Yeah, one of the problems is that for most things, tribute is more or less a dead mechanism these days. I don't have a comprehensive list or anything, but the effects generally do not stack with other spell/item effects (some with spells, some with worn item effects, again, don't ask me which is which). You get whichever is highest. So back in the day when very few people had those effects, tribute was a great way to fill in the gaps. Today? Almost all gear has better focus effects than you can get with tribute, and most classes will have spells or abilities that will supersede any tribute effects you might use.
This is further complicated by the tribute effects not actually showing up as buffs you can see and examine. Add in the old school style of "make up new/confusing/inconsistent names for every effect", and it's really really hard to tell if the stuff you're spending tribute on is actually doing anything at all. Frankly, I haven't bothered with it in years for these reasons. There might be a couple of effects that still do something useful, but if so they are so minor that you probably wont notice the difference. Remember that tribute was created well before they started tossing in gear with long lists of focus effects on them. So something that slightly increased your damage or regen or what not was a big deal. In today's game, where you have hundreds of points of every possible effect running all the time for free, tribute effects, even those that aren't overwritten, are mostly lost in the wash.
That's just my opinion, of course.
Edited, Dec 8th 2015 11:42am by gbaji
____________________________
King Nobby wrote:
More words please