How is this even a question?
Our daily lvl 2 swamp fractals runs are most IMPORTANT AND SERIOUS THING IN THE ENTIRE GAME! I mean, it’s really impossible to actually fail one of these as long as you can dodge out of some orange circles and autoattack, but I’ve done the math and the existence of your upleveled character in our group with the stat loss from your non-ascended armor adds exactly 4.37 extra seconds to run.
That’s COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE! That’s 4.37 extra seconds you are keeping me away from obtaining the purely cosmetic item that hasn’t even been released yet and will one day clearly demonstrate how superior I am, because of my ability to do lvl 2 swamp runs over and over again with 4.37 seconds better efficiency!
It’s like you are STEALING from me! Why would you STEAL from me? WHY WOULD YOU DARE TO JOIN MY GROUP AND STEAL FROM ME? DO YOU THINK THIS IS A GAME YOU PLAY FOR FUN IN A TOTALLY CASUAL ENVIRONMENT WITH NO CHALLENGE THAT REQUIRES ME TO USE SOME ARBITRARY METRIC LIKE TIME PER RUN TO ESTABLISH HOW MUCH BETTER I AM THAN YOU?
I wish public PKing was a thing in this game so I can punch every upleveled noob DEAD IN THE GODkitten FACE WHEN THEY TRY TO STEAL FROM ME!
Doubtful it’s that low. Do you have the math that you can share?
No, I’m being satirical and don’t feel the need to share math anymore than you, who posted reasoning largely based on perception of uplevels.
There is clear downsides, but I could really care less if uplevels are in a casual fractal run, because as long as they high enough to have masterwork quality gear and some rares, it’s not a huge deal in the outcome.
The upscaling issue stopped being as bad as it was when stat points stopped being built into your trait choices. It still has very clear downsides, but they are just mostly due to the issue of gear. Leveling characters don’t have much besides masterwork and a few rares, which doesn’t upscale to be adequate to a level 80.
That issue makes this issue very variable with extreme ends of a large spectrum. You can make a reference to a lvl 10 and say upleveling is bad, but we’re talking about a character who most likely has purely blue items with one or two stat bonuses per item and sigil and rune choices not relevant to their build. There is nothing there to scale up.
That’s very different to a lvl 40-60 character who has masterwork and rare items with three stat bonuses and hopefully invested into a few silver into major rune and sigil choices relevant to their build. The quality of your weapon is probably the biggest influence and having a rare one makes a big difference, because it determines what weapon damage range you will get scaled up to at 80. That’s the base number all multipliers and the armor divisor are applied to, so an uplevel with a blue is at much, much bigger disadvantage.
Another issue is traits and utility skills, which do influence a character’s effectiveness, but that’s a class and build issue. At 45-60 range, you are maxxing out your second specialization line and since most classes only have two heavily damage focused specializations to begin, it’s much less of an issue than a level 10.
Utility skills are also class specific as well. Like my current end game daredevil build, mostly uses utility skills for survival and breaking bars; all the dps comes from weapon attacks and the Critical Strike trait line, all of which I would have available to me at the level 40ish area.
So like…when it comes to running casual fractals, I don’t give a kitten very much about up levels. It doesn’t influence the success of the event and I notice really marginal change in the completion of the fractals, because let’s be honest: if you are pugging casual level fractals, more times than not you are carrying a level 80 with a kittenty build or who is too busy chatting with his friends to be more effective than uplevel.
Now, fractals where AR starts to matter or a very low level character who doesn’t have the gear for the system to scale up…that’s different. But I tend to handle that more one on one privately before removing someone.
Rehabilitated Elementalist. Now, trolling the Thief forums with my math.
Elitists are a problem, but writing a salty version of them with an essay after can be just as bad.