Given what I'm about to say, after you've read it, ask yourself, "Are we slowly shifting back to a battle system that more closely resembles that of FFXI?" I've mentioned this on the boards recently, and didn't get the responses I'd hoped for.
RELEVANT POINTS:
A. All classes regain HP/MP at an increased rate while standing still.
B. Movement will interrupt spellcasting.
C. Enemies at EXP camps are highly concentrated in many places.
D. Enemies respawn at a fast rate and link together.
E. Many of the Area of Effect weaponskills have been removed.
Since we are all now familiar with Combos, and are aware that mobs 10 levels above our own provide optimal EXP, I believe this calls for a more controlled and therefore efficent battle flow.
People don't often go beyond the first gate of Natalan at Lv38-43 where they would get the best EXP they could without having a Lv50 carry them. I was in an Iron Lake raptor party not long ago, and I realized a distinct difference in relative efficiency during those fights versus Stronghold parties:
At raptors, the party followed the tank around instead of having to wait for a single person to pull from Chocoback which requires the person to draw aggro, (given that your targets do aggro), instead of actually pulling it by ranged attack - an undoubtedly much more effective approach.
The difference with roaming is you are following your tank around, where you can visualize his target, lock on, and defeat it quickly because everyone is fighting the same mob. Previously, even when there were a group of mobs, we were able to employ any one of a cache of AoE weaponskills to take them all down virtually simultaneously.
That isn't the case anymore. The weaponskills we have now regarding AoE capability are either conditional or require an extended cooldown or are attainable very close to Lv50. This translates into an unnecessary difficulty in determining which of the horde to focus on. With the current system, one of the following needs to happen:
1. A system where all claimed/aggro'd mobs develop a simple, sequentially unique title. IE Grass Raptor 1, 2, 3, etc. so that members can quickly identify which mob is the next target.
2.Implementation of the /assist command.
3. A reliable method of disabling the mob group (a la Horde Lullaby) where the tank can draw out the next target to defeat.