Guild Wars 2

I think the perception of whether said dungeon is easy or hard, especially low level dungeons, relies on one major factor:

Your level. Not your reduced level, but your actual level. I've read on the wiki that there's soft caps on your stats in that only the stats from your leveling are effected. So if you're using Lv.80 gear, you're still getting that attack power, that defense power, as well as that +1xx to stats. This also influences your traits, since a Lv.80 would have 50 more trait points than a Lv.30.

That's true, except I've done the dungeon before in BWE and it was still about the same. My other friends have said it's taken them upwards of 3hrs to do Story Mode and I can't seem to wrap my head around that.

BWE party:
40 Engineer ― My build was focused on switching between Bomb, Flamethrower and Elixir Gun kit.
35 Ranger
40 Guardian
30 Thief
30 Elementalist

Time it took to do dungeon:
About 1.5hrs without knowing what to do. We were only warned of a certain fight, which was easier in BWE.

Last night's party:
65 Engineer ― Support focused build using kits, not elixirs. Even only having 20 traits could achieve similar effects.
45 Ranger ― DPS glass cannon build, which is hilarious because she is Australian and lagged like crazy because poopy laptop is poopy.
80 Guardian ― Support focused build.
80 Warrior ― idk what he was doing, but he only had melee stuff and never did dungeons before. He constantly downed/died.
35 Thief ― Not sure what he was doing, but I know he changed it up around a certain fight.

Time it took to do dungeon:
About 1hr. Protip: For two fights, pretty much all I did was throw boulders. I don't think my level counts for anything when doing this.

Not much of a difference in how long it took to do the dungeon considering the levels. Boons and conditions have been vastly improved since BWE ― pretty much all I was doing was laying down combo fields and rezzing people. I wish the med packs I dropped were more visible to my friends. ;-;

As for WvW, yeah, there's a bit of an ugh feeling when you're a dinky level against a higher level guy with gear in a 1v1 situation. This is why you zerg it up ― you can take over a supply/NPC camp with fewer people if no one is there. The exp is great anyway, so you'll catch up eventually. I only go into WvW to do the jump puzzle. :3