Leviathan.Comeatmebro said:
»I don't think ranged or magic would have made them easier at that point in time.
OK I just got home and able to check. I made a mistake, world 1st clear happened on May 2013, not June. A bit earlier than my bad memory remembered.
https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115865-Delve/page101
RNG setup was indeed meta at that time. Pretty much all of the top end NA group at that time used rng setup, including tojil. People were posting early tojil wins with rng setup.
https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115865-Delve/page142
But then JPs did it MNK melee/stun way then it replaced rng and became the new meta. I mean, rng was dead for long long time so it was harder to get an alliance of rng back then anyways.
Then the content eventually got easier as more and more people got Oat, and ilv update.
Personally, I feel legion in 2012 was still harder than delve, but I may be biased. I feel once MNK melee/stun became a thing and Oat became more common the difficulty dropped in a very short time. Ilv update in August made delve pretty much PUGable. My ls was clearing delve using 2/3 of alliance as soon as ilv update hit. On the other hand other harder content like legion or MT had same level of difficulty for much longer time.
Delve was certainly very challenge before world 1st happened though. Just getting an alliance of rng to even try meta strat was difficult since the job was dead for years so it was a rare Job back then.