Originally Posted by
MaxCarnage
I personally think that is a cop-out answer. Do new people exist? Oh, absolutely. But when no matter the content, no matter the players in said content, the content takes longer than it used to? We're weaker. If I am a healer in an 80 raid, and I have to heal more than I had to before the stat squish, just going off unavoidable AoE damage, we are weaker.
I refuse to believe that every player I have come across since Endwalker just sucks and that's why every bit of content under the sun is taking longer.
To further go against your point, I ran Thordan EX with my spouse the other day for journal progress. We are both lvl 90 in jobs we have been playing since the beginning. We know the Thordan fight like the back of our hand from how much we've run it. At 560 iLVL, that fight took as long as it did when we were level 80 in 430 gear.