Why do endgame dungeons not give you a piece of gear like leveling dungeons?

[Denji]

It used to be no dungeons would give you gear.
Now you can at least catch up until you can get actual endgame gear from raids or buy some with tomestones.

do you mean 1.0 because i have vivid memories of playing ARR when it was new and getting a bajillion "pink" items from haukke manor.

[Iscah]

do you mean 1.0 because i have vivid memories of playing ARR when it was new and getting a bajillion "pink" items from haukke manor.

ARR dungeons used to not give guaranteed loot even though Heavensward-onwards did. They switched it at some point (5.3?), which shows they can definitely add it to dungeons that didn't previously have it.