Attempting to diagnose Dawntrail's difficulty

[EponaTBHSMH]

The only real "difficulty" introduced by DT is having people pay attention because of a combination of:

-overlapping mechanics that started being more common in EW (last boss of Tower of Zot, Dead Ends, Smileton..)
-non-standard telegraphs that became more common since Nier raids

So I don't think it was that much of a steep increase, but the real cause of the division is that it exposes players that cannot or don't want to pay attention for various reasons and frustrates those players, some of them have disabilities, some other are too comfortable with normal content being glorified AoE rotation/single target rotation dummies where they could turn their brain off and clear no matter, thus feeling entitled to clearing stuff on first try

If OP's goal is to bridge the gap in that division it will unfortunately take more effort from the complainers, because people that don't feel like this content is difficult can simply troll them while others try to give them meaningful advice, especially if they feel entitled to clearing the content easily and therefore less receptive to advice

[ngwoo]

It's really only moderately more challenging (and will become less challenging with time and gear level), but games are supposed to get harder as you get further into them. I don't think anyone really finds that controversial.