sync should be reworked

[PyurBlue]

The ultimate issue with this is that it'd be far too much effort for very little gain, or depending on how they scale it, making us worse off than we were before.

I disagree that it's little gain. Making all content potentially worthwhile (or at least tolerable) again sounds like a significant gain. I guess it depends on what you like to do. If level sync is good enough for most players then I guess stat sync just won't happen. That's fine. I do want to promote the idea to the devs just in case it has some popularity, and I'd want to them to implement it in a way to keeps everyone happy.

Think about it this way; so many people in the DF already can barely manage proper rotations at level 70 (The clear time difference between a full party that knows their rotations vs one that doesn't is staggering.). If Square was to scale the rotation so that you'd have to do a proper rotation in order to do the same dps as someone who only has two buttons, it'd literally be nerfing the damage output of every single player who doesn't know their level 70 rotation properly than our current syncing system. If they make it so that way lenience can be made in the rotation, then you'll have people doing 2-3x as much dps as they are now in synced content or completely overwhelming newbie tanks when you get players that do know how to optimize their class and utterly shredding away any difficulty lower end content still has.

I don't really mind who I'm paired with in dungeons, so if DPS drops it wouldn't bother me. Like you've said, people already mess up, and at low levels you can also find people using single target rotations instead of AoE. There are ways around this problem in any case. Level sync doesn't have to go away and you can choose how you'll be synced in your PF settings. Alternatively high level skills can be reduced in effect more than lower level ones.

There'd also be severe advantages vs disadvantages when it comes to tanks and healers. For example, a lvl 70 WAR would be able to utterly trivialize lower end content between self heals, IR being utterly broken with Steel Cyclone spam, and having access to their full toolkit. You would essentially have to revamp the entire combat system to be a sliding dynamic of scaling to make sure abilities wouldn't be OP at every single level, dungeon and trial of the game; something that would take CONSIDERABLE effort and is time better spent on fine tuning every job at max level.

Potency scaling does most of the work. A level 70 WAR scaled correctly would have no more DPS than a level 15 MRD (which already has Berserk Overpower). This should also impact self heals. At worst in this case, Steel Cyclone might need to be scaled more harshly than Overpower. This would also only apply to the extreme case where you sync max level to starter dungeons. It's much easier to just scale potencies between say 70 and 60. So while this does need to work for all levels, reducing stats for high level content and possibly mid level content is pretty effortless.

Roulettes are optional, so outside of wanting to do lvl sync challenges you can unsync everything else to avoid losing your abilities whenever you have to do old content.

Everything is optional, this is just a suggestion to improve roulettes for some, I don't see the harm.

Consider an expert proficiency Lv80 BLM paired with Lv30 BLM in Manor. The Lv80 BLM needs to be nerfed heavily if he can still Foul and 4xFlare, or the things will die before the Lv30 BLM can even cast a second Fire II. Allowing the Lv80 BLM to maintain a complete action set without severely decreased potencies would trivialize the presence of the BLM who actually needs the dungeon to level.

So apply those nerfs. Now also consider a different party with a low proficiency Lv80 BLM paired with Lv30 BLM in Manor. If the Lv80 BLM doesn't know how to BLM, and only knows how to Fire III > Fire II > Fire II > Fire II> Transpose, he will contribute a miniscule portion of party damage while the Lv30 BLM and the tank and healer have to pick up the slack so the dungeon doesn't last twice as long as it needs to.

Fire II AoE is about 50% of Flare AoE on 3 enemies. So definitely a loss in damage but not minuscule, the 80 BLM's contribution will still be noticeable and the gap narrows if you happen to pull bigger. You'll find players that don't AoE big packs of mobs, keep up buffs, or properly execute combos at low level already, so this BLM won't necessarily stand out. If you wanted to fix the problem, the sync could only be applied to high level skills so that perhaps Fire II is at 80-100% of level 30 damage but Flare is reduced to 50-70% damage. Flare rotation is still superior, but only slightly. You'd have a lot of leeway in doing this too because leveling dungeons are inherently unbalanced due to the need to accommodate every party composition. Is it effort on the dev's part? Yes, but not something that should entirely disrupt their ability to continue producing content for the game.

You cannot balance around a fully unlocked action set in a low level dungeon.

You absolutely can, there are many ways to do it, it's mostly a matter of finding the "best" way and if the devs are willing to implement it. You and others are making valid points and I don't want to just sweep them away, but I think that labeling stat scaling as impossible is going a little too far.

I'm willing to pump out a full Lv80 rotation no matter what level I am. But nobody can guarantee that the other people I end up matched with in lower level dungeons would be willing or able to do the same. And with the potency nerfs that are a necessary part of exemplar-ing down, it will mean that any time you end up with someone who is not as proficient as they should be for their current real level, the dungeon run will suck. At least the way things are now, people only have to be as proficient as the level they end up syncking to in the dungeon for the run to go decently.

If they're not willing to use a full 80 rotation, they can choose to keep the current level sync. If stat sync is added I don't see why that has to go. Potency nerfs can be applied in more ways than a flat % down, that's just the easiest way, so we can keep players with improper rotations from falling too far behind. I guess you can't do anything about people who have no interest in even pretending to know what they're doing, but that's already the case even with level sync.