Guild Wars 2

Just a friendly reminder slash “holy crap this should be posted in general so people take notice”…

Every single trait or skill in the game that provides a bonus to stats but does not show up on your buff bar is currently being multiplied twice by level scaling. I put more details here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Stat-buffs-break-when-up-downscaled/first#post5245828

What’s it mean? An example:

Mesmers gain +7.5*level in toughness while channeling mantras. This doesn’t show up on the buff bar. The game instead adds it to your character’s total stats while channeling, and then applies level scaling to it. The result?

Level 21 mesmer in WvW channels a mantra. Level 21 mesmer gets +600 toughness for being a scaled level 80, right? Wrong. Level 21 mesmer gets +600 toughness TIMES EIGHT = +4800 toughness because the game is scaling the buff twice.

Got a trait that offers +200 precision “at level 80”? Slap it on a low level character and walk into WvW or fractals. Every hit is now a critical hit, and as long as you’re holding a level 21 masterwork weapon, you will deal level 80 ascended damage.

By the way, this also works against you when downscaled. Taking the mantra example again, suppose you’re a base level 80 mesmer in a level 21 zone.

The tooltip will say +157 toughness (the correct amount for a level 21). You do not gain +157 toughness. The game downscales it again. You get +19 toughness instead.

What if a level 21 mesmer uses it in a level 21 zone? They get the normal amount. +157 toughness.

This needs to be fixed. A good three quarters or more of the stat buffs that exist in this game are currently broken in this fashion, and are either significantly weaker than intended if you are level 80, or can be exploited in spectacular fashion if you’re not level 80 yet. This is honestly the most hilariously bugged mechanic I have ever observed in the history of Guild Wars 2. Like conditions on your necro? Slap on the lingering curse trait and gain +1200 condition damage baseline, then melt all your enemies in WvW.

This is the exact same exploit that the birthday blaster had when it came out, except you can do it with most stat buffs from skills or traits. As long as it doesn’t appear on the buff bar, it can be exploited / is far weaker than intended.

Time to roll instant level 20s with birthday scrolls and go WvWing I guess!

hmmm, maybe I should enter WvW … naw!

Haha .. i already expected something like that when i saw how downscaling worked
and when i remembered that they said upscaling should be stronger.

A thief with revealed training should deal some massive amounts of damage then lol

Bump for importance. Did you bug report this yet?

Yes I did.

I reported this (15 chars).

Tulki.1458:

This is honestly the most hilariously bugged mechanic I have ever observed in the history of Guild Wars 2.

I have to disagree. While this might have way more inpact on game balance in general, I think the bugged perplexity runes, when they applied the confusion on interrupt on yourself instead on your enemy, were more hilarious.

Yah this isn’t even the worst, especially upscaling in wvw has caused problems numerous times.

Buffs from claimed Keeps getting upscaled. Everyone and their dog was a lv2 Ranger with a Longbow, that was in essence a mobile Sup. Arrowcart.

The birthday cakeshooter gun, that gives +all stats. That was getting upscaled aswell, still have a funny screenshot somewhere of the absurd stats. 35k hp, 80% crit chance, 254% critdamage, 1.5k healing, 1,5k condition damage, 2.5k power, 2.5k toughness. Was hilarious, i autoattacked a full lv80 for 6k crits as a lv2.

There have been other instances aswell, upscaling is often overlooked it seems when stats are being boosted by new mechanics.

“Buffs from claimed Keeps getting upscaled”

Does this actually happen? I thought those counted as buffs on the buff bar?

Tulki.1458:

“Buffs from claimed Keeps getting upscaled”

Does this actually happen? I thought those counted as buffs on the buff bar?

He is mentioning previous upscale bugs, not the current one.

Thank you for the detailed analysis Tulki.

This is just outrageous. This is why they need test servers and proper QA.

Bump

/15 Charrs

The last patch claims to have fixed this but it only did so for one mesmer Duelist trait (as far as I saw). Everything else, including the stuff I mentioned in my main post, is still broken.

Very likely they only actually fixed the upscaling bug, leaving the downscaling one to nerf us ^^