Guild Wars 2

I would like all your opinions on this;
Earlier today I was completing Lornar’s pass for map completion (I was level 67 at the time) – Downscaled to the effective area, and therefore my damage was around 300-500 with crits. Very balanced, had fun completing the area.

I decided to go do my storymode. My current mission was:

Order of Whispers: Defend Claw Island.
I was downscaled to level 50… and I’ve never struggled so much in all my years of gaming
Each attack did around about 50 damage, no exaggeration. It has taken me roughly half an hour just to complete that mission because of the risen have such “ridiculous” health in comparison to my pathetic damage output.

Example: “Seek and revive deputy Mira”
I was half way through revival and a single risen thrall attacks me for quite a large amount of damage. I dodge-roll out the way of it’s knockdown attack, proceeding to use Entangle (Yeah.. An elite against a single foe), followed by barrage, Hunter’s shot, then using rapid fire in combination of Quickening Zephyr. My screen flooded with numbers… all of them below 70. At the end of my onslaught I had barely taken off any health. In the end I decided to use Point blank shot and just keep spamming Troll Unguent and “bunny” around.
“Abnormality”??: When the risen abominations appeared, I was absolutely fine; being able to swiftly deal with them as if I was fighting a normal foe.

Throughout the entire mission I had to rely on my pet doing damage (Some reason it was doing abnormally high even for it’s downscale) along with the Sylvari and Charr.

I just want thoughts really – I had a spare repair canister to fix the damage to all my armour so it is nothing to worry about; I’m just curious as to other players happenings with this particular mission and how they handled it

Abnormality: Just started the mission there-after, this time being a level 51. My first encounter with the enemy was absolutely normal… Was it simply just a fluke with my incredibly low damage?

Sounds like it. That is bizarrely low.

I did DCI with a level 44 (I think) and lvl 40-44 equipment on a ranger and was doing a helluvalot more damage than that. Well done for getting through it!

I’ve bumped into this in zones and in the story mission; I don’t think their downscaling algorithm works in a consistent fashion and it affects some classes more than others.

I’ve got five alts, three currently 80 and the other two mid-70’s; in general, because I do the hearts, DE, stories, exploration, and crafting, I have always outleveled the zones and crafting. Before this last change to the scaling algorithm, all of my characters were generally a bit OP when they went down to lower zones (usually for map completion activities, but also for crafting materials).

Since the change in the algorithm, I’ve found that:

• My pets (ranger and mesmer) obviously do not scale down as much as my characters; pets seem to continue to remain a bit OP
• Ranged weapons seemed to have been scaled down more than melee weapons; my ranger and elementalist are almost ineffective unless they go melee (which means the elementalist doesn’t last very long at all)
• Armor mitigation doesn’t seem to have been scaled down in the same way as offensive capability; my warrior often appears invulnerable even again five mobs, while my elementalist has trouble fighting even one… that’s NORMAL mobs

When they’re in level-appropriate areas, the different classes play in the manner I expect and grew accustomed to as they were leveling up.

Granted, it’s just perceptions; I haven’t been collecting any data on the phenomenon. However, I trust my perceptions. The characters definitely play diferently in lower zones (my elementalist – fire specced, no less – has to almost pop all her skills to take down individual normal mobs).

It’s rather disappointing when lower level zones/mobs are more difficult to fight for some classes than zones.mobs of the same level.

Leww.5149:

Abnormality: Just started the mission there-after, this time being a level 51. My first encounter with the enemy was absolutely normal… Was it simply just a fluke with my incredibly low damage?

I’ve occasionally had this happen vs Risen Brutes. Only in PS instances too.

There seems to be a down scaling problem, which is affecting all forms of pve. This seems to have started like 2 weeks go and was supposed to make the low level content more competitive for the high level characters. I think the new algorithm assumes that a level 80 character should have a full rare or exotic level 80 equipment set and then downscales the player based on that if she/he enters a lower level area or does personal story steps below her actual level. But this algorithm is bugged:

- yesterday I was doing Retribution with my ranger, level 71 back then, scaled down to level 59. It was difficult to as hell (I explain in another thread, where people complain Retribution being too difficult how I did it). I can tell you it was really the hard mode in pve. Notes: My ranger was underequipped with level 65 green items mostly, but also some level 55 blue stuff. I redid the mission after buying and crafting her appropriate level stuff. The cheapest level 70 exotic weapons cost around 35 silver. Eased up stuff a lot!
- I have been doing level 1-50 areas with my level 80 engineer with full exotic set. She is balanced semi-glass cannon with a lot of heals (8 healing skills!) and CC (5 CC skills). Going to level 1-15 areas is especially funny. I can kill almost any enemy with simple rifle #5, #3, #4 combo or an entire mob (even 8 enemies) using grenade barrage. Champion boss goes down in less than 10 seconds. I am of course using food buffs. I have around 3000 in attacking power at level 80. At level 80 my grenades do pathetic damage, only 254 for attack #1. It takes a long time to kill anything. Yet, at levels 1-15 the damage is like 50 points. Get close to your enemy and multiply it with three (grenadier grandmaster trait) and combine with food buffs = insta gibbed low level enemies. Just like my thief can also instagib anything at low level using power build and dagger #5, steal+mug, #1 and #2 combo. Downscaled thief at low level = super fast kills :-)

Summary: do not play with underequipped character when you are downscaled.

Ayna Wise and Ayna Micro