Something I've noticed happening more often, is a sort of "gatekeeper" effect in some of the event dungeons, and in the gauntlet too.

Like, I got past the AAA level of gauntlet for the first time recently. And then in the S level of gauntlet, I found the first battle to be very difficult and took two or three attempts, but the rest of them were very much easier, easier than the battles in AAA.

Same for some dungeons too, where there's a wave, sometimes the first wave sometimes not, which is extremely hard, and the rest are a lot easier.

Is this a trend, or am I just noticing it more ? Or am I imagining things ?