Guild Wars 2

Supposedly you can both level and attain gear in WvW. I thought I’d give this a try experimentally with my necromancer, but first I want to understand the system better.

Leveling makes sense – kill players, complete events, earn xp, karma, etc. all the same as PVE.

Now the point of gear. And this is a conversation that I’ve had from different angles as I try and understand how ‘dynamic scaling’ works. From the wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sidekick):

In WvW, characters will have their effective level boosted to 80 but do not receive any new abilities or gear, and experience must still be gained to unlock them. Therefore, higher level characters will still be more powerful than lower level characters, despite both having the same effective level. Levels gained in WvW are kept and a player may level to the maximum 80 entirely within WvW.

This tells me very little, specifically about how I am enticed to bother with gear at all. If I am level 20 wearing all level 20 blues and I enter WvW, what is the net result on my ‘effective level’? Suppose I upgrade one of those to a level 20 green, what then?

Then you are only slightly better than you were before.
You’ve got to earn your way up, and fight with the pack.

To be honest I didn’t pay much attention to my stats when I entered WvW at lower lvls. So i can’t tell you exactly how much of a difference it would make. I would imagine very minimal though if your only upgrade is from a lvl 20 blue to a lvl 20 green. Even at lvl 80 the net difference is only about 10 total points(between a gree lvl 80 and blue lvl 80), something like 2-4 on each stat.

I do remember going into WvW when I was around lvl 50 with Power/Vit gear on and my HP was higher then when I went into the borderlands at lvl 80 with no Vit gear on so it takes your gear stats into account somehow.

Honestly I wouldn’t worry to much about gear though. I did a lot of WvW before lvl 30 and never felt like I was to weak to kill anyone.

Oh and don’t listen to all the tools that will say crap like no one should enter WvW until they are lvl 80. Those are generally the same tools that have a a ton of excuses for why they are getting beat all the time.

I run with assault squads frequently and we will sometimes have 1 or 2 people in their 30’s and we don’t have a problem. I’ll take a smart lvl 30 getting upscaled to lvl 80 then a stupid lvl 80 in full exotic gear any day.

Hmm ok, thanks for the advice.

So gear does make a difference, meaning there is incentive to acquire and wear gear, though it sounds like it is very minimal. This is in contrast to, say, sPVP where skill is the only thing that counts since all gear is equal. Do I have that right?

Yep that is exactly right.

As far as acquiring gear from WvW. If you are talking getting the exotics that you purchase with Honor badges. Well it takes a long time to gear out that way. You do get gear drops though that are level appropriate while in WvW. At 80 I just went and bought a full set of rares before I started working on exotics. A full set of rares cost like 2 gold, it was pretty cheap.

People need to start approaching it in the following way (and this applies not just to upscaled toons, but level 80s as well):

• Gear is for looking pretty.
• Skill is for playing well.

• Your reward for playing well is having fun, looking pretty and getting money.

• Your ego will not be fed in GW2 by massively outclassing people with gear that has stats greatly superior than most other people.

Learn those mantras and live by them, and you’ll find you enjoy the game a lot more.