Attributes (pre-6.0)

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Attributes are the basic building blocks for a character's combat ability. The five attributes are strength, agility, stamina, intellect and spirit. These five attributes appear on the character sheet under "Attributes". These are sometimes referred to as simply stats.

A number of secondary attributes affect specific areas of combat more directly, and are often influenced in some way by a primary attribute. Secondary attributes include critical strike rate, damage absorption, attack power, spell power, and many others.

All characters inherently have some amount of each attribute that increases with level depending mainly on class. For example, a mage will have more base intellect than a rogue, who will have more base agility. Increasing these attributes is mainly done with equipment (from items' base stats, as well as improvements from enchantments and gems), talents, temporary effects such as buffs, elixirs, scrolls, auras, and many other means.

Nearly all combat mechanics rely in some way on one or more character attributes. Increasing the appropriate attribute will increase damage done, reduce damage taken, increase healing done, affect a character's mana or health, or other benefits. Understanding how these attributes work is important for effective combat.

Addons such as RatingBuster [1] can show you the actual improvements in game to your Secondary attributes which are more directly applied to combat mechanics.

Primary attributes

Strength

See also: Attack power

Strength (often abbreviated STR) has the following effects:

• Increases attack power with melee weapons:
  • Warriors, death knights, paladins, mages, priests and warlocks gain 2 melee attack power per point of strength.
  • Druids gain 1 melee attack power per point of strength.
• Increases parry rating for warriors, paladins, and death knights by 27% of strength.
• Paladin talent [Guarded by the Light] (Protection, Spec passive) increases spell power by 60% of Strength.

Strength does not affect the chance to land a critical strike. Strength does not improve the chance to block.

Agility

AGI per 1% Crit
Class	L. 60	L. 70	L. 80	L. 85
Death Knight	20	30	62.4	243.7
Druid	32.48	40	83.18	324.85
Hunter	33.17	40	83.18	324.85
Mage	22.64	24.58	51.1	199.87
Paladin	19.55	24.84	51.98	203.08
Priest	21.94	24.91	52.1	203.46
Rogue	28.17	40	83.15	324.72
Shaman	31.28	40.01	83.19	324.88
Warlock	21.03	24.29	50.46	197.08
Warrior	20	30	62.4	243.6

AGI per 1% Dodge
Class	L. 60	L. 70	L. 80	L. 85
Druid	Unknown	14.7	41.59	243.58
Hunter	20	26.5	75.04	440
Mage	20	25	51.22	300.16
Priest	20	25	51.98	304
Rogue	14.5	20	41.57	243.52
Shaman	20	25	51.98	304
Warlock	20	25	51.98	304.35

See also: Critical strike

Agility (often abbreviated AGI) has the following effects:

• Increases attack power with ranged weapons (not including wands) or melee weapons for certain classes.
  • Warriors and rogues gain 1 ranged attack power for each point of agility.
  • Hunters gain 2 ranged attack power for each point of agility.
  • Rogues, shamans and druids in [Cat Form] and [Bear Form] gain 2 melee attack power per point of agility.
  • Hunters gain 1 melee attack power per point of agility.
• Increases chance to score a critical hit with a weapon.
• Increases chance to dodge attacks. This is dependent on both class and level, in fact death knights, paladins and warrios don't.

Agility Equivalence Points is a notable formula for calculating the contribution of agility. It might be outdated with regard to hunters.

