Party Strategy Guide

[Concillian]

If everyone is following the plan, mobs lost due to focus fire should be no problem. It should only be the primary target and whoever took the aggro had better want it.

Agreed. If the mob is getting AoEd AND the single damage people are focus firing, it will be dead fast, likely before whoever stole it needs healing. This should be of little concern unless the tank needs the rage of those hits, which is unlikely.

[quote3) In addition to aggro, a tank has a lot he or she can contribute to the party in the form of damage, shouts, buffs and debuffs. Asking the tank to "stay ahead of the (threat) curve" takes away from his or her contributions elsewhere to the rest of the party. I have no doubt that "this...can result in higher DPS for the AoE'rs" but I'm not sure it increases the party's damage and it makes the tank's job a lot less interesting.[/quote]

In the case of AoEs, the tank adds damage to the party by allowing the AoE to happen. I met one warrior who preferred to charge into a 5 pull ALONE, everyone else would wait for 2 greater heals, then open up with AoE and focus fire. That was a fast instance. The warrior takes a lot of damage in the beginning, but that also generates tons of rage. He could lock down aggro through the WHOLE pull even under AoE.

5) I question how much time is saved with AoE battles. The mobs that are killed are fairly weak and would only take seconds to kill if they were picked off one at a time. Then these fights always seem to need more downtime afterward since both the healers and attackers are out of mana.

In the later instances casters are pretty much drinking every pull either way. The time spent drinking is time for the warrior and/or rogue to spend surveying and communicating about the next pull.

There is more than one way to go about pulls. what method you use is situational. The largest single factor is your tank. What he is most comfortable with is often the best choice. Provided what he is most comfortable with isn't attacking one target in battle stance.