What happened to Varena's crew? Those were some cool ppl who had been playing together for years. Their composition fits your idea of group 2 almost perfectly. Inq, Fury, SK, Coercer. They had been gaming together for years, dating back to eq1, and just have a natural synergy developed. They're not all 80 I believe, but do have 140AA+ I'm certain becuase they locked in their 70s. Gearing them up into T1 shard armor takes 2 days of maybe a 4-5 hour grind each. NP
As far as recruiting, I've been puggnig a lot lately, and get tells pretty frequently from the same ppl to join their groups. I've been in their ears (only the somewhat skilled/geared ones) about their guild's raid status and such, and most are unhappy with their situations, be it their guilds don't raid high end content, or can't even field a consistent 24. Over the next few weeks, I'll try to get buddy buddy with them a bit, and see if they want to come to a few runs with us, and hopefully do a bit of poaching.
Before any of that happens though, we need to get our shit tight. It'd blow any chance of getting ppl on board if were all over the place, sloppy as hell. Lets start from square one, like you suggested and try some T8 ez mode stuff.
I really suggest we talk to Varena reguarding his click to see if they want to try some simple raiding. The fury even posted in her intro post that she was looking forward to raiding soon. Maybe the lack of drove them away, but lets see what we can gather.
My 2cp~