I have no idea what is up with s4 but it's definitely way harder this time.
GAS with Steadfast Retribution at full power (100% reflected damage + more over time) is insane. On Padmé it's bad enough, but I can use rey and the droids and cheese my way through the first bit until damage immunity, then let the droids go.
But GAS does too much damage to sit around waiting for DI.
And I'm still before the mini-boss and used a full-meta JMK squad against a Maul squad. Maul went first against a speed-modded GL, and nuked GK. There was no possibility of keeping everyone alive in the first half of s4 with a full-meta GL squad.
Seriously? What's up with this? How are they going to make the s5 fights harder than this? This is substantially harder than previous s4s. Substantially.
People can talk all they want about how CG can't make things too easy, but I disagree: LS Geo is getting easier all the time. Why? Because they're not making it harder and our rosters improve. That's the way it is supposed to be in PvE.
I don't mind a challenge. I like a challenge. But I like a challenge I can build toward completing. Maul with Overprepared IV made it impossible to get 3 stars with a meta team, and while I fully understand that there might be another disk combo that might perform better, I will have none of it: that's not the solution until we can freely access any disk we want. So long as RNG can prevent me from completing a synergistic set of disks, then what CG is doing is telling us that luck, not roster building, is the way to defeat the harder enemies in a sector.
This deal is getting worse all the time.