Obligatory support items on Hard and Ragnarok

[Revan]

Ever since I came back to NI a couple weeks ago (I left prior to 0.5) it struck me as a little odd (or even ridiculous) how many cades you needed for Thor/Odin/Ragnar, and how important toming dozens of times was. It would be certainly nicer and less weird if you needed less cades for the bosses, but how do you maintain the necessary difficulty? And if cades had more hitpoints, but you can't spawn them with tomes, wouldn't that make bringing cades in support slots at regular spawn even more important? (And people not bringing them was the reason this thread was started.)