Cross-post from reddit user Tulki
I was curious how this worked, so I tested it out. And well… I’m not sure what they were smoking. As some of you know, how it used to be was you would gain some base stats every level. Now, you gain a huge chunk of base stats every few levels. It turns out this approach screwed up the difficulty curve for new players for a couple of reasons.
1) Base stats are now subject to downscaling. Before, if you were a level 40 player in a level 20 zone, you would have L20 base stats plus your scaled gear and trait stats. Now, all of your stats are lumped together and downscaled, and the result is almost always that you’ll have lower stats than before because you don’t gain base stats every level.
2) That plus the fact that you gain base stats irregularly causes the difficulty curve to shift violently as you level up. Example test case:
I was level 21 in a level 17 zone. All of the mobs were overly difficult despite me having level-appropriate gear and a lucky power amulet drop. I hit level 22 which is a stat bonus level, and gained +40 to all stats (which turned out to be ~35 points when downscaled). Immediately after gaining this level I started absolutely wrecking everything in sight. At level 21, I fought a champion and it destroyed me. At level 22, I destroyed the champion.
I then levelled to 23 (same zone), and I lost 8 points from all of my stats. I then levelled to 24 (same zone), and lost 8 more points. Now the difficulty was significantly higher. I levelled to 25, and almost the entire bonus I had gained before was now negated.
The point is, players who are levelling now reach absurd power plateaus on levels where they gain stat spikes. And then as they level up, difficulty rises dramatically until the next stat spike arrives to alleviate it. It makes little sense, and I have no clue why Arena Net decided this was a good idea.
… bug confirmed by a-net