Curse

Aladdar · Apr 14, 2005, 08:29 PM // 20:29

We have debated at great length what the best final attribute selections are and I'm not looking to get into that at this point. My question I pose to the board today is what is the best allocation method while levelling up. Are you of the mind to focus on raising one attribute to it's highest, levelling them all up equally, or something else.

For example, Let's just say I was going to build a ranger/necro with the following final array of attributes:

Expertise 11
Marksmanship 10
Curses 10

Would I be better to focus on raising Expertise first and then bringing up marksmanship and Curses, levelling them all evenly, ignoring expertise at first and focusing on marks and curses, etc...

Let's just assume that all of my skill allocation is split evenly between marks skills and curses skills and I'm using expertise for the energy drop. How would you allocate. Feel free to discuss other professions as well?

Tuon · Apr 14, 2005, 08:35 PM // 20:35

Where's your elite at? Which line is more important for helping you do what you want to do? How are the opportunity costs?

Kha · Apr 14, 2005, 08:42 PM // 20:42

I've had the best luck by raising them all up fairly equally. It is good practice for keeping yourself balanced when you reach 20 and are aiming for a 11,10,10 build. The only attribute I tend to focus on more is which one is affecting my damage the most. Considering you mostly do PvE to level, I feel there is a need for more emphasis on damage output/skill power than energy management. So for my ranger I focused on Marksmanship, for my warrior I focused on Swordsmanship, and for my elementalist I focused on Water Magic. I still kept the other attributes faily equal, but it gets harder to as it requires more and more points to just raise the attribute one level.

Synthos · Apr 14, 2005, 08:43 PM // 20:43

I dont think it much matters how you do it, just that its done in the end. I usually level things up evenly, that way if you need that extra little bit in curses or something you can take down your other attributes a point or 2.

snipes · Apr 14, 2005, 08:45 PM // 20:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aladdar

We have debated at great length what the best final attribute selections are and I'm not looking to get into that at this point. My question I pose to the board today is what is the best allocation method while levelling up. Are you of the mind to focus on raising one attribute to it's highest, levelling them all up equally, or something else.

For example, Let's just say I was going to build a ranger/necro with the following final array of attributes:

Expertise 11
Marksmanship 10
Curses 10

Would I be better to focus on raising Expertise first and then bringing up marksmanship and Curses, levelling them all evenly, ignoring expertise at first and focusing on marks and curses, etc...

Let's just assume that all of my skill allocation is split evenly between marks skills and curses skills and I'm using expertise for the energy drop. How would you allocate. Feel free to discuss other professions as well?

Thats really situational. My Mo/R uses 12 divine and 12 healing 3 Wilderness survival.
My W/Mo uses 12(+2 runes) 10(+1 runes) 8(+2 runes)

Aladdar · Apr 14, 2005, 08:54 PM // 20:54

I'm just giving my character as an example and discounting runes for a moment as we won't find them till later. I'm just curious as to how you best level them and give your attributes per level. I know how I do mine and it works ok, but I've got a little article in my head for the new player center and I'm looking for some other perspective.

Bgnome · Apr 14, 2005, 08:57 PM // 20:57

i have heard ensign say that low expertise is not all that useful to you so you should only raise it towards the end. along with curses being somewhat energy intensive, i believe you would get the best damage output by maxing out marksmanship first. this is increase the amount of damage you do with your weapon and increse the damage of your main skills as well. i would treat expertise and curses as support attributes and raise them once marksmanship is acceptably high. surely you will find and use runes during the trek as well.

Synthos · Apr 14, 2005, 09:00 PM // 21:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bgnome

i have heard ensign say that low expertise is not all that useful to you so you should only raise it towards the end. along with curses being somewhat energy intensive, i believe you would get the best damage output by maxing out marksmanship first. this is increase the amount of damage you do with your weapon and increse the damage of your main skills as well. i would treat expertise and curses as support attributes and raise them once marksmanship is acceptably high. surely you will find and use runes during the trek as well.

IM gonna be an ranger air elementalist, i was having a hard time choosing between marksmenship and wilderness survival, Your saying i should chose marksmenship over wilderness survial?

Bgnome · Apr 14, 2005, 09:05 PM // 21:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Synthos

IM gonna be an ranger air elementalist, i was having a hard time choosing between marksmenship and wilderness survival, Your saying i should chose marksmenship over wilderness survial?

if you want to use a bow effectively, you need marksmanship. as of the march bwe, all bows were tied to marksmanship so your base damage with a bow is directly related to your marksmanship attribute.

worthless · Apr 14, 2005, 09:15 PM // 21:15

i usually jack up the one that helps me kill faster. so that the other attribute points come quicker

tastegw · Apr 14, 2005, 09:25 PM // 21:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by worthless

i usually jack up the one that helps me kill faster. so that the other attribute points come quicker

i would agree with this.

ive made the mistake of jacking up some defensive skills before offensive, and when your soloing, it really makes it hard if your dmg is poor.

HotSnack · Apr 14, 2005, 09:32 PM // 21:32

When levelling up, I always dump points into one attribute. I only start putting points into other attributes the moment its gain outweighs putting points into my main attribute.

There are special cases, for example early on in the game Orison of Healing will be used excessively, with each point in Healing only rewarding something like 3-4 points, the same gain if you were to put points into Divine Favour. So then it usually boils down to whether it's cheaper to raise Divine Favour or Healing, keeping things in mind such as sweet spots for Healing Breeze, or if its even more beneficial to start putting points into Protection.