Stamina

Stamina (often abbreviated STA) has the following effects:

• Stamina provides 1 health per stamina for the first 20 points of stamina, and 14 health per point of stamina thereafter.
• Stamina also increases the health of a player's pet for classes with pets, although not from the player's base stamina (the stamina the player has without any armor or talent bonuses). They gain between 3 and 11 health per point of stamina, depending on the pet's type and the master's talents (see the hunter pet, warlock minion and Risen Ghoul articles for details).
• Stamina is the key attribute of tanks. It is useful to every class in PvP. Non-tank PvE characters should not actively seek out stamina, but some of it is found on nearly any piece of gear.
• There are many non-standard adjustments that can be made for stamina:
  • Death knights — [Blood Presence] provides an 8% bonus to stamina. The Blood talent tree specialization [Veteran of the Third War] provides 9% stamina. The death knight-only runes [Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle] and [Rune of the Nerubian Carapace] provide a 2% and 1% bonus to stamina, respectively.
  • Druids — [Bear Form] gives a 40% bonus to stamina.
  • Paladins receive 25% stamina from [Guarded by the Light] when choosing the Protection talent specialization.
  • Priests
    • [Power Word: Fortitude] increases stamina by 10% and lasts for 60 minutes.
  • Warriors receive 15% stamina from Sentinel (warrior talent) by chosing Protection specialization.

Intellect

Class	Expected @ 60	L. 60 1% Crit	L. 70 1% Crit	L. 80 1% Crit	L. 85 1% Crit
Warlock	200	60.6	81.92	166.6667	648.91
Druid	192	60.0	80	166.6667	648.91
Shaman	259	59.5	80	166.6667	648.91
Mage	286	59.5	80	166.6667	648.91
Priest	160	59.2	80	166.6667	648.91
Paladin	106	54	80.05	166.6667	648.91

Intellect (often abbreviated as INT) has the following effects:

• Increases spell power by 1 per point at level 80 or above. Intellect is now the main source of spell power for most cases.
• Increases chance to score a spell critical strike. This increase varies by class and level; in general, the relationship is linear as intellect increases. The rate of increase is generally based on the amount of intellect a class is expected to have at a certain level, given by the following table.

Spirit

Main article: Spirit

See also: Mana regeneration

Spirit (often abbreviated SPI) has the following effects:

• Increases mana regeneration for healers. It's the primary attribute for mana regeneration of healers. All healing specs have the [Meditation] passive, allowing 50% of mana regeneration from spirit to continue in combat.
• Adds 1 spell hit rating per point for shadow priests, elemental shaman and balance druids with the appropriate specialization or talents ( [Spiritual Precision], [Elemental Precision], [Balance of Power]).

Spirit is of no use for mages and warlocks due to how their classes' mana regeneration works.

Secondary attributes

Secondary attributes are player stats that affect combat directly. The primary attributes only indirectly affect combat, by contributing to these attributes.

Mastery

Main article: Mastery

Mastery is a unique attribute that that has different effects depending on class and specialization. Mastery becomes available at level 80, and must be learnt from a class trainer in order to become active.

Players at or above level 80 automatically gain 8 points of Mastery. Mastery rating can be gained from gear and enhancements and is converted to Mastery depending on level. Each specialization has its own Mastery, improving key areas of the character's abilities by X% per point of Mastery.

Physical combat

• Weapon damage - Weapon damage is a property of the player's equipped weapon. Melee weapon damage is increased by enchants, and enhancements such as sharpening stones or weightstones. Ranged weapon damage is increased with scopes.
• Attack power - (Abbreviated as AP) Increases the damage of the equipped weapon, as well as improving many abilities. Attack power is increased directly by buffs and effects, and indirectly by strength and agility.
• Attack speed - Attack speed measures the length of time between the player's auto-attacks, with a higher attack speed indicating slower and less frequent strikes. Attack speed is a function of the current weapon speed and the player's melee haste (see below).
• Ranged attack power - (Abbreviated as RAP) Increases damage of an equipped bow, crossbow or gun, but not wands. Ranged attack power is increased similarly to melee attack power.
• Haste - Decreases the time between auto-attacks. This lowers attack speed, but has no effect on cooldowns. Increased by effects and haste rating, a combat rating.
• Hit - Increases chance to hit with melee and ranged weapons by a percentage. Hit chance is increased by hit rating, a combat rating.
• Critical strike - Percentage of attacks that will result in a critical strike. Crit chance is increased directly by critical strike rating, a combat rating, and indirectly by agility.
• Expertise - Reduces the enemy's chance to dodge/parry. Also increases Spell hit for casters by the same amount.

