Ambuscade! 1 NPC, 100 players

[Olor]

So what I'm reading is that somewhere between Normal and Difficult, the hit rate becomes unacceptable and the fight becomes very dangerous (assuming we're talking about the dragon right now). I think you're also suggesting throwing 3 melee jobs at it with no real regard for tactics. Might some adjustment be in order then? Possibly bringing some kind of support or healing role into the mix? A GEO, COR, BRD, RDM? Also, outside of the breath moves, the AoE ranges are very small. I would think any ranged attacking job would do just fine in there.

I was trioing normal and it was going really well and was pretty easy so we decided to do difficult and the initial dragon breath one-shot one of the other players I was with...

The step up between normal and difficult is way too big for folks without great gear.

Honestly the only way I can see random grouping working would be if the number of people in the party directly added a bonus to the amount of Hallmarks to be gained in the fight.

Say you are doing a Normal volume 2 fight and get 100 for it. If you did the exact same fight with another player you'd instead get 125, 150 with 3, etc. That way even if you aren't fighting a harder version of the battlefield (or had to lower the difficulty) you'd at least get something from it while using less instances in the process. Which would also help with congestion in my opinion.

This would help. I like this suggestion.