I was thinking a bit about some things I've mentioned before, but now I'm interested in what people think about it.
Currently, there's no reliable way to direct aggressive NPCs to specific players in a group, nor are the buffing or healing spells particularly well oriented to group combat. Perhaps this should be changed some.
Currently the only AoE heal I know of requires you to master Blue Way, perhaps a few weaker ones should be added to BlW and CW, and maybe other Ways if they make sense. As well, regenerative spells (HoTs) would also be very useful for group combat to place on tanks or other members that happen to be being attacked or afflicted with a DoT.
I'm unaware of any reliable way to focus attacks on a single player. For those familiar with WoW, I'm referring to threat management. We have heavy armor and shields, all we'd need is either a special ability (which as far as I know may be in the pipeline but I'll mention it anyway) that can generate threat (a taunt) and perhaps AoE threat generation. Stance should also factor in; typically defensive stances in games generates more threat so if a tank goes defensive and casts flash, they should be able to generate more threat than another character using flash I think; this approach would mean casting should put a player in a stance or treat them as if they are in normal stance, but without the attacking warnings. Perhaps there could be a buff which increases the amount of threat you generate (probably at least one for each Way), one that can be cast on any friendly target.
And then we get to buffs. Some can be cast on friendly players, some can't be but it won't cast it on you if you have something else targeted (gives you an error message), then some cast on you regardless of what is targeted; these should probably be cleaned up and refactored to make them consistent, and reconsider which ones should be able to be cast on group members (while leaving some as perks for picking a certain Way). Group-wide buffs are important and encourage people not to just focus on the Ways that deal the most damage. Perhaps a master Red Way user can boost everyone's strength, while a master Brown Way user can boost defenses.
Finally, can we get a res? For quick-thinking, high-level CW healers it should be possible to revive someone if they've not yet gone to the Death Realm; the description of CW even says that this should be possible. This makes sense especially with role-focused characters in a group. This would probably be one of the draws to having a CW healer with you (where BlW would be for the massive AoE healing).
With these various types of abilities added/modified, group combat will be a lot more practical, and a lot more attractive as well. This will further increase how people focus on their skills and should help keep people from trying to become "master of everything" if they find they like a specific combat role better than others, and since players can pick both a weapon and a Way you could get some very interesting combinations when you factor in role specialization.
I also find that good group combat opportunities can be both a lot of fun, but also can work towards playerbase cohesiveness; most of the people in my raid group on WoW I didn't know when I started, and we're all pretty good friends now. This is also not to mention the doors that are opened to further development, things such as dungeons and raids (stone labyrinth runs, anyone?), smaller events that can be held in separate instances, world bosses that can drop rare and sought after loot that only spawn once every few hours...