Spell combat

• Spell power - Increases the damage amount of damaging spells and the healing amount of healing spells. Bonus varies depending on each spell's spell power coefficient.
• Spell haste - The rate at which spells can be cast, increasing casting speed and reducing cast time and the global cooldown (to a minimum of 1 second). Increased by haste rating and effects.
• Spell hit - Increases the chance spells will hit their target. Spell hit is increased by the same hit rating used for melee hit, but the effects differ after that point.
• Spell crit chance - Percentage of spells that will result in a spell critical strike. Spell crit chance is increased by critical strike rating and intellect.

Defense

• Armor - Decreases physical damage received. Increases your pet's Armor. Armor is always present on equippable items, such as chest pieces and shields. Shields and plate items generally have the most armor, while cloth items have the least. The base armor of an item is determined directly by its type (cloth, leather, mail or plate), item level and slot (chest, head, legs, etc). Some items have extra armor, which is indicated by the total amount of armor appearing in green on the tooltip. Rings, weapons, amulets and trinkets have no base armor, but may have bonus armor.
• Dodge - Chance to dodge incoming melee attacks. Ranged attacks cannot be dodged. Dodge is increased by dodge rating and agility. Only tanks should use gear with dodge rating.
• Parry - Chance to parry melee attacks with a melee weapon. Ranged attacks cannot be parried. Parry is increased by parry rating and strength. Only (non-druid) tanks should use gear with parry rating.
• Block - Chance to block melee and ranged attacks with a shield. Warrior and paladin tanks receive additional block chance through their respective mastery and abilities such as [Shield Block].
• Resistance - Decreases the damage taken from magical attacks.

PvP stats

• PvP Power - Increases damage done to enemy players and their pets and minions, and increases healing done in PvP zones and outdoors. PvP Power's healing bonus varies for each spec. PvP Power can be found on PvP gear, and added through gems and enchantments. Has no effect on non-players.
• PvP Resilience - Decreases damage taken from enemy players and their pets and minions. All characters have an innate resilience of 65%. Additional resilience can be gained through gems and enchantments. Note that resilience has no effect against npcs.

Other information

Attack power

See also: Attack power

Base statistics affect attack power (which contributes to DPS) as follows:

• Strength will always contribute to the physical melee attack power for all classes.
• Rogues, hunters and shamans can also use Agility in addition to Strength to increase their base physical melee attack power.
• Druids in [Cat Form] can also use Agility to increase their base physical melee attack power. However, Agility also affects critical strike percentage which directly affects Cat Form abilities such as [Primal Fury]. This gives an added attack power equivalence.
• Agility is the only primary statistic to affect physical ranged attack power (bows and crossbows, guns, throwing weapons) for all classes capable of using them. This is especially important for hunters.
• Wand damage is not affected by a primary statistic.

Critical Strikes

• Agility will increase the chance to score a critical strike with both physical ranged and melee damage for all classes. The amount needed per point varies by class.
• Intellect will increase the chance to score a critical strike with spells. For a mage at level 60, the rate is 1% per 59.5 points of intellect.
• Critical strike rating increases the chance for both spell and physical affects to score a critical strike.

Dodge

• Agility will determine a character's chance to dodge an attack. Rogues and druids (as of 2.03) gain a much stronger bonus to dodge than other classes.

Fighting with two weapons, using off-hand, two-handed

See the "Physical Combat" section of Combat.

Random attributes on items

On many uncommon, rare and on some epic items you can get random attributes.

