Level Difference in campaign doesn't make sense

So there's a penalty right now for any zone if you are 1 level below the content.

It feels to halve your damage, and defenses, this is absurd and happens frequently in the campaign, especially playing in groups.

Say you are level 14, and head into a level 15 zone, you'll notice immediately that the monsters hit (if you have evasion, your evasion is worthless, your damage is rougly halved), until you ding 15 if you're lucky enough to do so, then you can continue the zone as normal.

This was just a stupid design and it would have made sense to have this type of penalty if for example you were underleveled by 3 or 5 levels, but 1? It happens so often to level during a zone, or maybe a zone wasn't large enough to grant enough xp to level up in, and now the next zone is higher.

This whole system needs to go or be reworked, it's why the campaign feels so different from zone to zone, and just feels awful.


Thanks for your time,
Mara