In Lost Ark, there are six attributes you can have on your gear. However, most players only find three of them truly useful in PvE endgame, while the others are referred to as the “bad stats”. We will tell you which attributes you should avoid and why.
Which attributes are the “bad” ones? The bad attributes are:
- Mastery
- Competence
- Toughness
At least that’s what user Civocivocivo says, who just created the reddit thread with the most upvotes on Lost Ark (via reddit). He criticizes that even players with high gear scores often rely on the wrong stats. In the comments, he receives a lot of support for his statement and his overview.
He even calls the three attributes useless and claims that in Korea, players are immediately sorted out in endgame if they use these attributes. This should slowly catch on in the West as well.
What exactly is the problem? While the other attributes – Crit, Specialization, and Agility – significantly increase damage, the three “bad stats” provide specific or defensive bonuses. However, that is supposed to be unimportant and counterproductive in the later dungeons.
More damage and fewer cooldowns are the best defense
What exactly do the attributes do?
- Mastery increases damage to enemies that have been knocked back, staggered, and/or inflicted with debuffs. The problem is, however, that bosses in PvE are often immune to CC.
- Competence increases the duration of debuffs and the damage you inflict with them. Moreover, the duration of debuffs on yourself is reduced.
- Toughness, on the other hand, increases your defense, shields, and healing.
Toughness still sounds interesting on paper for the support classes Bard and Paladin, but even they focus on Specialization and Agility in endgame, as they strengthen class abilities and reduce the cooldown of skills.
- Crit increases the chance of a critical hit.
- Specialization enhances your class-specific abilities on X and Y, as well as the damage of the Awakening ability.
- Agility increases your movement and attack speed and also reduces the cooldown on skills.
How big is the difference between the stats? Enormous. The reddit user mentioned two examples in his thread.
As a Shadow Hunter with only 200 Specialization, you deal 17% more damage with abilities in Demon form and the duration of the form is increased by 8.5%. In contrast, someone with 1,200 Specialization deals 103% more damage and extends the duration by 51.5%.
Those who use the rotation correctly are said to be able to deal a total of 83% more damage and also return to Demon form after each rotation of the regular abilities.
As a second example, he shows the damage of the Death Blade when attacking with the Surge skill from behind the enemy. With 200 Specialization, it deals 1.72 million damage, while with 1,200 Specialization it deals 3.38 million.
As a rule of thumb, many say: The faster you deal damage and the fewer cooldowns on your abilities, the less you have to deal with boss mechanics. Attack is, therefore, the best defense in Lost Ark.
Mastery plays a role in PvP
Can the “bad stats” not be used at all? In PvE, the stats don’t matter and should be ignored by you. In PvP, it’s a bit different.
Especially the attribute Mastery plays a more important role there, as you generally want to incapacitate enemies with CC. It is practical to deal more damage at the same time. For example, Paladins, War Dancers, or Soul Fist utilize Mastery.
Some guides and builds also suggest skilling some Toughness when doing PvP. However, this varies from class to class and build to build.
However, in arena PvP, gear doesn’t matter; instead, you simply choose your preferred attributes before the fight. So you don’t need gear with the appropriate attributes.
What do you think about this statement regarding attributes? And will you only use the three good stats in the future, or will you not let that dictate your choices?
All guides to Lost Ark on MeinMMO can be found here: Lost Ark Guides: All tips, tricks, and builds at a glance.
