It seems that the trait system is complicated enough for the min-max crowd to sweat over it for a long time. Meanwhile, here’s a handy guide for the rest of us.

The big 5: Each profession have 5 trait lines, which can be roughly described as pressure, criticals, defense, healing/support, and profession-specific. Each boosts 2 attributes that are most closely linked to how that given profession fulfills this role. For example, for all professions the pressure trait line increases power and condition duration, except for guardian which increases power and boon duration. However, as guardians rely on boons more for damage, this is understandable. Likewise, the elementalists’s four first trait lines are fire (pressure), air (criticals), earth (defense) and water (healing/support), with the fifth tied to arcane and attunement swapping. So if you remember pressure, criticals, defense, healing/support, and profession-specific, it should be easy to see where you need to invest your attribute points.