As you progress through The Division, you’ll get to a stage where you’ll know what sort of player you want to be, and this is all linked to three attribute levels – Firearms, Stamina, and Electronics.
These values are affected by the gear that you equip. Stamina is the simplest one to explain – the more stamina you have, the more health you have, which means it’ll take longer for you to kick the bucket.
The firearms value is directly linked to how much damage you can do with your weapons. While each gun has a damage per second (DPS) value, if you have an identical gun but a larger firearms value than your opponent, you’ll dish out more damage overall.
Electronics is linked to your skill power, so the higher this value, the better your skills will be. For example, if you have a higher electronics level, your shield will be able to take more damage and recover quicker than normal.
Balancing all of these values can be quite tricky, as they’re all determined by the gear you equip, in a similar way to the Intelligence, Discipline and Strength stats linked to armour in Destiny. If you want to be a glass cannon for example (aka maximising your firepower at the expense of your durability), then you’ll want to equip gear which is focused primarily on your firearms value.
Higher level weapons have perks – such as increased damaged, or a chance of blinding enemies with each headshot – which require minimum levels for both electronics and stamina values.