stormblood dungeons and normals were pretty much the same difficulty tbh, if anything this last normal tier had more difficult things to execute in a df environment than any of the stb ones did. i can't really think of a stb dungeon boss or hw dungeon boss i'd call harder than what's been in dungeons now.

none of the stb alliance raids were that difficult people just got cleaved by hashmal and that's all anyone remembers. anyone who played back then was worse at the game than they are now, and job changes over time affect perception of difficulty as a lot of jobs did have a lot of things removed from them they'd have to manage to some degree back then (ie: threat).