So with heavensward...

[DkDerek]

I don't remember how it felt leveling to 50, but in other MMO's, you actually get weaker as you level up due to scaling. That X ammount of Dex/Str becomes worth less and less. So level 50's in ilvl 130, will do more damage than lvl 52's.

[Nutz]

I don't remember how it felt leveling to 50, but in other MMO's, you actually get weaker as you level up due to scaling. That X ammount of Dex/Str becomes worth less and less. So level 50's in ilvl 130, will do more damage than lvl 52's.

I was wondering about this as well since I think most of our secondary stats work on a sort of ratio (that is to say that at level 15 if we had 350 crit that would probably be a 100% crit rate, but as you level up each single point of a secondary stat becomes less useful by itself). It would seem that keeping the same 130 gear actually will make us 'weaker' as we level up (though our STR/ DEX/ INT/ MND will increase to probably more than compensate).

For the dungeons and equipment, I think it will mostly come down to how they handle the level cap increase. If simply having Heavensward linked to your account changes the level cap to 60 then I'd think new players likely won't even step foot into Ishgard before level ~55 due to all the leveling that will just happen from CM onward. At that point they could buy cheap vendor/ MB gear that would likely be as good as or better than poetics or at least soldiery gear (and they'd have some tomes/gear from required content like CM/ Praetorium/ Leviathan/ Ramuh/ Snowcloak/ Shiva/ Keeper of the Lake). If the level cap increases from a quest that's not accessible until you complete 2.55 then it's probably going to feel like a disjointed and rough climb through the main scenario and probably a couple of optional 50 dungeons for new players. On the other hand if new players hit level 51 inside Praetorium or something then it will probably be a breeze, though we don't know how level sync will impact level 50 content.