Originally Posted by
Jeeqbit
SE should get rid of arbitrary requirements generally. You have to do Heavenward's Stone, Sky, Sea unlock to access higher level versions of the same thing, so most people likely never find out that Stone, Sky, Sea exists due to ignoring old quests. You have to do ARR and Heavensward's hunt unlock quests to unlock the hunt systems in expansions, causing some people to be unable to even join hunt parties.
But SE just never fixes or addresses anything hardly. It's all about the new patch content and that is the only thing they focus on, even as the rest of the game falls into irrelevance and disrepair, burdened by years of systems buried upon eachother without being addressed or even noticed by the developers.
Soloing POTD 1-10 without any aetherpool is hard. I tried it on a healer back when it released and failed due to lack of DPS/time. I was at literally the last boss as well.
Most likely, that is why they buffed aetherpool to make it more likely you are powerful enough by then.
That said, I did manage to solo the first 30 floors of EO on Red Mage without any initial aetherpool, but our kits are a lot more extensive at that level and you can do virtually anything by that level.