Surprised how "easy" gearing is in Act 1

I just tried 0.4 today and transitioning from controller to WASD input. I'm about to meet my favorite Geonor Act 1 boss.

I noticed it's quite easy to gear up in Act 1 now. "Easy" meaning I managed to have all rare gear in every slot possible. The Vaal ruins helped a lot. I already got 5 Exalted Orbs too. But prior to today, I'd been seeing threads where Act 1 is slow and slog because there's no gear available for leveling.

Am I just lucky? Or are they asking something else?

I'm gonna go back to D4 after Geonor to test the leveling in S11 for comparison.