The easy node 12 is unmistakable. It's 5 toons with gear ranging from green to blue.
To answer your overall question though, they "rebalanced" Galaxy War. It's impossibly hard for everyone in my guild since the most recent update. Whereas I didn't lose a GW for months, I've now only won about 50%. My squad power is roughly 49k. I've never heard a concrete answer on what drives GW difficulty, but people see the easy node anywhere from 46-47k power. I don't know whether your trick to boost power will affect it or not though.
