Attributes (pre-6.0)

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 can show you the actual improvements in game to your Secondary attributes which are more directly applied to combat mechanics.

Strength
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
Agility (often abbreviated AGI) has the following effects:

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 It might be outdated with regard to hunters.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

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 Ally 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
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
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
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.

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

Patch changes