Greetings.

All your stats combined give you an "All Damage Buff", you can see it in the bottom right of the stats screen. Your highest attribute contributes the highest percentage of this bonus, but all attributes contribute together, so you get a good damage boost either way. I have not tried if heavily stacking one attribute gives more boosts then diversity thou.

Ailment is the same as Status/Conditions in other games, Freezing, Burning, Bleeding, Weakness etc, each Damage Type has one.

Attack damage applies to your Basic attacks, regardless of your weapon (Including Staffs and Bows) as well as all your Attack Skills. An Attack Skill is a Skill that is not a Spell (kappa), you can see the keywords in the skill tool tip. Bleeding edge for example is an attack, Burning Embers a spell.

The skill is bleeding edge with a modifier i believe. You can achieve what the streamer did by having a strong 2handed weapon and lots of attack modifiers, as well as the skill that doubles attack damage when cast at full rage. I call it my lawnmower build. :)

Hope i could help.

Edit: Typos

Stats qua stats (i.e. in and of themselves) are important but understanding how and in what way your stats interact with your skill tree is, I would argue, much more important.

Take a look at skills on your skill tree (passives, I believe they are called) and think about the kind of play style you want for your character.

For example, I love the dodge mechanic and being able to blink, dash, and jump around a lot and wanted to build a character that could take advantage of this play style. I also like swords and think they are over-represented in nearly every single dungeon crawler I've ever played, right up from Diablo 1, so I am banking on them having more uniques and legendary variants than, say, staffs.

So I am building a dual wielding swords character and stacking Ferocity and Agility, which will maximize my critical strike chance and attack speed, so I can get lots of damage in over a short amount of time (burst) before jumping out of the way of incoming damage (making the build that some RPG fans call a "glass cannon"). There is a major green passive node on the 2nd rung that makes critical strikes deal 100% more damage, but reduces your characters damage by 30%.

This would be a terrible passive skill to choose if your critical strike chance was only 5%, and is mathematically and demonstrably bad if your critical strike chance is under 30% (assuming that "normal" critical damage is 2x normal damage). As soon as you start getting that critical strike chance above 30% however, this skill starts to make sense. Why? Well, now for the math part...

Let's say you deal 100 damage per attack of your weapon (weapon damage), and your weapon swings once every second (attack speed), and that critical strikes normally deal 2x damage (critical strike damage).

With a 10% critical strike chance:
- at normal (unchanged) damage you will deal 100 damage per attack and 200 damage once every 10 attacks which totals 110DPS
- with the passive skill you will deal 70 damage per attack and 280 damage once every 10 attacks which totals 91DPS

With a 33.3% critical strike chance:
- at normal (unchanged) damage you will deal 100 damage per attack and 200 damage once every 3 attacks which totals 133.3DPS
- with the passive skill you will deal 70 damage per attack and 280 damage once every 3 attacks which totals 140DPS

With a 50% critical strike chance:
- at normal (unchanged) damage you will deal 100 damage per attack and 200 damage once every 2 attacks which totals 150DPS
- with the passive skill you will deal 70 damage per attack and 280 damage once every 2 attacks which totals 175DPS

Now although all stats may contribute to your damage output through things like ailments (bleeding, poison, etc), characters that have a super high wisdom and toughness would not really benefit from this particular passive skill, since neither of those stats increases core weapon damage, attack speed, critical strike chance, or critical strike damage (the four fundamental factors used in this equation).

By understanding that Ferocity and Agility directly boost those four fundamental factors, and that Wisdom and Toughness do not (by themselves), players can understand what choices to make when selecting passive skills and assigning attributes when they level up.

That said, don't be afraid to experiment with different build styles and active skills too! I am currently using a skill that requires a dagger (so am using one sword and one dagger) just to see how that feels with my character. If you really do feel like you are getting your ass kicked or it takes forever to down enemies, take your character to a safe place (like town) and spend half an hour or so figuring out how your attributes interact with your chosen passive skills.

Worst case scenario you could always pay the refund cost and start fresh on your already leveled character!

Edit: messed up my math the first time, corrected it.

Thanks to both of you guys for thorough responses.

So i've converted my character from strictly spells to using a 1 handed axe and a catalyst.

So far I've found its made transferring rage and willpower back and forth MUCH cleaner in making sure i have either one when i really need it.

My main skills I'm using are -- Bleeding Edge, Anhilation, Solar Blast, Bulwark healing, and bladestorm. The goal is a glass cannon spell caster with access to melee when necessary.

I respec'd and put an absurd amount into Ferocity and made wisdom my secondary (Level 33 -- about 280 ferocity, 160 toughness, sub 100 agility and like 190 wisdom. Is that a good choice/beneficial distribution? I want my primary to still be Spells and spell damage with physical/melee as backup if i get rushed/regenerate willpower faster.

I've also balanced the passive between the purple and red trees -- lots of spell damage nodes, crit chance/dmg nodes and then ones that are base damage buff nodes. Basically dodging anything ailment related or utility related.

I absolutely annihilate trash mobs/purple enemies with Solar and Anihilate -- I just seem to struggle with bosses and dealing bigger damage

I'm still kindof having a hard time understanding WOLCEN specific character building.

I've played endless ARPGs and RPGs to understand what Crit and Status are -- I just don't really understand in WOLCEN the subtle stuff. Is there anything about builds that goes beyond the obvious stuff?

Also is there any Wiki besides https://wolcen.wiki.fextralife.com/Wolcen+Wiki
There is some info on there but its minimal

I think the Wiki isn't to well developed yet, as the game is fairly young (Early Access changes to much to get a Wiki going unless the game is gigantic). The trick really lies in the passive Skilltree, and finding synergies that match your skills.

I believe you might want to try to not split up this early. You are in a way a Jack of all trades at the moment. You got a melee Aoe Bleed, a channeled AoE Sacred, a channeled Single target Aether, a healing buff... Try to match some skills, get a theme going, then buff them up.

In early levels high power is achieved by picking a damage type or a keyword or idea and bolstering it to the maximum.
"I will follow the ranger tree and level all my projectiles, attack damage, ranged damage, and frost damage so i can annihilate everthing with my ice bow and projectile based attacks",
"I will follow the red trees and boost my bleed damage, attack dmg and melee damage to the max (All of which benefit bleeding edge), and so on."
Then you collect armor pieces that boost the fitting dmg types, and you will be so strong that everything melts.

Later you will have so many Passive Points that you are kinda forced to diversify anyways, so no worries on missing out. You will also find some items that will give you natural build ideas. You could also check the big Passive Bonusses on the outer ring and see if they give you any ideas. Pick a thing, build around it.

Note however that "real" bosses are designed to be a challenge, unless you have a very "cheesy" optimized build (Some traits are absolutly overpowered) you will need to position yourself correctly, dodge big hits (we got an active dodge for a reason), and damage them for a decent while.

If you want survivability, i heavily recommend Life leech, and heavy damages, with just enough toughness/armor/forceshield to not get one-shot. You deal insane amounts of damages in this game and even 2% of fitting live leech can make you near immortal as long as you dodge CC and keep killing. Another updside is that you can focus on damage and vaporize any garbage before it even hits you. Ofc, only if that fits your style.

Edit: You might also want some skills that you can use at the same time/in quick succession, not mutually exclusive to a specific situation. Some skills that are casted quickly and work together or buff you or Debuff and CC Enemys. None of your skills have any synergy, they are all doing their own thing.