worrying about conserving energy.

Whats the first thing teams do when they focus fire a monk? They remove your enchantments and pile on hexes and conditions, followed by lots of damage. Warriors and rangers especially put on conditions, dazed, bleed, ect.

Melandru's Resilience ELITE (Stance) For 8..18 seconds, you gain +2 Health regeneration and +1 Energy regeneration for each Condition and Hex you are suffering. Updated: 1/25/05 5 None 15 sec.

Its a stance that cannot be removed, instant cast, cheap, and it makes up its energy cost with just one hex or condition. As a monk your likely to have multiples on you most of the match! Couple this with draw conditions and you can now have a constant, huge energy regen during the match and clear out any and all conditions. It just seems like the perfect synergy with a monk character both to assist in defense and reducing negative health regen, and in boosting energy reserves.

Actually I like divine favour, it makes primary monks able to hold their own versus the pure power elementalist/monk combos who use their more massive energy reserves to spam heals. though most of its skills arnt that good, the attribute itself doesnt hurt

The listing for Melandru's Resistance here at Guru only has it as working for 'Conditions' and makes no mention of hexes, in which case it's only partially effective.

Which is it?

Dwayna's Kiss might be a good one for dealing with the hexes, perhaps.

Watchful Spirit could be useful, too. I realize it lowers mana regen by one, but in the middle of a fight, you can un-enchant it and you've got a neat windfall of health (If you've got a decent amount into DF), and your energy regen is upped. I'm just speculating, here, of course.

Probably neither. You can't trust any skill information these days due to the current NDA picture. No one can update their skills any more so if they've change you just don't know. Take everything you read with a grain of salt given that GW is still under development. That said, it probably does work on both conditions and hexes (obviously, we can't check on that for you but you can see yourself during the BWE.) or used to given the date that the above skill was last updated.

And that said, we're starting to stray a bit far afield here (I know, to-pik? What is this to-pik you speak of?). This thread is for the discussion of the various attributes and how they come into play or could be improved. What's the best secondary to pick is not the most germaine to the subject at hand, although what secondary's attribute has influenced things would be. So, you can post your musings on what's the best secondary here and let's keep this thread focused on the attributes.

And to help get us back on track I'll throw out a wacky idea. What if all attributes were more like the weapon attributes? In other words, what if they had both an active and passive benefit - affecting both skills and some aspect of your character. Weapon attributes make your character better every time they swing a weapon and they're linked to skills. Most primary attributes are similar. Energy Storage increases energy and is linked to skills. Same with Strength and Expertise and Divine Favor and Fast Casting. So what about, say, Fire Magic? Sure, it's tied to wands and foci but that's largely forgettable. There's no real choice there, as there is when picking between the damage and speed and skills of a weapon, you just simply find the best wand and focus to go with your attributes. However, what if Fire Magic had some other passive benefit outside of that? What if it, say, added +1AL versus fire damage per rank? From a flavor standpoint, mastering the forces of the flames has given you a bit of resistance to their effects. From a gameplay standpoint you'd get a reward for pumping up your attribute and you'd, at a rank of 10, either double the protection of a Pyromancer suit or eliminate the penalty from a Hydromancer's suit, strong but not necessarily overpowering. Such passive benefits would be nice little bonuses but an order of magnitude below those of the primary attributes (That's why I like Energy Storage and Fast casting best, they affect fundamental mechanics of your character while attributes like Divine Favor I'm less keen on because they're too narrow in scope. Tone the DF bonus down and that's what I'd stick on Healing Prayers, every time you cast a spell on an ally they get an extra +1 health per rank.) and be just small little boosts to effectiveness. Inspiration could add +1 second to the duration every enchantment you cast. Blood Magic could be a Vampric bonus, gaining or stealing you +1 health every time you cast a damaging spell. And so on, add a little benefit to each and every attribute in the game.