Questions and Thoughts

[Kreegan]

What attributes you are going to focus on depends on how you want to build your gladiator. Check what the skills you want to develop require, but:
- don't overestimate Intellect - it's expensive and does not help your gladiator fight better past certain threshold (100-110 Intellect is quite enough for a premium-tier slave in legendary gear);
- don't take much Presence if you want your gladiator to fight longer - you increase the chance of getting killed when losing but your fighter will not give up or be saved as easily;
- if you want an offensive fighter, some Chi investment is always good, no matter the class. For defensive ones pay no attention to it, except if you have some skill that needs it - like Surprise Ending.
- Stamina is always good. In the higher brackets it becomes especially important because there are many endurance-draining gladiators. On top of being the second biggest contributor to Health, it also reduces armour penalty which is great.

Apart from these general tips, some "templates" for various gladiators look like this:

Speed Rage (fast Blades) - Agility, Stamina, Chi, some Strength.
Two-handed Rage - Strength, Stamina, Chi, some Agility.
Power Rage (Axes & Maces, a bit rare nowadays) - same as the two-hander.

Offensive War (30/70 or 40/60 Rage/War skills) - depending on the weapon it would be either Agility, Stamina, Size and Chi + some Strength (for Blades and Pole Arms) or Strength, Stamina, Size and Chi + some Agility.
Defensive War (usually 100/100 trains in the War tree with Armoured Fortress as a top skill) - Stamina - lots of it!, Agility if you use Shields, otherwise lots of Strength and Size.

Speed Theatrics (fast Blades, usually Rage/Theatrics hybrid build) - lots of Agility, Chi, some Stamina and Strength. Presence is good here for lowering the opponent's initiative.
Power Theatrics (Axes & Maces) - Strength, Chi and Stamina.
Defensive Theatrics (something + Shield) - Strength, Stamina, Agility, some Presence and Chi.

Offensive Shadow (focus on damage-dealing) - depending on the weapon it would be either Strength or Agility as a main focus + Stamina and Chi.
Endurance-draining Shadow (focus on winning by exhausting the opponent) - Stamina and Agility.

Slayers I don't particularly like, too one-dimensional for my taste so I can't give advises about them.

Trixters currently suffer from terrible balance of their top tier skills. The whole tree of the class has defensive and endurance-draining focus so unsurprisingly everybody goes for Cheating Bastard and tries to win by exhausting the opponent before he/she manages to drop your guy. Stamina is not terribly important here - at least not as much as with the other classes - but still some investment in it is required. Apart from that you need Agility to boost your defense and that's pretty much it.