Quote Originally Posted by DoctorPepper View Post
AK and WP both dropped low ilvl gear which was essentially useless given that DL was i70. They nerfed the original AK significantly by making the demon wall easier (removed adds) and by removing quite a bit of the trash. The trash and lower average ilvl across the playerbase is what made the original AK slower, even when speed running it. Most DF groups would take 30+ minutes to complete AK and it rewarded less philosophy than CM did. I'm not sure why you're asking which AK since there was only one AK at launch.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but the way to speedrun AK at launch was to sac pull. Which means that the number of mobs didn't really matter beyond whether the tank could make it to the boss room. And I'm not talking about DF speedruns. Because if you really want a lot of tomes fast, the solution has always been to get a group and farm so that you don't have to wait on queues. I wasn't asking which AK, by the way, I was asking which nerf. Since they've alternately nerfed the difficulty and nerfed the ability to speedrun. Also, AK gear was only "useless" in the same way that i120 is currently "useless." It would get you pretty much anywhere you needed to go up until maybe T4 (and maybe even then, I don't know).

As to the rest of your point, sure, if you only need a few hundred duty roulette is the way to go. If you need, say, a few thousand, you've always been better off farming a dungeon.