While one has always been required to run ultimate to get the SSRs in advent events without blowing tons of half-elixirs, the requirements have gone down noticably. For what it's worth, pre-Ixion (1st time) was worse. Ixion to now basically asks for 30/635/375/275 materials to max out the two SSRs. Launch to Rahab (1st time) asked for 30/740/460/360. Although, drops were highly variable over the first few advents; it took until... Typhon or Medusa to settle down to what we see today, I think?
Speaking of which, raids also sucked back then. Part of it has to do with game age; fewer strong players around to bail others out. Other is system-related; mainly that stupid division into blue and red raids. I maintain that Jormungandr is the roughest raid event we've had in terms of number of failed raids.
At any rate, back to Sphinx/Vritra... Vritra, how/why are you so much less threatening than Rahab? 0.o
Was Vritra always like this? I could not remember her event at all.