Guild Wars 2

I notice that when moving from lions arch to a low level zone my crit chance may stay the same but my crit damage will decrease substantially.

While I understand downscaling is supposed to drop your hp and damage output to that of a character who would otherwise be playing the zone at the correct level, this seems wrong.

It makes sense to drop power etc down to reasonable levels, but crit chance and crit damage are essentially a post-damage-formula increase to your damage in a percentage form. A +20% damage buff from having +50% crit dmg and 20% crit should be a +20% damage buff whatever zone you’re in, otherwise it makes gearing for crits less attractive in downscaled environments compared with gearing for stats which decrease linearly such as vitality, toughness and power.

The difference is that crit chance is derived from precision, which is scaled down.

Crit damage is a direct bonus, and if you’ll notice, there is less of it on lower-level items than on higher-level items. So even though, as a percentage, it should scale inherently, that’s not how it gets put on items. So the scaling itself is working properly.