Guild Wars 2

I’m probably going to embarrass myself by not understanding a few things that may be plain and simple to everyone else, but bear with me!

At level 35 I blew my small fortune on sylvari light armor – it looks awesome, and I love it. Further, the stats were nifty as heck! I figured I’d be set well into my 50s without having to upgrade.

I was mistaken, however, because of the curiosity that is armor scaling. I.. don’t understand the mechanics of it, but I’m guessing that while I’m still playing in lower areas (which I have been) my armor doesn’t so much scale down with my level, but actually below it if my armor level doesn’t match my character level. If someone could confirm/deny/explain that, I’d love to know more.

So, reasonably, I should buy/craft armor to match my level and transmute to keep my cultural skin – but I’m confused about the stats. Why does a level 35 set of armor have stats comparable to ~50? Especially if, at level 36 those stats are suddenly null and void (if I understand correctly)?

I feel really confounded by the idea of having to ‘upgrade’ and lose stats, since I can’t swap to level 40 armor and keep the cultural stats – level and stats are connected, yes?

For the sake of survival, I’ll start upgrading with downgrades (twitch), but I’d like to understand the method in this apparent madness! Wouldn’t it make infinitely more sense if level 35 cultural armor had level 35 stats, so upgrades would be upgrades and not downgrades?

A few insights would be great! So would any suggestions.

First off -- the t1 sylvari light armor is definitely cool looking. Really cool choice, in my opinion, there for a sylvari character.

amyty.6389:

So, reasonably, I should buy/craft armor to match my level and transmute to keep my cultural skin - but I’m confused about the stats. Why does a level 35 set of armor have stats comparable to ~50?

Tier 1 cultural armor has the same stats as level 35 rare armor, as it is level 35 rare armor. For example, the shoulder piece has +10 condition and +7 precision in that sylvari set. If you take a gander at other rare shoulder pieces at level 35, they likewise have +10 in their primary stat and +7 in their secondary.

If you compare it to level 50 blue or even green armor, perhaps it might seem similar, but it is not.

As for the scaling, the way I have come to understand it is about how it sounds like you are thinking -- if you have armor that’s a few levels below your level, when you get scaled down it will scale down relatively as well and be a few levels below your scaled level. Likewise those with solid gear at their level should scale up fairly well when dropping into WvWvW or, for example, the Halloween events we had.

Personally, I haven’t encountered any issues with armor scaling in lower-level areas; things die pretty easy when you have more traits and all that available. Hopefully it’s not messing you up much, as I imagine that could be frustrating. In any case, I wouldn’t worry about it, especially not immediately like at level 36. Heck if I had rare armor at 35 I’d probably keep going with it for a while longer than I normally do [normally just stick with blue and green when leveling, don’t see a lot of point, aside from skins that look cool, to dump money into rare or exotics until later in the game] before worrying about upgrading it.

synk.6907:

First off — the t1 sylvari light armor is definitely cool looking. Really cool choice, in my opinion, there for a sylvari character.

amyty.6389:

So, reasonably, I should buy/craft armor to match my level and transmute to keep my cultural skin – but I’m confused about the stats. Why does a level 35 set of armor have stats comparable to ~50?

Tier 1 cultural armor has the same stats as level 35 rare armor, as it is level 35 rare armor. For example, the shoulder piece has +10 condition and +7 precision in that sylvari set. If you take a gander at other rare shoulder pieces at level 35, they likewise have +10 in their primary stat and +7 in their secondary.

If you compare it to level 50 blue or even green armor, perhaps it might seem similar, but it is not.

As for the scaling, the way I have come to understand it is about how it sounds like you are thinking — if you have armor that’s a few levels below your level, when you get scaled down it will scale down relatively as well and be a few levels below your scaled level. Likewise those with solid gear at their level should scale up fairly well when dropping into WvWvW or, for example, the Halloween events we had.

Personally, I haven’t encountered any issues with armor scaling in lower-level areas; things die pretty easy when you have more traits and all that available. Hopefully it’s not messing you up much, as I imagine that could be frustrating. In any case, I wouldn’t worry about it, especially not immediately like at level 36. Heck if I had rare armor at 35 I’d probably keep going with it for a while longer than I normally do [normally just stick with blue and green when leveling, don’t see a lot of point, aside from skins that look cool, to dump money into rare or exotics until later in the game] before worrying about upgrading it.

Thank you for your help here! Clearly I need look some more into the armor rarity as well, because I’d completely missed that distinction! Which, now that you’ve explained it, makes perfect sense. My spiffy level 35 armor really is still level 35, I just need to find infinitely more spiffy armor of the same, or better, rarity to stop turning into dredge pate. Because I was dying like it was the new black there for a while, despite believing my armor was still spiffy – because I was in areas 15+ levels below!

I feel all edified and such! Thank you!