Why can't sync just affect gear and stats...?

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

About as fast as a BLU run, and SE seems ok with allowing those.

All damage is throttled by weapon damage which when synced is low.

BLU is barred from DF and roulettes (where the vast majority of people are going to queue solo rather than find a full party of BLU or for roulette rewards), so what it can accomplish is pretty irrelevant, as Square cares about balancing when it involves DF matchmaking, not premades. Otherwise they'd prevent people from partying up for experts since a full premade can easily do 10-12 min expert runs where most DF runs are closer to 18-25 depending on luck of the draw.

Yoshi-P has stated in the past that with the level syncing system, they want everyone to be on a decent enough level playing field. Weapon damage may be synced when low, but a level 80 is still capable of so many more times damage than an on-level character can accomplish in sheer potency alone. Even just as a quick example, contrast a level 80 WAR vs a level 30 WAR hitting 3 enemies:

A level 30 WAR does berserk, gets 5x Overpower in its window for 650 potency (all of which Crit/DH). Then does 2x more overpowers (which may not DH/CRT) for 910 potency total per enemy, or 2730 potency across the 3 enemies.
The level 80 WAR does IR, gets 5x Decimate for 1250 potency (all of which CRT/DH) then adds 2x chaotic cyclones for an additional 800 potency (also guaranteed to DH/CRT), for 2050 potency per enemy, or 6150 potency across the three enemies. Add in 10% from Storm's eye for 6765 potency total.

From a sheer raw numbers comparison, that WAR already did 2.5x as much potency as the level 30 WAR did. The gap widens more if even a single one of the 30 WAR's overpowers didn't CRT/DH. This also ignores the free upheaval + Onslaught during the 80 WAR's IR for an extra 550 potency. This also even ignores the fact that in just standard aoe, the 80 WAR does 70 extra potency every 2 GCDs from having Mythril Tempest.

And lets not even get started with the fact the 80 WAR has Nascent flash, allowing them to lifesteal while the 30 WAR is literally incapable of it outside of storm's path.

And all of this is on a job that is extremely GCD heavy and is also a tank. I'm sure the potency gaps would look even crazier on an actual dps job.

Weapon damage is pretty irrelevant when having access to your full toolkit gives you literally 2-5x as much damage output as someone who doesn't. The difference between getting a party of 4 synced players vs 4 unsynced ones would be ridiculous.