I feel like people who lack critical thinking will struggle with this notion, but you are making a logical fallacy. The fact you claim they have "shitty gear" should explain to you why they get kicked in F8. AP requirements simply don't work, but if we put nothing we get 10x as many extremely weak players. On average if you look higher AP players regardless of their ap, they will have better crit, shields, badges, mystic badges, they will more then likely have decent gear. This is why most people use AP as a requirement. Now if someone artificially inflates their AP, while ignoring all other stats, they are highly likely to be kicked because that is not what people meant when they said 1k AP.

AP Requirements in F8 are simply all we can do since it's hard to put exactly what you want in the recruitment message. AP is a decent measure, if someone is 1.1k+ they usually will have good crit, proper shields, badges, etc. So why do people with 1K+ ap get kicked? Because they have stuff like Dark Vicar shields, immortality earring, no elemental gear, just bad all around stats. I feel like this is quite easy for a normal intelligence reasonable person to understand, but some Redditors seem to be struggling with it.

Whales do get kicked as well. You don't need a reason to kick someone is the thing - someone having high AP doesn't give them a right to run with anyone in the game.