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Dec 25, 2012 -- 10:23PM, floating_stump wrote:

so you don't have to move to get between the enemy and the rest of the party?

I go in the door. I walk five squares in. The enemy runs up and attacks me. How many squares are between those enemies and the controller who walks through the door behind me? Not enough. How many squares does our entire team take up? Burst 3.

I want to go in, spread out and engage the enemy. Not go in, stand together and let them engage us.

But I guess we're going to have to learn some new tactics. Double move without running is probably my only option. It doesn't make me happy. So back to my question...

You go in the door.  You go one square in and ready.  You are now occupying a choke point and the enemies can't get past you.  Your ranged allies attack from behind you without penalty.

I've been thinking about this for a while, trying to reconcile the advice with my experiences.

So we should not advance into the room. Defenders walk in, archer peeks through the door, and makes the enemies head for cover. But then we have to go in after them and they're behind cover. And while we're standing at the entrance, they're spread out and we're bunched up. And we no longer have surprise. Either that, or they rush us - but that's not going to happen very often.

And that only works when we have recon and know what's in there. Either way, I can think of several recent encounters that involved going through a door or doorway, and we could never do anything from beyond the threshold.

Our GM is fond of two things - area attacks, and hitting the weakest member of the party. If I (the defender) stand next to the healer, the monster will blast/burst us both or go around me to attack him (or just attack him from next to me, since I probably haven't marked it yet). Or the monster with reach will reach past two fighers to attack the controller. A recent combat, we had three fighters and a healer. Six enemies. Whenever an enemy could get away from the fighters, it did so, and went for the healer. No ganging up on the striker, who was dealing lots of damage. No ganging up on the defender, who was not dealing much damage. They disengaged to deal with the guy who was standing back. And when we reconverged on the healer to defend him, they still always attacked him. I'm sure the GM would say the monsters are smart enough to know that the guy skulking in the back waving his hands is both dangerous and easily killed. Hmm, this wasn't supposed to be a rant...

As a battlemind, it's my job to keep some of the enemies away from the rest of the party, so they can focus on killing the others first (focus firing is definitely the plan). I'm pretty effective at this, when the numbers are right. Like, "I'm going to keep the dragon occupied. You take care of the trogs."

But you've got me thinking about it. I'll see if we can adjust our tactics in this direction, and we'll see what happens.