Guild Wars 2

I get the basic jist of it: as a level 80, if I enter a level 20-ish zone, I get downleveled to around 20-ish.

However, I’m wondering about how the gear is scaled down in relation to the level of the character wearing it.

Disregarding traits since we know trait-wise, a level 80 is going to be better than a level 35 when it comes to that, how would the following situations compare to each other:

• Level 80 character in Level 80 Rare quality equipment doing Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable Mode, which is level 35 content.
• Level 80 character in Level 35 Rare quality equipment doing Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable Mode.
• Level 35 character in Level 35 Rare quality equipment doing Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable Mode.

Let’s assume and reiterate: no traits, just plain raw stats from base level and gear.

Although, since level 60+ gear has three stats attached to the gear, I suppose a downleveling test with 60+ gear might be more suitable. In that case— we can also use Sorrow’s Embrace, since it is level 60~65 content.

• Level 80 character in Level 80 Rare quality equipment doing Sorrow’s Embrace Explorable Mode, which is level 65 content.
• Level 80 character in Level 65 Rare quality equipment doing Sorrow’s Embrace Explorable Mode.
• Level 65 character in Level 65 Rare quality equipment doing Sorrow’s Embrace Explorable Mode.

My hypothesis is that there could be a ratio scaling of gear-level to player-level in that a Level 80 character in level 35 or 65 gear would not be as statistically efficient than a level-appropriate character wearing level-appropriate gear, but I have yet to test this and wondering if someone has already tested this already. Again, I’m not counting traits, because traits themselves would really screwball the tests; but they are still important in giving a slight advantage over level-appropriate characters of that content.

Alternatively, I could probably use Blue or Green quality versions of that gear since it’s cheaper to obtain just for the purpose of this test.

Purpose: This would be used as a gauge to statistically evaluate a person’s expected efficiency as far as their gear is concerned when inviting someone to a dungeon. Barring any level 80-only dungeons, maybe one could still invite a level 80 still in level 65 gear to do a level 65 dungeon. Of course, elitists would still be elitists and would demand a near-full group of 80’s for AC Story, but that would be an extreme situation.

Problem is that I don’t have a level 65 character so I can’t test that part, but it is something to consider.

Anyone have any insights on this particular feature and how it really works? Any suitable feedback is appreciated!

Well, I have done this test in Sorrow’s Embrace on a Level 80 Warrior in Sorrow’s Embrace Explorable Mode with the use of:

• No Gear!
• Level 65 Masterwork Gear
• Level 80 Masterwork Gear
• Level 80 Exotic Gear

I’ve only really paid attention a little to this for up-scaling. I know at level 20, each 1 stat on my gear was translated into 7 in wvw 80 scaled terms. Once I figured that one out, I quickly realized that the most powerful gear for that level range in wvw was gear with % crit damage, as it 1% was being scaled to 7%. I managed to do some really rediculous damage on my warrior alt. It may very well have been more than was feasible at 80 in exotics. I think I ended up having 2.1k power, 99% crit rate, and +110% crit damage. Something like that.

Basically, what I speculate based on my limited findings, is that stats are scaled. The level of gear itself isn’t a factor, your actual level vs current level is the only factor that matters. There is very likely to be some sort of static conversion rate. Ie difference of 60 levels is a 7:1 ratio as in my data. I did verify though, that it was a consitent 7 to 1 conversion, there were no outliers whatsoever.

I tested it with a mix of stats, power, precision, crit damage, toughness, vitality, healing, and condition damage. I didn’t test for duration % however… though I might now that I think about it next time I’m in game. When I went full +vitality on the same lvl 20 war, he had nearly 40k hp though, which was funny.