Has it always been like this or...?

[DoctorPepper]

Only, not really. Don't think CM or Prae is faster than speedrunning any of the experts, which would also give you Poetics.

Some people like to do all of their duty roulettes in order to add variety to what they're doing.

Also, you get 140 soldiery from the roulette and it generally takes 15-20 minutes max because people are so over geared. If soldiery is what you're after it's just as fast as running an expert a lot of the time which only gives you 100 and you're less likely to get a slow group. The only option that can sometimes be significantly faster is farming hard mode primals for first time bonuses and that's not a sure thing.

Except that AK and WP also drop gear. Which means you don't need as much DL gear to defeat the content you're gearing up for. And better than AK before which nerf?

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.

There were really only 2 viable options for fast philo at launch and they were WP and CM.