[zuljita]

Personally I find that I do best running for groups of 3-5. 6 taxes me too much for pacing.

I was in the group Colarmel mentioned with the higher power, higher optimization but only 3 characters and we found it to be reversed:

The peshkali became super easy once the barbarian (very rapid healing and 20+ hp) had been blurred to -5 to hit, and the wizard followed up with a clumsiness spell. Once the Peshkali was at an effective 8 to hit it was just a matter of time.

Merle was super painful because we lacked a large enough number of attacks to burn all his parries. He also did a lot of move and attacking which meant we had to move and attack to keep up with him. Merle slapped down swing after swing with his respectable defenses until someone critted him (with a ceiling of 9 that's not easy). It was all downhill from there, but we spent easily 15 rounds chasing him around the room rolling vs 9.