Mob Levels

[Mirage]

High level mobs that are just barely killable with 16 people are fine, and they would be more than enough to give players a sense of danger when travelling around the world. I would feel intimidated by a level 65 mob too, even if I could survive 3-4 hits with stoneskin up. Having a single mob one-shot you for 9999 damage because the game suddenly thought you ran for 2 seconds even if you were in auto-walk mode is not exciting. It's just dumb.

It also makes no sense that there are common mobs in the game that are harder than the strongest endgame bosses. I mean you just got out of Ifrit Extreme and got all the phat lootz, and then you bump into a basilisk that deals three more damage to you in one regular attack than ifrit did with a special attack. Doesn't exactly make ifrit feel like the all powerful primal avatar that he's supposed to be.

I mean sure, when you increase the level cap and add new endgame bosses, then it would be fine to add mobs that are stronger than the current ifrit and garuda, but at any given point in the game's evolution, the strongest mobs should be the endgame bosses, not common pop mobs.

tl;dr
you could keep (nearly) the same sense of danger by adding common pop mobs that were like 75% of ifrit extreme's strength. No one in their right mind would try to run straight through that mob's aggro range either.