Character & Stats
Your character is described by a handful of attributes. You never have to memorize them to play well, but knowing roughly what each one does helps you read your character sheet and pick the right upgrades.
Primary attributes
Five attributes shape your character: Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intellect, and Spirit. Each class leans on a different mix, so the ones that matter most depend on what you play.
Strength
Strength raises your melee attack power, so your weapon swings hit harder. It does the most for the heavy melee classes that fight up close.
Agility
Agility sharpens you in several ways: it raises your chance to land a critical hit and your chance to dodge, and it adds a little armor. For rogues and hunters it also feeds attack power, and it drives a hunter's ranged shots.
Stamina
Stamina is your staying power. More Stamina means a larger health pool, and it speeds the health you recover while resting out of combat. Every class wants some.
Intellect
Intellect grows a spellcaster's mana pool, raises their spell power so their spells hit harder, and improves the chance their spells crit. It matters to the classes that cast from mana; for a Rage or Energy class it does little.
Spirit
Spirit governs how quickly a caster's mana returns. It pays in full only once they have gone a few seconds without spending any, and a share of it keeps flowing even mid-cast, so Spirit is never dead weight in a fight, though a caster nuking flat out will still run dry. Pausing for a breath is a real mana decision, in a fight as much as between them. Like Intellect, Spirit serves the mana classes and means little to the others.
Attack power
Attack power measures how hard your weapon strikes. Your primary attributes feed it, and gear that carries those attributes raises it further, while a stronger weapon raises your damage directly, which is why an upgrade can be a real jump in damage.
Damage per second
Your sheet also shows a damage-per-second estimate: roughly what your weapon, its swing speed, and your attack power add up to over time. It is a quick way to compare two weapons at a glance.
Critical strike
Your critical strike chance is how often an attack lands for extra damage. Everyone starts with a small base chance, and Agility (plus some talents and gear) builds on it. Your sheet shows both the chance itself and the critical strike rating your gear contributes toward it.
Spell power
Spell power is a caster's counterpart to attack power: it raises the damage your spells deal. Intellect feeds it, and caster gear and buffs add more on top, so a spellcaster watches spell power the way a melee fighter watches attack power.
Haste
Haste is one stat that quickens everything you do: melee swings, ranged shots, and spellcasting all speed up together. It comes from gear, most notably armor-set bonuses, while a few abilities grant a short burst of quicker swings. Your sheet shows it as Haste Rating.
Hit rating
Hit rating comes from your gear and its set bonuses. It makes your attacks miss less often and your spells resisted less often, and it earns its keep against enemies above your own level, where misses pile up fastest. Your sheet shows it as Hit Rating.
Armor
Armor reduces the physical damage you take. It comes mostly from what you wear, and the heavier armor classes carry far more of it. More armor against a foe near your level means each of its hits lands softer.
Dodge
Dodge is your chance to avoid an incoming melee attack entirely. You begin with a small base chance, and Agility raises it, so nimble classes slip more blows.
Parry
Parry is the warrior's own defense: a chance to turn a melee blow aside entirely and take no damage, and it grows with Strength. Only an attack coming at your front can be parried, which is one more reason to keep facing whatever is hitting you. Other classes see the row on their sheet sitting at zero.
Warfare
Warfare is the one stat that counts only against other players: it raises the damage you deal to them and lowers the damage you take from them, and your sheet shows both halves on one line. Against creatures it does nothing at all. It comes from the Warfare gear you buy with honor, so it is a reward for playing PvP rather than something to chase while leveling.
Reading your character sheet
Open the character window in game to see all of this in one place: your five attributes on one side and the stats they feed on the other. Hover any value and a tooltip breaks down what it does for your class, so you can see at a glance which numbers an upgrade actually moved.
How your stats grow
Two things raise your stats. Every level adds a fixed amount of each attribute to suit your class, and the gear you equip adds more on top. Keeping your gear current is the steadiest way to grow stronger, all the way to the level cap.