I mean, it can be faster than your average distro on some scenarios. Mostly if you know your way in kernel config.

Though most of its real advantages are in the form of a lean system completely tailored to your needs.

It seems to me most of that Gentoo FUD comes from people that never even tried to install it or gave up because apparently reading a wiki is too hard for them.

Binary speed is really the least reason to do it. Whether it's worth it or not is up to the individual, but there are a lot of little reasons Gentoo is uniquely powerful.

Benefits specific to compiling:

• fine-grained control of features and dependencies with USE flags
• very easy package maintenance (writing ebuilds)
  • much simpler to add your own custom local packages when you need them
  • less workload on the gentoo team which is good for repository health and breadth
• control of compile flags (yes speed, but more practically hardening for secure systems)
• the same gentoo is available on way more platforms and architectures than any binary distro