Honestly, you never had to restart P1 if your team was strong enough. People that always complained about restarting were running low geared teams than necessary / recommended but people would rather complain rather than work on their teams.
Remember how everyone was restarting tank raid too all the time?
Its like the tank raid, once you have the teams built you won't have to restart at all. I haven't restarted a phase (except P3) in months
I will agree with OP P1 was a lot easier which idc about. My guild destroyed the first phase in 30 minutes (a lot of people didn't get an opportunity to participate) which I guess is OP's concern that it goes by so fast that a lot of people end up missing.
The first annihilate by DN was when the enrage CD was on 8. Its almost like Annihilate doesn't exist anymore.