Isn’t the difficulty of SR also being tweaked with less time on the clock and such in 1.3? It might become a bit harder overall as well is what I’m thinking.
And hopefully there are levels to the ascended mode, 
Edit: I mean I would like a bigger challenge than the current campaign, but I don’t want to have to design all my characters to be super endgame destroyers either!
It’s probably going to be more a Clones of Burbon level enemy, since Ravager is actually pretty tough, especially Ravager of Minds and his null totems, subject of course to the difficulty maluses you choice on the altar…
I say this because it’s otherwise going to lead to massive amount of whinging about “fairness”, since most builds can kill Burbon, not so much Ravager of Flesh and definitely far less vis Cally.
Brave Sir Robin running away - bravely running away… Except that Calla doesn’t have a leash. I wonder if the ‘Dread’ will have a leash.
That depends on what the intent is. Taken at face value, the quote stays most characters are NOT supposed to kill the Dread. (“only the most prepared […] that regularly tackle some of Grim Dawn’s mightiest enemies”)
So perhaps you are supposed to run away from it? And it becomes more of a question of survival.
Or perhaps that statement was exaggerated a bit and it’s indeed more on the level of Lokar or the Bourbon Clones. (Though but very doable if you know the game and made a good quality build, no matter what type of build)
So to me the main question is: Are average well-made end-game characters supposed to be able to beat the Dread, or not?
Though I take your point about “massive whinging”, if we’re supposed to flee from it I expect many people won’t realise that, die, and then complain, so probably not the best idea from a marketing perspective.
Then again, to a lesser extent the Nemesis spawns also cause that.