Traits: An Analysis

[Lensor]

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. 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 [...]

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[Alaris]

tl;dr: spreading across attribute lines is just fine in most cases.

[Art]

I'm waiting for the study notes.

-Art

[Gorani]

As the Elementalist relies heavily on his attunement swapping abilities, I'd say (without knowing all traits for the Ele yet and no precise numbers for damage/heal etc. values) that spreading out the traits among all five trait categories will be a choice that can't do anything wrong.
Of course, you can chose traits that are less beneficial (e.g. Signet boosting traits without taking signets on your skill bar)

[djacob]

You can change major traits without paying a fee, and signet traits are major ones... so I'd assume that you'd change those out when adding/removing signets from your bar.

[Alaris]

I can easily see elementalists focusing more on damage or support, in which case they're probably better off fire/air or water respectively. Those swapping often (like me) should also consider arcane, although that's not going to be every elementalist (to their loss imo). But even swapping often, it might pay off more to spec in those major that give you the bonuses you want.

There's plenty of place to adjust your major traits to your specific build without having to pay, the minors and attribute mainly give general bonuses anyway.

[Gorani]

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.

Since I haven't taken a look at other professions except the Ele, I find this quoted text interesting. So there is a common ground among all professions.

With the skill tools available I have currently set up a 10/10/20/15/15 setup. Signet Mastery & Written in Stone looked nice so I wanted those two major traits

[Alaris]

It seems that way, yes. I am an alt-a-holic, so I was looking at several professions trying to understand how traits are organized.

Seems like even major traits fall into that general common ground, although there are enough major traits that don't so you can easily respec without necessarily having to redistribute your points.

[Wisley]

I have not looked into it in detail so this type of analysis is very useful. I like the idea of spreading the attributes around, but I guess we have to wait and see how important that last 5 is to get to 30 in some lines.

[Gorani]

We should not forget that 70 trait points are only available at maximum level. You will have a lot less traits during your character progression toward being a hero in end game content.
Even a PvP character should need unlocks for them, or will he have all traits unlocked too ?