• ...of the Bandit - Agility, Stamina, Critical Strike Rating
• ...of the Bear - Stamina, Strength
• ...of the Beast - Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, Stamina
• ...of the Bedrock - Stamina, Strength, Mastery Rating, Parry Rating
• ...of the Bouldercrag - Stamina, Strength, Dodge Rating, Parry Rating
• ...of the Champion - Strength, Stamina, Dodge Rating
• ...of the Eagle - Intellect, Stamina
• ...of the Earthbreaker - Stamina, Strength, Critical Strike Rating, Mastery Rating
• ...of the Earthfall - Stamina, Strength, Critical Strike Rating, Haste Rating
• ...of the Earthshaker - Stamina, Strength, Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating
• ...of the Elder - Stamina, Spirit, Intellect
• ...of the Faultline - Stamina, Strength, Haste Rating, Mastery Rating
• ...of the Feverflare - Stamina, Intellect, Haste Rating, Mastery Rating
• ...of the Fireflash - Stamina, Intellect, Critical Strike Rating, Haste Rating
• ...of the Flameblaze - Stamina, Intellect, Mastery Rating, Hit Rating
• ...of the Galeburst - Stamina, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise Rating
• ...of the Invoker - Intellect, Critical Strike Rating
• ...of the Landslide - Stamina, Strength, Hit Rating, Expertise Rating
• ...of the Marksman - Stamina, Agility, Hit Rating
• ...of the Mercenary - Stamina, Strength, Haste Rating
• ...of the Monkey - Agility, Stamina
• ...of the Mountainbed - Stamina, Strength, Mastery Rating, Expertise Rating
• ...of the Rockslab - Stamina, Strength, Mastery Rating, Dodge Rating
• ...of the Seer - Stamina, Intellect, Critical Strike Rating
• ...of the Soldier - Strength, Stamina, Critical Strike Rating
• ...of the Sorcerer - Stamina, Intellect, Haste Rating
• ...of the Stormblast - Stamina, Agility, Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating
• ...of the Tiger - Agility, Hit Rating
• ...of the Undertow - Stamina, Intellect, Haste Rating, Spirit
• ...of the Wavecrest - Stamina, Intellect, Mastery Rating, Spirit
• ...of the Whale - Spirit, Stamina
• ...of the Wildfire - Stamina, Intellect, Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating
• ...of the Windflurry - Stamina, Agility, Critical Strike Rating, Haste Rating
• ...of the Windstorm - Stamina, Agility, Critical Strike Rating, Mastery Rating
• ...of the Zephyr - Stamina, Agility, Haste Rating, Mastery Rating

Warlords stats changes

Main article: Attributes/Warlords

See also: Warlords of Draenor gear changes

In World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, numerous stats will be added or modified. Hit, expertise, dodge, and parry will be removed. All of the new secondary and tertiary stats are passed down to pets/guardians. Gear will change the primary stat based on the spec (that is, a Holy paladin will have intellect on it's gear, whereas Retribution or Protection paladins will have Strength). Secondary stats on gear will not change based on spec and are fixed at item creation time. Finally, armor may randomly have up to three additional properties: bonus item level (a la Warforged), gem sockets, or tertiary stats. As an example, all copies of some item would have Mastery+Amplify, but the tertiary stat/gem socket/"Warforged" attributes are random.

Primary stats

• Armor pieces will always have some amount of Stamina and Armor value.
• Armor pieces always have Strength, Intellect, or Agility as a primary stat. Plate has either Strength or Intellect. Mail and Leather have either Agility or Intellect. Cloth has Intellect. Non-armor pieces (except for weapons) likely will not have strength, agility, or intellect.
• In the cases of Plate, Mail, and Leather, the primary stat will change depending on your current spec. Specifically, casters (including healers) will get Intellect, and melee or tank specs will get Strength or Agility.

Secondary stats

Blizz intends that all five all-spec secondary stats to be close-but-not-equal in value to each other. Secondary stats on an item are fixed at item creation time and will not change with spec.

