What disturbs me about what I'm reading is that I'm not going to get tougher in a relative sense once you change things.
With my scrapper it used to be at low levels I took out 3 whites with work. Then in my teens I became pretty comfortable at it. In my 20s large groups of lower levels or a few +1/+2s became no problem.
Why can't we just have a great spawn of lieutenants and bosses in the mix? I want my upper level guy to be like established comic characters - any group of minions is pretty much fodder, but the lietenants and bosses can get me if I'm not careful, and the Arch Villains (Doom baby!) ... uh, get a group! :-)
-Jeff