I think that Warriors, Rangers and Eles should put almost all their points into their weapon of choice, as it pays off when you find a weapon with a high attribute requirement, while Mesmers and Necros get some freedom in point distribution.

Sausaletus Rex · Apr 14, 2005, 10:24 PM // 22:24

Right, Astepladder's not asking for attribute builds. He's looking for how you would go about getting there. RP characters *do* exist, you know.

Anyhow, you get variable levels of attribute points per level. Can't recall off hand just what it is but you start off getting 5 a level.

At low-levels it's best to concentrate on just one or two attributes and use your primary or another attribute as a dump stat for your left-over points.

For example, after your first level up you'll have 5AP, you can reach an attribute rank of 2 for 3AP (1 for the first, 2 for the next, and so on) with that with 2AP left over which turn into two ranks of 1. You'll have a 2/1/1 setup. So pick your most important attribute, that's your 2, and the other you plan to make use of and throw a 1 into that and your primary. The next level you can either refund those two rank 1s and get a rank of 4 in your most important attribute or go to a 3/2/1 setup. The next level you can have a 5 or a 4/2/1/1. And so on.

Now, obviously, this changes from profession to profession. For a Ranger those first few ranks of Expertise are meaningless, so skip it until you can invest a lot of points into it, same thing with Mesmers and Fast Casting. For a Monk or an Elementalist, a few points into Divine Favor and Energy Storage, respectively, pays big dividends (That first point of ES is the equivalent of all the foci you'll find in Pre-Searing, so it's a good thing to have.) but you don't want to get too wacky with it. Strength and Soul Reaping really depend on your character. For a tank, Strength's a secondary concern, especially with Tactics looking like it does. And for a Necro a few points in Soul Reaping are nice but you won't really notice it unless you're a Death/Minion Nec.

Beyond that you get into sweet spots and what skills you're using and all that. At low levels, I tend to look for survivability. I pump up the attributes that will let me heal or defend myself before the ones that will let me attack. With enough defense you can outlast things so as long as you're not doing chip damage you'll win the marathon eventually. For Warriors and Rangers you want to take care of your weapon, whatever that is. Mesmers benefit from points in Illusion because Conjure Phantasm's > Tutorial.

Also, there's the issue of respeccing. You can start in one attribute and invest heavily in it and then back out and switch as you go along. For example, as an Elementalist coming out of the tutorial you have your choice of blinding someone for a few seconds with Blinding Flash before you use your Lightning Javelin on them. Or you could use Flare and Fire Storm. Fire's the obvious choice, especially in PvE, and if you want Water or Earth you're out of luck. So, you run with Fire until you can get some better skills and then you can use refund points to remake your character.

Ensign · Apr 14, 2005, 10:30 PM // 22:30

Ignore Expertise entirely, and put almost everything into Marksmanship until the returns start to peter off. Then drop a bit into Curses. Don't touch Expertise until you can get into the 7-9 range without losing anything - levels 1-6 are completely useless.

Generally I focus early, branch later. Your power will always come from focused attributes, and the quickest way to that is to stick to 1-2 early. Fill in once the returns get bad and you have better skills to play with.

Skill selection plays a huge role, of course. If the Curses you want to use aren't available until Denravi, then ignore it early.

Peace,
-CxE

Davion · Apr 15, 2005, 02:57 AM // 02:57

Expertise
Marksmanship
Curses

I usually spend the first 6-7 levels putting points into the marksmanship exclusively (if my marks isn't near 7-9, I 'm not stopping until it is). The damage and weapon requirements satifying takes precedence over anything.

Maybe a couple points into secondary next (curses here) to give a boost to secondary skills.

I would never really touch on expertise until AFTER i hit level 10 just to be sure that the basics of my character were running at usable levels. Then I would start using points for expertise building to help manage all those costs and start to branch out into other more costly skills in aftermath of gaining levels in it.
Basicly,... 7-9 levels in marksmanship..then 3+ in curses.. then start alternating between expertise/curses....coming back to marksmanship if NEED be..sooner than later.

spiritofcat · Apr 15, 2005, 03:21 AM // 03:21

Considering that the number of points needed to increase an attribute becomes greater the more you increase the attribute, it seems logical to me to raise the three of them evenly so that you have the least unused points along the way.
For example, if you tried to raise one high and then the others you might find that sometimes when you leveled you wouldn't get enough points to raise that high attribute even higher and you wouldn't spend the points at all.
My approach would be to spend them as exhaustively as possible. So if you wanted to focus on one attribute first, put all the points you can into it each level and then put any remaining points into the other attributes you think are important. And if you leveled and didn't have enough points to raise that main attribute, either spend the points on the lesser ones or save them up.

Lamaros · Apr 15, 2005, 04:40 AM // 04:40

I focus on one, and dump the spares in a secondary. Every time I level up I reallocate to make the most out of what I have.

To be more specific: When I play my warrior Strength and the Weapon Class are where the points will go. Why? Strength is a versatile +damage attribute, and helps more overall at early stages than the weapon skills (some of your options are just terrible). Plus it lets you use shield if you're so inclined. The weapon skill cannot be ignored though, as they're vitally important for making sure you can use whatever weapon you just upgraded to.

I don't even think about working in my secondary class for a long time, unless I happen to have picked up one which has a requirementless ability.