• Multistrike: X% Multistrike = Each ability has two separate (X/2)% chances to hit each target an additional time for 30% damage. Multistrikes count as hitting the same target twice with one cast, not multiple casts. Multistrike is split into two (X/2)% chances, so that you can occasionally get a triple-hit (fun!), and the cap is 200%, not 100%. Heals can multistrike. Multistrike is a chance on hits/crits only, not misses/avoids. Additional Multistrike and Cleave hits are considered procs, so can't proc more things. But, DPoison could Multistrike. Cleaves (and Multistrikes) can crit.
• [Readiness]: X% Readiness increases the cooldown recovery rate (aka, divides the cooldown by (1+Readiness)) of *some* class abilities. The number of abilities affected by Readiness will vary by spec (will be listed in spellbook, like Mastery). Coefficient likely to vary too. Readiness will be a competitive benefit, even for WW. Exactly what it will affect is still being decided, but will boost DPS.
• Haste: Haste breakpoints are gone because the duration of a DoT no longer changes with haste. DoTs now get a 'partial tick' at the end, equal in damage/healing to the ratio of that time and the full tick time. Since DoTs are no longer tied to individual ticks, Blizz can be more lenient about refresh windows. May allow full refresh from last Xsec, or X%.
• Crit down to 150% from 200% (in PvP only)
• Mastery (as before)
• Bonus armor (for tanks) and Spirit (for healers) only appear on rings, neck, trinkets, cloak and weapons. If you want to stack Spirit, get it on all those pieces. But you shouldn't need that much. Spirit will not appear on gloves, hats, etc. The intent of including Spirit and Bonus Armor on these pieces is to make sure some items are still valuable only to healer and tank specs, helping to make sure they don't have too much competition for gear against the more numerous DPS players in a given group. In the case of Bonus Armor, this stat fills the niche that Dodge and Parry fill today.

Tertiary stats

Tertiary stats are not set in stone, but currently include: Sturdiness, Speed (movement speed), Leech, Avoidance (-% AoE damage taken), and Inspiration. Items can have a maximum of one tertiary stat on them. Generally tertiary stats are not expected to have a limit. Speed in particular may need one, but that would be a global Speed cap, not a cap on Speed from gear.

• Avoidance (reduced area effect damage taken)
• Inspiration (heal on damage received)
• Leech: (heal on damage dealt) Works off every hit.
• Speed: Movement Speed is changing to be calculated additively [from multiplicatively], and most movement speed buffs will stack. For example, two separate 50% movement speed increases on you will result in 200% movement speed, not 225%.
• [Sturdiness] (reduced durability damage)

Patch changes

• Patch 5.0.4 (2012-08-28): Spell Penetration has been replaced by PvP Power on existing items.

  Undocumented changes:

• Intellect: No longer affects mana pools
• Spell Resistance no longer displayed on character sheets.
• Mastery is no longer measured in points, and is instead converted directly into a percentage bonus. Accordingly, there is no longer a standard rate of conversion for mastery.
  

• Patch 4.2.0 (2011-06-28):
  • Agility: Death knights, paladins and warriors no longer gain dodge from agility.
  • Strength: Death knights, paladins and warriors now gain parry rating equal to 27% of their extra strength (up from 25%)
    
• Patch 4.0.1 (2010-10-12):
  • Mastery rating has been added as a new stat which provides unique benefits for characters based on class and talent specialization. Mastery rating does not currently exist on items in the game, however, Reforging can be used to add Mastery rating as a secondary stat to existing items.
  • Resilience: No longer reduces chance of receiving a critical hit and is now a flat reduction on damage taken from other players.

