If staying on older builds works for you then why not ( in some cases there is really no need to update ) .On the other hand esp8266 has been totally dropped from other projects so in wled I think it takes a lot of effort by mainly one person to keep it alive .
All of that with the note that not everyone is having issues with esp8266 connectivity ( i personalty no longer use esp8266 in production as it is not ideal even with other projects if you have a demanding requirement but connectivity wise we seen no issue on latest wled builds)
If you have free time you could look at code and compare to see what exactly changed and good luck with that .