Guild Wars 2

so i always find that the way i play i outlevel my gear very quickly, but i am also trying to finish up a lot of the map so i am almost always being downleveled.

so when my gear is downleveled, which of these is the closest way to how it is recalculated -

1. if i am level 60 and i step into a level 40 zone it multiplies all my gear x 2/3 or .66?

2. if i am level 60 and i step into a level 40 zone it just takes 20 levels off of my gear by some internal math?

3. or is there a better explanation of how this works.

i have been wondering, and not really able to tell by my numbers. i wonder because lets say i am level 54, but because i am so far behind in my gear that my average level is 35. then i step into a level 30 area and i am deleveled to 30. if the game just knows that my gear is at 35 and takes it down to 30 that is not so bad. but if it multiplies it all down then i still have poop gear. eh well, anyways the pve seems not so bad most of time, i am just sleepy and wanted to make a crazy post.

From the wiki

In PvE, a character’s effective level and attributes are automatically reduced based on the enemy levels immediately around the player, and there can be numerous level scalings per area/zone. Skills and equipment are retained, so the area is easier because of this, but should still be challenging to play.

While that leaves a tiny bit of ambiguity, I do believe what happens is that the stats get down-ranked to the whatever the top tier of that level is. You still retain your gear but the actual usable stats are capped.

I’ve found that if there is a large gap between your equipped weapons level and your actual level, you will find things more challenging than they should be when you’re down scaled. I haven’t noticed anything with armor, so it may just be a DPS reduction.

I figured out the hard way that I had forgotten to keep my underwater weapons up to date My level 80 has exotic weapons, but she’s still wearing a mix of rares and less for her armor and the lower level areas are really easy. The upside is that my repair bills are really low, although I rarely die any more.

My level 80 ele is downleveled to 31 in gendarran.
407 power
323 toughness
354 vitality
In my exotic armor.

My exotic chestpiece grants him 101 power, 72 toughness, 72 vitality
My rare chestpiece grants him 89 power, 64 toughness, 64 vitality (it’s level 80 like the exotic one)

When I switch to the rare chestpiece from the exotic my new stats are
404 power, 321 toughness, 353 vitality

Remove chestpiece completely and I have
383 power, 306 toughness, 337 vitality

From this we can infer several things
1. armor is downscaled
2. exotics will still be better than rares/masterworks/uncommons. This is more noticeable the higher zone you go into, as the difference between the scalings grows wider (youll note that the rare chestpiece differed by 1 vitality when scaled to 31. But if I was in say a level 70 zone, that would probably be closer to 7 vitality.)

additional notes:
Im not sure at what level it is gear starts to have 3+ stats. But the level 35 rare gear from AC only has 2 stats on it. Meaning that despite any scaling it is worse. If you want some more concrete numbers:

My exotic boots: 34 power, 24 precision, 2% crit (my precision at 31 is 287)
With the rare 35 boots that have: 10 power, 1% crit (my power drops from 407 to 401, and my precision from 287 to 282)
Thus even equal (or closer to) leveled rares for the downscaling are still worse than downscaled gears.

What does this mean for you as a player?
1. Better stats will help regardless of downscaling. But they will not allow you to steamroll lower level content
2. While I havent done concrete testing for it, it’s highly unlikely that gear upscales in a different pattern. Which means in WvWvW your gear can and will matter, especially as a low level, to the point where a level 25 blue will still be worse than a level 50 blue, which will be worse than a level 70 blue, and so on. While I dont know how the scaling works exactly, it’s easy enough to tell for yourself that upscaled players are often much weaker than non upscaled.

At any given level, you have a base attribute score. This is your “natural” (naked, untraited, etc.) power (or toughness, or vitality, or precision).

If you want to know what this is, the formula, I believe for points earned per level is:

floor(level/10) * 2 + 4
You also get a 20-point bonus to this.

At level 1, your stats are 24
At level 80, your stats are 916

Divide your current stats (base + armor + food + buffs + etc.) by the base for your actual level, then multiply by the base for your effective level. That is your stat score.

Pandemoniac.4739:

I’ve found that if there is a large gap between your equipped weapons level and your actual level, you will find things more challenging than they should be when you’re down scaled. I haven’t noticed anything with armor, so it may just be a DPS reduction.

Just searched the forum for downscale, and this thread popped up. Convenient, since it asks what I was going to ask.

What I have been noticing is that my characters are getting slaughtered in lower level zones, because I haven’t been keeping armor up to date. My level 46 warrior was wearing level 35 rare crafted items, for instance, and went back to Brisban Wildlands for completion. There was a group of bandits that dropped her to defeated faster than you can say “holy gee willikers, Batman, that’s a lot of damage taken.”

I went back to town, and bought more level-appropriate gear. I haven’t run into the same group of bandits again (that was for an event), but I do notice that I’m taking a lot less damage.

I still don’t know exactly how it works, but it seems to me like the armor is getting downscaled pretty significantly.

You’re downscaled proportionally, so if you’re not keeping your gear up-to-date you’re going to be weaker. When you level-up in an area you’re downscaled to, you’re actually going to lose stats (not taking into consideration that extra trait point).