Anyone who calls starts different than intended "cheating" have no idea how the development team thinks. Yoshi has stated multiple times that he loves it when he sees players think outside the box and always looks forward to what we can come up with.

The LoS method has become the preferred because it's just a better strat period. While it requires a bit more skill from the individual player, it removes the semi RNG of disappearing brambles and let's the heals focus in the party as a whole and tanks individually instead of the spikes from various players.