Attributes (pre-6.0)

Primary Attributes

The basic building blocks for your character are your Attributes. They determine your physical and mental aptitude.

The five attributes that define one's character are listed below. They are primary attributes that influence secondary characteristics.

Strength

Abbreviated Str

• Increases your attack power with melee weapons.
• Increases the amount of damage you can block with a shield.

Warriors, Shamans, Druids and Paladins gain 2 melee attack power per point of strength. Rogues, Hunters, Mages, Priests and Warlocks gain 1 melee AP per point of strength.

Strength does not affect critical hit chances at all. Strength does not improve your chance to block, but rather the amount of damage blocked when you succeed. This amount is determined by strength and by the block value of your shield.

Agility

Abbreviated Agi

• Increases your attack power with ranged weapons (not including Wands).
• Increases your armor by 2 per point.
• Increases your chance to score a critical hit with a weapon.
• Increases your chance to dodge attacks.
• Rogues gain a stronger bonus to dodge from agility than other classes.
• A useful formula for calculating the contribution of agility is AEP - Agility Equivalence Points.

Warriors, Hunters and Rogues gain 2 ranged attack power for each point of agility.

Hunters, Rogues and Druids in [Cat Form] gain 1 melee attack power per point of agility.

From the Developers

Agility

• Increases Armor Class by 2 for every point of AGI.
• Increases the chance of a critical hit with melee and ranged attacks. The amount of the increase is dependant on both class and level. For most level 60 character classes, approximately 20 points of AGI will increase your critical hit chance by approximately 1%. Rogues require 29 AGI for an additional 1% critical hit chance, and Hunters require 59 AGI for an additional 1% critical hit chance (NOTE: As ofr patch 2.0, it is now only 33 AGI for 1% crit. Please confirm this and edit as needed), but both of these classes also gain attack power from agility and the items available to them typically have much higher amounts of AGI.
• Increases the chance to dodge an attack. The amount increased is dependant on both class and level. For most level 60 character classes, approximately 20 points of AGI will increase your chance to dodge by approximately 1%. Rogues only require 14.5 AGI for an additional 1% dodge chance. Hunters require 26.5 AGI for an additional 1% dodge chance, but Hunters typically have a high amount of agility, as well as an Aspect spell that further increases their chance to dodge attacks.

Burning Crusade: Hunter Agility Changes

Source: [1]

Attack Power and Crit related changes

• Hunters now get 1 AP per Agility rather than 2. This change helps us provide more interesting stat distributions on hunter items. Previously, Hunters valued Agi significantly above any other stat, such that it was extremely difficult for us to create variety among Hunter items. For example, before this change, we could have spent 1 stat point on an item to give you either 2 AP or 1 Agi (which gave 2 AP along with a small bonus to crit and a small bonus to dodge... clearly the better choice). However, several changes have been made along with this change in order to offset the AP loss.
• Hunters now get significantly more crit per point of Agility than before (about 33agi/crit at level 60).
• Hunters now get more dodge per point of Agility than before (about 20agi/dodge at lvl 60).
• Ranged weapons have had their damage values significantly increased (and consequently the weapon's dps)... this also helps make weapon upgrades feel more meaningful for Hunters than it did previously (along with the other changes, this change is retroactive).
• Most Hunter equipment has been updated to have a better distribution between +Attack Power bonuses and Agility.

Stamina

Abbreviated Sta

• Increases health points. Each point of Stamina gives you an additional 10 HP.

Intellect

Abbreviated Int

• Increases the rate at which you learn weapon skills. (Some people claimed here that it also increases the rate at which you learn other skills, including tradeskills, but Blizzard explicitly states "weapon skills" (source here). Until a source is given for any other claim, we should stick to Blizzard's words.)
• Increases your Mana points. Each point of intellect gives you 15 Mana points.
• Increases your chance to score a critical hit with spells. For mages, at level 60, 59.5 points of Intellect equal 1% chance to crit with spells, varies depending on class.(See Talshuler's Int Research)
• A recent post by Tseric gave the exact figures at level 60 for spell crit for all casters except paladins, they are as follows:

Class	Expected Int at 60	Int per 1% crit chance
Warlock	200	60.6
Druid	192	60.0
Shaman	259	59.5
Mage	286	59.5
Priest	160	59.2

Spirit

Abbreviated Spi

• Also see Spirit for comparision to mana/ 5 second gear.
• Increases health and mana regeneration. Spirit affects all characters' mana and hit point regeneration rates in and out of combat.
• By default health will not regenerate in combat unless your race is Troll or you have certain types of spells or potions in effect (buffs).
• By default mana will not regenerate in a period of 5 seconds after casting a spell.
• A Priest with the appropriate talents can receive a spell damage and healing bonus of up to 25% of their total spirit.
• Also see: Formulas:Health Regen, Formulas:Mana Regen

Weapons

Attack (AR)

Attack Rating.

Power (AP)

Attack Power.

Damage (DMG)

Weapon Damage.

Armor

Defense (AC)

Defense Rating.

Armor

Physical Damage Reduction.

Other information

DPS

The general rule of thumb on how base statistics affect DPS capability is as follows:

• Strength will always contribute to the physical melee DPS for all classes.
• Rogues and Hunters can also use Agility in addition to Strength to increase their base physical melee DPS. Each point of Agility will contribute equally as a point of Strength.
• Druids in [Cat Form] can also utilize Agility to increase their base physical melee DPS. However, each point of Strength contributes twice the amount of DPS as a point of Agility.
• Agility is the only primary statistic to affect physical ranged DPS (bows, guns, throwing weapons) for all classes capable of using them. This becomes especially important for Hunters.
• Wand damage is not affected by a primary statistic.

See also: Formulas:Attack Power for exact calculations.

(Note - This is a generalization for base DPS only. Damage modifiers such as critical chance is not considered.)

Critical Hits

• Agility will increase the chance to score a critical hit with both phsyical ranged and melee damage for all classes. See the Agility section for specifics.
• Intellect will increase the chance to score a critical hit with a spell. For a Mage at level 60 the rate is 1% per 59.5 points in intelligence.

Dodge

• Agility will determine a character's chance to dodge an attack. Rogues 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.