Small group tactics

I have been considering some of the more common NERO tactics recently. Some of them make sense, some of them could be improved upon and some of them are just plain bad. I am going to try to take a look at one of each and everyone else can tell me why I am wrong.

The one that makes sense to me is the smallest chunk of the NERO battlefield, the fighter/healer backpack relationship. Fighters are the best repetitive damage dealers in the game but they have terrible survivability against packets. Healers have the worst combat survivability but the most versatile skill set. It seems pretty obvious. This building block became even more powerful in the post cantrip age, the cantrip healer at every level has more healing per level than the tree healer. In addition the cantrip healer maintains his tree for removal spells. The break down of this tactic is always the flanks, if something gets around the fighter and hits the healer, everything falls apart.

Which segues nicely into our next tactic, the one that could be improved upon. The shield wall, is generally a group of fighter backpack combinations standing side by side. This tactic is generally employed in field battles and it has one glaring deficiency, the shields are the worst packet magnets in the game, and when lined up edge to edge they are virtually impossible to miss. The fix is something that was discovered in Ancient Greece actually. Greek soldiers fought in phalanx similar to the NERO shield wall, just like the NERO shield wall they found that the added coverage from a neighbors shield allowed for better survivability in the closing portion of a battle. In the later days of Grecian dominance, they discovered that once the battle closed, breaking the phalanx into a spaced line actually protected the individual soldiers better from enemy arrow fire than maintaining the tight lines. The reason for this was simple, the spaces allowed for arrows to hit their own men, tight grouped close fighting still provides the packet target. The moral? Spread out when you are in close.

The tactic that I do not think works the way that it is intended is the protracted door battle tactic. Too often I have seen two groups randomly throwing packets at one another until the attacking group builds up the steam to charge in ( sometimes completely unsafely) This tactic is so easy to improve upon it is almost laughable, concentrated fire beats individual fire every time. Get your packet throwers together and throw the same packets. Not only does this lessen the possibility of missing, it also increases the likelihood the opponent will take the appropriate effect. Volleyed fire was common practice in almost every organized military throughout the ancient and medieval ages, it works, it has been proven, you should use it.

What do you guys think about this? Any other ones that you think we should talk about?