Guild Wars 2

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).

Elixir X is really good. You get like double your vit and toughness in the big form and your autos hit for 3x more than pistol attacks. Has something ridiculous like a 90sec CD when traited for it, and it’s just really ridiculous in an elixir build when you can stack a bunch of boons before using it.

Mortar seems the weakest but it might be okay in certain turret builds specialized in sieging.

Leogolas.6941:

The scaling systems is very good , way diff from many mmos, it is really boring to 1 hit everything in your path when you are in “endgame” stated equipments. I farm for gold with my friends who are like 30 lvls lower than me. The scaling system makes them fight hard with me instead of looking at me rofl stomping the mobs and waiting to just loot the kills.

Nobody’s saying that it’s bad that the higher level characters can’t “1 hit everything in your path” but there’s VERY little sense of progression if you get WEAKER by leveling up. A huge part of the MMO experience for a lot of people is a sense of progression.

I have confirmed that leveling up in an area you’re scaled down to will reduce your effective “main” stats due to having a more severe % scale-down. This probably means that if you’re not keeping up in equipment, you’re going to be weaker even when you’re doing lower-level areas.

This does not take into consideration stuff like trait points and buffs from any new skills. I also did not do any calculations or tests on the secondary stats like health or condition damage.

Thanks! I’ve heard similar stories and the % scaling enforces it as well.

A question was brought up in a recent discussion on whether or not it was possible for a character who’s above an area’s level (and consequentially scaled down) to be weaker than a character who is at an area’s level (and is not scaled at all).

This is directly related to how scaling mechanics work. We’re all aware that higher leveled characters get weaker when present in lower-level areas. But to what extent? How exactly does it work? Is it possible to manipulate the system or to get “screwed over” by the system?

When my group first arose with the question, we had been under the assumption that “a level 80 character in a level 20 area will be brought down to level 20 stats.” The question, then, was “how does my equipment scale down?” There are 3 reasonable possibilities.

1. Equipment doesn’t scale down at all. The player retains all of his equipment stats, and that makes him stronger than the area he’s at, despite the level.
2. Equipment scales down to the best equipment of that area’s level, as long as the character’s current equipment is equal to or better than it.
3. Equipment scales down relative to it’s effectiveness on the player. That is, a level 20 character with level 20 equipment in a level 20 area will have more impactful equipment than a level 80 with level 30 equipment in that same area.

1 and 2 make sense design-wise (if the intent is to ensure that the higher-leveled player has at least a small advantage), while possibility 3 can create some odd situations where a character is both objectively higher leveled and better equipped than an other, yet he is weaker in certain areas.

I did a small amount of testing and came up with these results:
If you are in an area lower leveled than you are, the 4 “main” stats – Power, Precision, Toughness, and Vitality – are scaled down by a percentage that I assume is based upon the level difference between your character and the area. That is, your “effective” statistics for that area are directly proportional to your “real” statistics. This IMPLIES that situation #3 is the case. However, this does not necessarily mean that the unfavorable situation before (of a stronger character being “weaker” than another character of a lower level) is possible; there are other factors to be considered and there may be safeguards in the scaling equations to prevent this.

I’m going to see if my “effective” statistics go down when I level up in an area I’m scaled down in. I’m assuming the % scaling of my stats would go down (since the level difference between my character and the area would be higher) but I’m wondering if the base stats I gained from the level-up would offset that so that I would not necessarily need to keep up on equipment.

Any DEFINITE input or reasonable speculation to how this works would be greatly appreciated!