When the game was first released I remarked that the story modes were often more difficult than the exploration modes. Also that the difficulty was in reverse. With Arah, COE, HOTW, etc being the easiest story/expos and the earlier AC, CM and Twilight whatever being the hardest story/expos.
I haven't run a story mode since the release of the game. I assumed the dungeon rebalancing had taken care of that. Seems like that assumption was incorrect and the dungeons still follow the extremely poor QA and design Anet launched with for dungeons.
Once you run every thing one or two times the dungeons are not really that bad/hard, Lane.
The last time I did AC with friends we had 1 PUG with us and yet we cleared all 3 paths in just a short while. With like 1 person dying. And people hardly die in FTOM too. Like every dungeon in MMOs- it becomes auto pilot mode with practice.
Don't get discouraged.