How does the Main Assist work?

[Ynir]

That's an interesting application, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend against it so long as you can verify that everything's under control -- however, I would tend to thing you should still be beating on the main target, with your visual field placed toward the crowd controlled so that you can spring to them if they become uncontrolled.  Every second quicker that first mob dies is one more second the controlled mobs effectively (from the perspective of the assists) stay controlled.

I agree in principle, but in practice, the our MTs are actually discouraged from assisting, unless there is absolutely nothing else to do. One reason is in the damage table we that publish after each kill. The damage output from each caster, rogue, pally, and (arms/fury) warrior on the assist is always more than an order of magnitude greater than that of the defense warrior(s) on MT. The numbers are truly astounding: a rogue can issue more than 200,000 damage in the time it takes a defense warrior to generate 8000. Damage control in the backfield is a better use of our abilities, under these circumstances.

Absolutely, although what's more important here is not so much the peeling away part, but the "make sure you're the one breaking CC" part.  Most non-warriors do not understand this and it's a serious pet peeve of mine, but the chances of them drawing the aggro if they break CC are extremely minimal, whereas I can count on one hand the number of times I was unable to hold aggro when breaking a CCed mob (excepting Mind Control) with a Sunder (and in every case, it's because the caster had been obligated to CC the mob multiple times).  Sunder generates more hate than any CC save MC, and even on an MC you can usually get it back with two Sunders.
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That is an interesting point. My attack when breaking CC is always taunt, followed by sunder, which (usually) works. I am trying to discover if the mob can be taunted before CC is broken, so that it wakes up remembering the taunt. I doubt it, but I'm still not sure.

One minor annoyance is when a conventional warrior charges my target while I am trotting over to intercept it. When this happens I head straight for the backfield, knowing that I will meet the mob there shortly. This doesn't happen often, actually, because it is so difficult to set up a charge in the fog of a raid war.