Quote:
-For whatever reason the mobs base level is higher here vs retail
Bad misconception!
Retail: you go to the dunes at lv 10. You join a party. The party ranges from levels 10-12: If your WHM was 10, that's bad. If your tank was 10, that's bad. But, otherwise, you go through the "lv 10" part of the dunes just fine.
Here: you go to the dunes at lv 10. You join a party. The party ranges from levels 10-20: but then you sync. Now everyone is 10. Your WHM doesn't have Cure II. Your tank is only level 10. This is going to make things feel more difficult than a "lv 10" party in retail.
Similarly, for Qufim: you may have went there at 19 in retail... but that didn't mean your party was lv 19.
The "monster levels were adjusted across the board by 1-2 levels" patch from several years ago that nas did was not to increase the levels of mobs here to be higher than retail, but rather, to make them closer to retail. Originally, the levels were set without the above phenomenon in mind, so the increase was a correction to the norm, not a movement away from it.