The only meaningful "the fight is harder" is with turn 2 ADS where the melee have fun moving the rot around. Even that is obviated by the stack method (although that method has other impacts so I wouldn't recommend it).


For everything else, the difference is negligible, although stacking melee on T5 is going to be rough on Twister phase. Range-stacking Ifrit EX removes the howling mechanic, but /shrug. The fight isn't too difficult with the mechanic, and the # of melee don't make a difference.

In addition, if the group wants to use the "range stack south" approach on Ifrit EX, that is also possible with 1 melee -- the melee can spread DPS and tab DoT all the nails south and on the opposite side of the howled healer. They will contribute normal DPS to the nail phase and the nails will die in a normal staggered fashion. No big deal.

Garuda EX is pretty easy if the melee are competent. They can simply eat the WW straight on with defensive cooldowns. Pretty trivial to 4x melee that fight. If I can sell Garuda EX with 2 melee and 1 range DPS, any group can sure as hell do Garuda EX normally with 4 melee. Tbh the tanks don't need to pay too much attention -- the melee just need to pay attention to the cleave areas and the WW timing.