  Undocumented changes:

• Strength: Now gives 0.25 parry rating per point to plate wearing classes.
• Stamina: Now gives 14 health per point (up from 10).
• Agility: Now provides 2 melee attack power per point to rogues, shamans and druids and no longer increases armor.
• Intellect: Now provides Spell power.
• Spirit: No longer increases Health regeneration.
• Defense: Stat has been removed from gear.
• Block value: Stat has been removed.
• Armor Penetration: Stat has been removed from gear, all previous items with ArP have had it converted to Crit or Haste depending on which stats was not present in the item. (Still exists in skills, debuffs, etc.)
• Mana Regeneration: Stat has been removed, all previous items with MP5 have had it converted to Spirit.
• Spell power: Has been removed on most items. (Usually found only on weapons now.)
  

• Patch 3.2.0 (2009-08-04):
  • Agility: The amount of agility required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This change required recalibrating the amount of dodge a player has with 0 agility by a slight amount as well, so all players will see their dodge percentage vary a small amount.
  • Block rating: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
  • Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.
  • Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.
  • Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.
  • Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage-over-time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion. The other effects of resilience (reducing critical chance, critical damage and mana drain effects) have not changed.
    
• Patch 3.1.0 (2009-04-14):
  • Armor Penetration Rating: All classes now receive 25% more benefit from Armor Penetration Rating.
  • Haste Rating: shamans, paladins, druids, and death knights now receive 30% more melee haste from Haste Rating.
  • Mana Regeneration: The amount of mana regeneration derived from intellect and spirit has been reduced by 40%; however, talents that allow for mana regeneration while in combat have been increased. As a result, in-combat regeneration for classes with those talents will stay the same, while out-of-combat regeneration will be lower.
    
• Patch 3.0.2 (2008-10-14): Resilience: The damage reduction component of resilience has been increased from 2 times the critical strike chance reduction to 2.2 times the critical strike chance reduction. In addition, the maximum damage reduction to a critical strike from resilience has been increased from 30% to 33%.
  
  • Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.
  • Spell Power:
    • All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spell Power. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant "increased spell damage and healing" such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
      • For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
    • Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive more benefit from Spell Power than they received from bonus healing, with a net effect of no change to the amount healed by their spells. Some talents have had to be rebalanced to accommodate this change, but the amount healed will remain roughly the same. In addition, some talents will provide only healing spell power.}}
• Patch 2.4.0 (2008-03-25):
  • Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
  • Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.
  • Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
    
• Patch 2.3.0 (2007-11-13): All items have had their bonuses to Weapon Skill Rating converted to a new stat called Weapon Expertise Rating. Each point of Weapon Expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by .25%.
  
• Patch 2.2.0 (2007-09-25): Haste: Haste has been rebalanced. It has returned to the ratios from the launch of Burning Crusade. Melee attacks and spell casts will now benefit at identical rates from haste. This change results in a reduction in the benefit of haste for melee attacks and an increase in the benefit for spellcasters.
  
• Patch 2.1.0 (2007-05-22):
  • Spell Haste: The amount of spell haste rating needed per percentage of haste has been increased substantially. However, spell haste will now affect channeled spells, increasing the rate of their effects and decreasing their total duration. The same amount of damage/healing per casting will occur, but will take less time.
  • The amount of parry rating needed to get 1% parry has been reduced by 25%.
  • Dodge Rating: Low level players now calculate dodge from dodge rating at the same rate as level 34 players.
  • Health Regeneration: This effect on random property items has been renamed to Health per 5 sec.
    
• Patch 2.0.7 (2007-02-13): The amount of haste granted by a point of haste rating has been increased by about 50%.
  
• Patch 2.0.1 (2006-12-05):
  • New item property "Resilience" has been introduced. Resilience reduces your chance to be the victim of a critical strike, and reduces the amount of damage critical strikes do to you.
  • Items that give bonuses, such as critical strike percentage, have been modified to adhere to a combat rating system.
  • All current items will provide the exact same benefit from ratings at level 60 as they provided before the ratings system.
    

External links

World of Warcraft Community Site Character Information — Attributes

World of Warcraft Europe Character Information — Attributes

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