Quote Originally Posted by Daralii View Post
I don't get why people keep bringing up Benediction as if it's an insurmountable design hurdle. Essential Dignity will almost always achieve the exact same result sub-50 and is accessible at level 15.
Absolutes are always both the easiest to point to and the hardest to solve, since the usual argument for why "keeping abilities is okay" relies on adjusting potencies, but that becomes irrelevant for things like 100% heal or 100% invulnerabilities. (Also, Essential Dignity is an AST skill, not a WHM skill. And "almost always" isn't "100% guaranteed always".)

For me I don't see this as an issue, never really did I need many defensives in leveling dungeons. And if I did, I overpulled intentionally, knowing that I need to throw defensives.
The issue is that you can overpull when you have those extra defensives without affecting the group. Without them, the healer will need to throw extra heals your way, which means losing DPS and thus taking longer to clear the dungeon. If a high-level tank keeps its extra defensives when doing a low-level dungeon, you now have noticeably faster runs compared to an at-level tank. Core design requirement failed.

As for your Example with WHM, everything below lvl 50 almost only needs one or two Cure II to fully heal a player, yes its not oGCD like Benediction is but the healing required in low level dungeons is minimal to none depending on who is tanking.
Again, as soon as you introduce the difference, it's no longer valid. Even though it's extremely rare to see a party that's either entirely new or almost entirely new today, that still remains the design focus. The "depending on who is tanking" is key. Every extra GCD heal a Healer needs to throw either because the tank doesn't have additional defensive CD's or the Healer doesn't have additional oGCD heals slows down the run and makes an at-level player a liability.

I can't emphasize enough that this is the single most important point SE has repeatedly put forward about why you lose abilities when syncing. Ignoring that point is just going to lead to exercises in futility in frustration. The first and most important question to ask yourself when proposing a solution to syncing is "Will this naturally make an at-level player a liability compared to an over-leveled player (i.e. will the run take longer and/or be more likely to fail)?" If the answer is "yes", you have a non-starter.