It's time to redesign Level Sync

[Berethos]

WoW (yeah yeah, just hear me out) has done an excellent job with Timewalking (their version of level sync)

Well, except Timewalking in WoW has an entirely different reason to exist - it's meant as a sort of way for characters above the level of the dungeon to sort of revisit old nostalgia.

You aren't actually running the actual dungeon, but rather a version of it specifically balanced for those using the feature. Players at the correct level for the actual dungeon do not benefit from the feature (unlike level sync here), nor are they ever grouped with anyone who is doing timewalking, and the actual dungeon is balanced around them and their potential gear levels.

They've done a nice (excellent might be giving them too much credit) job with the feature, but it's not meant to achieve the same goal as XIV's level sync - instead being solely for those who are passed the point of running the dungeon normally - and thus isn't a good comparison.

FFXIV could do it like wow's level sync where you keep all your abilities you know so far but everything is scaled down. Makes the game feel better once you hit max level.

See above - WoW's goal and thus their design for their version are different. Theirs is meant to give veteran players a "new old" playground to run for rewards, ours is meant to encourage veteran players to play with new players. Theirs can easily support the design and balance of scaling based around putting everyone at a specific "timewalking only" level of stats and damage (since literally everyone is getting scaled down into it, there's no "just right" gear level). Ours is meant to bridge the gap and thus has to take the balance of what players can do at that level into account, including their suite of abilities, as well as their experience overall, which is meant to be that they get to run the dungeon roughly as it's intended to be run at that level, which means the party using the abilities available at that level.