iLVL Requirement and Trials

First forum post, sorry in advance.

Have the first trials of an expansion (Zodiark in EW, Vali in DT) never had an item level requirement?

Me and a couple static members were helping level an alt character and had to do Valigarmanda for MSQ. We had a summoner who kept dying in one hit, and so out of curiosity I checked their HP- they had 40k HP, half of what everyone else had. I checked their gear and they were in the full Cryptlurker set (iLvl 530).

I thought they had somehow managed to cheese their way in, but after clearing, I checked to see what Vali's item level requirement was- to my surprise, there isn't one listed at all. The dungeon before it requires an item level of 635- why isn't this in place for the trial as well?

The summoner said they got this through their roulettes. My friend decided to experiment and take off all his gear, and he could directly queue for Valigarmanda.

Is this purposeful on Square's part? I don't know what purpose this could possibly serve other than mess up everyone else in the trial; we failed Vali's DPS check because the summoner just couldn't live a hit.

I'm not sure if Square expects everyone at the level requirement to also meet iLvl requirements, but this either seems like an oversight or poor design. They forced an iLvl requirement onto Alliance Raids, but they can't do it for trials like Titania/Zodiark/Valigarmanda? I think it's fair to, at the very least, force the same iLvl of the dungeon before the trial as a requirement.

I know this might be a specific problem that might not be encountered often, but at the very least I want to bring it up.

So it turns out, according to science, that there is no ilvl requirement for trials until level cap for the expansion in question.

Now we wait for the "No Gear Challenge" runs of these trials.

I suspect it's cultural assumption on the part of the developers. JP players are more team oriented and so one wouldn't go into a duty not wearing gear appropriate for it.

Too many NA/EU players are "for the lulz" oriented. They're going to see what they can get away with because they don't care about the team.

Fortunately, vote kick exists. That would be a situation where it's appropriate to use it. The player clearly has better gear because they wouldn't be able to do the previous dungeon without it. It is not unreasonable to expect players doing the trial to have the same or better equipped.

Even if that expectation would hold true for folks who intentionally queue to it, the problem is as seen here, people who might get it when not intending to through roulette.

As it sounds the player had done the duties previously on their main class that had been properly geared at the time. But they were leveling another job through roulettes and only made sporadic gear updates, trusting that the ilvl cap would keep them out of content where it would become a problem. It doesn't seem to be that rare that people who level fast some alt job end up not noticing their gear falling behind.

Yeah sounds to me like this is a roulette fail, not a fail on the part of the player, though honestly, if I was dying to raidwides in one shot, I'd step out myself.
Still should be measures in place to prevent a situation like this.

Could also be the case that their gear was broken, i once had a Ninja in the Valigarmanda trial with only 9k HP because all his gear broke after the first death.