Guild Wars 2

How do gear stats compare in WvW for a bolstered lvl 80 and a real 80? Is there a huge difference or only minor differences? I’m not sure I understand how it works. What I’m curious about is, will a group of bolstered players have a chance in a 5 v 5 with legit 80 players? How big is skill compared to gear at that point?

i’d like to know this as well

I’ve found there is a decent- but not hugely significant- difference, at least when it comes to 1v1. What really makes the difference is the traits and possibly runes/sigils.

Well, actually, it highly depends on from what level you are. If you are between 1-30, you gradually have no chance of beating a level 80 player, even if he only has paper sheets on his character.

If you are between 30 and 60, with some very good PvP knowledge you can stand your ground against most, in 1v1 situations that is, but if it comes to group fights, you’ll still die, and players with that shiny green arrow next to their name enjoy going down first in fights, not just because they are easier to kill, but because you are “marked” easier to kill.

From 60 onwards to 80, it pretty much comes down to skill at firsthand, and gear on second, though level 80 full exotics still have the upper hand as I feel.

Summed up, you can still enjoy the World versus World no matter what level you are, as you are bound to bump into enemies near your level, the majority is still not 80 inside WvW, but if you happen to run into a 5v5 with geared 80s, don’t take it out on ArenaNet, you have the chance to be like them too.

Edit: What I forgot to mention is, yes, it is mostly coming down to the advantages of higher level runes/sigils and traits.

I think gear + levels both matter. I tend to aim for players with green arrows first, they’re easy kills. Big crits give = big smiles.

Depends who you ask.

Some say it makes very little difference while others say it makes a big difference.

From what i’ve seen gear and level do make a difference.

Levelled my warrior purely in WvW and it felt pretty squishy against the “bigger” guys. Now it’s 80 and fully geared for tough/vit and I can sit back and giggle at most people trying to kill me …. especially thieves trying to do it solo. I don’t do nowhere near the amount of damage some of the “glass cannons” produce but I can soak up a spanking and ask for seconds which is great when trying to push through a stalemate standoff or a guarded choke point.

What you need to remember is while you may get a bit of a boost in stats it is only an “average” boost. It doesn’t compare to those 80’s that are geared up with full traits, runes and sigils.

You can be still be useful no matter what level you are and you will still get kills as long as you don’t go charging head first into a mob of folk.

I suggest playing with your gear while in WvW to see how it affects your stats.
My level 20ish guardian has very similar stats to my level 80 warrior with some exotics. However, this is only true if you have gear that is very good for your level. For instance, at level 20 I had all level 20 gear that was mostly green and my stats were very very similar to my 80 warrior. Then I leveled to 21 and I noticed my stats actually went down rather than up. Then again at 22 my stats went even lower.

In other words, with the way gear scaling works it is very important to have good gear for your particular level if you want to be competitive with higher level players.

it makes a huge difference. When i was lvl 30-40 i was doing a few hundred damage and crit for maybe 1k and now at 80 i do upwards of 5k damage crits

It can be pretty significant especially if you out level your gear. You will also lack some important traits and skills. However, you can still have fun and be useful. Doing supply runs to fix that wall getting pounded on can actually help your side win the war. Keeping eyes on objectives can help. Use and help build siege. Avoid small scale battles for the time being.

When my ranger was lower level, even with rare gear and upgrades, I got run over consistently by full level 80s. I could give them a good fight sometimes but it pretty much always ended the same. But I think I was mostly spamming keys hoping for victory.

Now at level 80 with a mix of rare and exotic gear my ranger holds his own quite well in 1-vs-1 fights. Biggest improvement was probably more from experience in PvP than in the gear. I had to lose a bunch of fights to learn what worked vs other classes, key spamming definitely didn’t win any fights for me.

There’s a pretty big difference – however that does not mean you cannot be useful.
Currently in WvW I’m running with a low level alt, cause my Ranger doesn’t really seem useful. And while I can’t kill much on my own, I still feel much more useful

Just do go 1-vs-1 with a thief.

When you are upscaled it upscales your base attributes to that of level 80. But from my understanding it does nothing for your gear.

This means a level 30 in blues has about 700+ less attributes than a level 80 in exotics. Which is why they deal 4k’s to you and you deal 300’s to them. Obviously as you level up this discrepancy decreases, as the gap between your gear and theirs gets smaller and smaller.

TBH I wouldnt expect much until you’re at least level 60.

This means a level 30 in blues has about 700+ less attributes than a level 80 in exotics. Which is why they deal 4k’s to you and you deal 300’s to them. Obviously as you level up this discrepancy decreases, as the gap between your gear and theirs gets smaller and smaller.

This is incorrect.

I had a lv20 guardian wearing best-in-slot toughness armor for his level.
When he was scaled to lv80 in WvW, his toughness shot up to 2500.
In fact, even after i removed a few armor pieces, it stayed at 2500 which i concluded was some kind of stat-scaling limit or cap.
I switched a few pieces out for +vitality armor and came to 2500 toughness and 1800 vitality.

That guy was lv20.