Guild Wars 2

Tried a little experiment with the new system.

At level 21, in a level 17 zone. I hit level 22 and got +40 to all base attributes. Whoo, now I’m more powerful! This turned out to be about +35ish due to the downscaling but still. More powerful.

Then I hit level 23 in the same area, and lost 8 power and 7 from my other stats. Then I gained another level… and lost 8 power and 7 from the other stats. Wait a minute. What?

With the old system, downscaling made you weaker, but it was gradual as you levelled. With this one, you get a huge spike in stats that makes the game easier, but between these big stat spikes the game difficulty rises quickly. It doesn’t make any sense at all. Going from level 22 to 23 caused me to lose 80 max HP. It’s very weirdly designed. With all the stuff introduced in this patch about introducing new players, this change in particular makes absolutely no sense. The game difficulty wobbles violently from level to level.

ArenaNet previously promised that when ascended weapons get released, weapon kits and elementalist conjured weapons would have their weapon power stats buffed to ascended power (at level 80) so that players who use these can still benefit from the new tier. When the game was patched, this did fall through. Kits and conjured weapons got the appropriate ~5% bonus to weapon power.

In the last hotfix, they were all dropped back down to exotic weapon power, meaning anyone who relies on kits can never benefit from ascended weapon power.

What is the reasoning behind this?