Dear DPS.

[Nova_Dresden]

spike damage=bad, kill the thing that causes the spike damage=good. I can tank the imps all day, the doctore meanwhile punches some fairly sizeable dents into my armor. also, I just stun the big bastard when he's winding up.

and again, this was halitali the place with exactly 4 caster type mobs, in order of encounter: bombs(7 total, might be adding/forgetting one), firemane(1st boss), lightning sprites(anywhere between 0 and 15 depending on luck), and fire sprites(final boss room, spawns 2 per add phase, seems that killing them is what triggers the switch back to normal fighting.)

and yes, it does sometimes make sense to kill the weaker things first. but the more time you spend killing them the longer the big thing lives that's really causing the damage. and early on, there isn't much separating everyone in terms of health, so big spiky damage can kill your tank if you aren't paying attention/standing there throwing rocks in cleric stance and spamming medica for your main tank heal.

I get the "fun" groups. I think I may have set puppies on fire and hurled them at girl scouts in a past life or something. because it's every single time when I'm tanking or healing.

When I DPS? the tank and healer are over-geared(relics in brayflox anyone?) and know exactly how to run each pull and boss.
When I tank? I'm the only one who's been there before, the DPS forgot how to count, and the healer pulls the boss while I'm explaining mechanics. Good thing I like playing WAR, because I'm always infuriated.

The spike damage is still avoidable, particularly if you stun the buff they put on themselves. Their melee attacks are slower, so they do hit harder than other mobs (which is pretty standard for every MMO). While you can tank the imps "all day long" and focus the Doctore first, all you're doing is running the risk that your healer takes aggro while healing unnecessary damage from adds. Halatali is still a fairly lower dungeon, so it's not critical. But at higher levels in other MMOs I've played you still took out casters (healers in particular), then ranged, then melee. This game still suffers from WoW transfer issues where below a certain level every DPS assumes you just AoE every pile of stuff until it's all dead. I give the DPS one warning on AoEs in lower dungeons, then if they insist on it after that I stop trying to pull it off of them (killed a lot of idiot Archers in Copperbell from that). At level 50 I tend to lose threat occasionally just because I'm not highly geared and DPS don't have a throttle below "Kill it yesterday!" on their damage output.