Attribute

Attributes
Every profession has 4 or 5 attributes, and one of them always is the primary attribute of this profession. The primary attribute of a profession is only available if the respective Profession is also the character's primary profession. For example: an Elementalist/Mesmer has Energy Storage and all other Elementalist and Mesmer Attributes except Fast Casting, while a Mesmer/Elementalist has Fast Casting and all other Mesmer and Elementalist Attributes except Energy Storage.

Attributes are the cornerstone of your character's development. Their values indicate, among others, how powerful a character's Attribute Skill of the respective attribute are. Every level, characters gain a certain amount of attribute points. See the following table for details:

The maximum base level an attribute can be raised to is 12, but the final level can be modified by various methods:
 * The most common of those methods is using a Rune of the corresponding type, which give a character an attribute bonus of up to +3. Note that positive Rune effects of the same type do not stack, so having a Rune of Minor Fire Magic and a Rune of Superior Fire Magic equipped at the same time still gives +3 instead of the expected +4, because only the highest positive effect counts.
 * The second-most common method is wearing crafted Head Armor, which can give a +1 bonus to one attribute.
 * The third method is using your weapon and/or your focus item that has the ability to give a +1 bonus to an Attribute when the player uses a skill that is linked to this attribute. This ability is always chance-dependant and has a low chance of success (less than 15%), which seems to make it the least valuable of all possibilities, because it replaces a potentially more powerful weapon ability. Because both the weapon and the item can have the +1 ability, there is a chance of a total +2 Attribute bonus with this method.
 * The fourth and currently final method to increase an attribute is only available to Necromancers and Elementalists. Necromancers have the spell Awaken the Blood, which gives them +2 Blood Magic and +2 Curses for a certain time span. Elementalists have the Glyph of Elemental Power, which boosts all elemental attributes (Air Magic, Earth Magic, Fire Magic, Water Magic) by +2 for the next spell.

This means that the maximum Attribute Level is 12 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 2 = 20

Many players prefer to specialise in 2 or 3 attributes to make most effective use of points, since only 200 points can be gained by the time you reach the level limit, 20. For example, a monk dedicated to healing might decide to have 12 points on both Healing Prayers and Divine Favor, making as much use as possible out of the healing attributes that a monk posesses. This would cost 194 points in total, but allow basic healing spells to be considerably more effective; with Healing Prayers and Divine Favor both at 12 Orison of Healing will heal for 96 Health (60 thanks to Healing Prayers, and Divine Favor adds 3.2 health for every level) compared to a mere 20 Health with those attributes set to 0.

However, because of the quickly diminishing returns of higher attribute levels, it is a viable strategy to diversify into 4 or more attributes, if a Build required doing so.

Primary Attribute/Profession Bonus

 * Divine Favor heals an ally for 3.2 per attribute level (rounded down) whenever the Monk casts a spell on an ally (including himself).
 * Expertise lowers the Energy costs of all skills.
 * Fast Casting lowers the casting time of all spells
 * Energy Storage adds +3 to the Elementalist's maximum energy for each attribute level.
 * Soul Reaping heals the Necromancer 1 energy for each attribute level whenever any creature dies nearby.
 * Strength adds 1% Armor penetration per attribute level whenever the Warrior uses a Warrior Skill on a foe.

Skill Bonus
Most skills are linked to an attribute. All of those Linked Skills' effects, or more exactly their increase from a certain base value, are directly proportional to their Linked Attribute's level. The skill description shows that effect with a green number to indicate that this is a variable, relative to the players attribute level.

All Linked Skills have an effect directly proportional to their Linked Attribute's level. This means that the increase in a certain effect of a skill, for example damage, can always be described as a certain constant number, multiplied with the linked attribute's level. For example, Flare deals 16 Fire damage at a Fire Magic value of 0. For every level of Fire Magic, its damage increases by 2. Thus, Flare's effect increase is proportional to Fire Magic's level.

However, as shown in the table below, raising an attribute becomes over-proportionately more expensive with growing attribute level, in terms of Attribute Points. For example, if these costs were directly proportionate as the effect increase is, then the total cost of an attribute level of 6 would be twice the costs of level 3; the cost factor, however, is 3.5 instead of 2. Thus it can be argued that a level 6 attribute is overpriced by a factor of 1.75 when compared to level 3.

Likewise, the cost factor from level 4 to level 12 is not 3 but 9.7, which makes a level 12 attribute overpriced by a factor of about 3.2 compared to level 4. If one calculates all of these "Overprice factors" for an attribute level and its corresponding (for example) double level (i.e. 1 and 2, 2 and 4, 3 and 6, etc.), one can clearly see that even this disproportionate increase in costs itself steadily increases.

The "over exponential" raising of attribute points per level is slightly more exponential than the [Triangonal Numbers]:

0,1,3,6,10,15,21,28,36,45,55,66,78

a(n) = C(n+1,2) = n(n+1)/2 = 0+1+2+...+n.

BUT it increases slightly more. The table below shows how much more per step (and absolute) compared to the Triangonal numbers.

Damage Bonus
Many attributes boost damage by a certain amount. These include Swordsmanship, Marksmanship, and Beast Mastery. The following table illustrates how exactly the attribute level affects the damage bonus.

Attribute Refund Points
Every player has at any time a maximum of 24 Refund points. By spending 1 Refund Point, a player can, even in Explorable Areas, Missions and Arenas, lower one of his attributes by 1 base level. The Attribute points spent to gain this level will be fully refunded and can immediately be spent on any attribute. This feature is very useful for re-skilling a character, i.e. re-distributing its attribute points to better suit a new strategy.

For each 250 experience points you gain, you also gain 1 Refund Point, if the character has less than his maximum Refund Points. Also, every time a character's experience bar is filled to the maximum, all Refund points will be regenerated, regardless of the amount of XP normally required.