Guild Wars.

[Roland]

Try staying as far away as possible when first attacking.  It is random who the monsters attack, but there are ways to get them more likely to attack certain monsters.

About aiming area effect spells, don't worry about perfect monster formations, sometimes you get them, sometimes you don't.  Pretty much what I do is if there are 2 or 3 monsters in an area for an area effect spell, I drop in on the monsters, since it will kill the monsters faster than waiting for a perfectformation.  Alesia can almost always keep other people alive even if a couple of monsters go for mages.

I haven't bothered waiting for the "perfect" formation since about half an hour into the game, when I truly started to see the limitations of AoE spells (I laugh at that phrase; AoE in GW is a joke - half the time if two mobs are standing equally apart from a central mob only one will take damage). I fire off what I can, when I can, depending on what is posing the biggest threat. The problem is, once my Henchmen start to crumple, the battle can very quickly go south, despite me being much stronger than them and my opponents, generally.

Oh, and Alesia can't do jack. :P She spends more time using her wand then she does healing, and if someone goes down, it'll usually be half a minute before she even attempts to start her 8-second resurrect spell. Orion always casts Firestorm right as the mob is dying, so that by the time he finishes casting, the mob has been dead the whole time and the spell is completely wasted. The Warrior, at least, is somewhat useful, able to dish out decent damage and take a fair bit, too. Maybe I need to start carrying around two Warrior henchmen? :P

If ranged attackers start near each other, or if they patrol that way, let them attack and hit them with area effect spells. They will just stand there and get beaten.

Yeah, you know, I know that. That hasn't changed much in video games at all over the last 20 years. It's no different here. Only players in PvP bother to move around to avoid spells. See my comments above: I don't bother waiting to hit them if I feel they are a sginificant threat. And ranged-attackers are ALWAYS higher than tanks, especially healers, because they always hit MY mage and healer.

About it being your tactics or not, it is your tactics, notin the sense of you being really bad, more in the sense of not having learned yet the hard to see tricks that make a big difference.  First time against ettins, they would wipe out my henchman party,later on,  Icould kill them without a sweat, I still am not sure what the difference was, but I somehow have picked up timing and such that makes it a lot easier.

That's really helpful. Thank you. Somehow, I still doubt it's my tactics. Perhaps there are times where I could have backed off to avoid adds, but generally it seems that adds use the aggro radius of the mobs I am attacking, rather than MY aggro radius, thus it does me no good to stand as far back as I can. After all, I do that anyway - I'm a R/E. I only get up close to take the heat off someone else who's getting maimed, because I can tank better than any of my Henchmen, and dish out more spell-damage. What sucks is not being able to pull attention off a mob that's beating on someone (like my Mage or Healer), and having him/her run away just as I get right next to the monsters to unleash a point-blank AoE, only to have to cancel it and move to the mobs new location because they followed. There's just no way for me to pull attention off one of my party members like there is in WoW, therefore, whoever is getting maimed will die 99% of the time. That's NOT MY tactics. That's poor game implementation. :P

with henchmen running and atrtracting monsters, let monster movement take care of that for you.  Monsters will split themselves up, so when you attack, the henchmen will go for the monsters you want and not rush off.  If two groups seem to be moving towards each other, stop your attack, and run back, the henchmen should back off too.  Otherwise, can't really help you, I have only had henchmen rush off from one group to another twice.

Generally, this is the case. Not always, however. Henchmen, once they have their target, will NOT go for what I want if I switch targets. It usually takes them upwards of 10 seconds to switch targets, and even then, most of the time I don't want them to switch! I want them to fight what they are fighting so I can take down the really important mobs, like Healers, not have them rush off to the healer in the back, only to drag every other mob they were fighting with them, and then get totally destroyed because of it. Worse, them running off like that often brings in unexpected visitors, sometimes from the very ground. Every been walking along and been ambushed by 6 monsters at once, who were not on your radar? Yeah, happens to me. And even when I try to be cautious, I still get ambushed, although usually I can pull out ok in the end these days. Not my tactics, just the way the game is, however frustrating.

I'm really getting tired of people saying "it's your tactics", or "use these skills", when a) it's NOT my tactics, it's just a poor game, and B) I don't have any of those skills because I can't complete the quests to get them.