This is pretty standard, no? With the season turnover, base player power level goes up so delves that are intended to reward endgame gear rise to match. The relative difficulty should be the same as it was at the beginning of season 1 and at the end of the season will be just as easy as they are now.
This is all very routine and not worth making a thread about.
The echoes were good, but the issue was that in order to make them worthwhile you needed 5 memory fragment things which you only got from Bountiful delves as far as I can tell and that was gated by keys from weekly events and exalted rep.
Further this still doesnât deal with how the delves didnât give the crests in an adequate quantity to upgrade gear; one upgrade could take 5 bountiful delves each of which could take 20-30 minutes depending on the specific delve and difficulty.
Yeah Iâm only speaking on stones, but a bountiful delve yielding effectively 105~ valorstones is well above rate compared to anything else.
Errr⌠everytime Iâve busted through an 8 Iâve gotten like⌠25.
And then 1/5th of the mats for a tier 2 echo, which when completed gives 400~ and takes a couple minutes.
All my valorstones in S1 gearing phase came from echoes pretty much.
Were they bountiful 8s you unlocked with a key or a normal 8?
I pretty much only run Bountiful with my Warlock and survival hunter.
May have missed it 
Itâs the shiny epic thing, you get 5 of them and join a raid group to hand them in. Kill mobs for 5 minutes and the reward is 400~ valorstones and 225 key fragments.
I dare them to scale delves to tier 40.
Guaranteed highest loot tables. End of dungeon actually rewards a lot of gold not the vendor trash amount I could get from saving kittens on a cliff
The levels have added challenges like:
crushing. The dungeon is collapsing
Drowning. The pit is filling with acid water
Darkening. The darkness is like a spreading void that will just swallow you up.
The parkour pit: remember that Nazjatar jumping areaâŚ.
Been while since I did echoes but but I didnât know this, I capped out to 2k just running non bountifuls. 
Echoes were the best way to get stones for upgrades in S1, it was like the best kept secret or something.
Yea, I imagine most ppl did it specifically for the key shards(Me being one of them)
Finding a group for them became more and more scarce as the season went on.
Well more shards is more echo fragments is more stones too, but yes I imagine most were there to get their 2~ extra keys.
To be fair youâre going to get one whole upgrade a week with the new system.
Come again?
I feel like youâre not taking crest conversion into consideration.
Oh Iâm just jumping to the end of the whole thing where gildeds are the only thing worth getting, but I did forget you can trade up, yeah.
T1-3 is for people leveling up 70-80 I would guess. 4+ is meant for 80âs to start gearing.
I donât know but if the goal is to make delves harder in S2 that is going to backfire on them.
Donât know why they are making Delves more difficult, I mean I thought Tier 8âs were tough as they are.
Oh wellâŚ
New season, new ilvls. 4+ are the levels that are only doable at max level. 1-3 donât change cuz theyâre for levelling players.
They are increasing the difficulty but also increasing the rewards so youâll have the gear to meet that difficulty. A S2 t8 at ilvl 639 will feel the same as a S1 t8 at ilvl 600.