The volume balance or as its commonly referred to the sweet spot -18dB, its this balance of -18dB and -10dB I've been floating at, with the exception of the highest peak at -2.5dB.
I experienced the volume drop, referring to the "sweet spot" -18dB when applying the Limiter setting "Output Level" -4.5dB, visible in the post above. As mentioned with that Limiter setting I got the desired peak to drop from -2.5dB to -4.5dB, but at the same time the general balance volume dropped from - 18dB to -23dB, which decreased the overall volume of the track, which is what I tried to avoid, hope this makes sense?
In any case, compression has done the job.