Ditto what Alothia said (and hi, my large linkshell's boss lady!). When I do leves a 3-4 person group is what I wind up in if am grouping with either a) random people at the camp, or b) people from my very small linkshell. But my large linkshell has a bunch of people in my rank range, and to be honest even with the current 8-man "optimal" limit I hesitate to try and join them as there are just so many of us and I don't want to horn in and mess up the SP.

And that is a good point TubalaTrommler. There seems to be no shortage of mages, IMHO -- I see 'em everywhere and am rarely in a party without another one besides myself. If you need 1 mage in a party of 4, that is doable as I am sure that at least 25% of the battlers are mages. But I am quite often in a party that is lacking a gladiator or decent tank, even in larger parties. We can usually manage fine without a proper tank, but I suppose that is just part of the way the battle system is set up now.