After running a number of instances as my new Bear tank, I’ve noticed a number of things about how 5 man groups are running now.

This article discusses AoE Damage pros/cons, target priority, utiltiy abilies in combat, and inventive ability use.

AoE Is King
As is well known by this point, AoE is the most used ability style in instances.
It burns down mobs and makes dps drool over topping their last known top dps.
We’re mostly over geared now so this works great most of the time.

The Problem With AoE
There are a couple problems that come from this style of play.
The first thing that happened when people started gearing up in Northrend and AoE burning their instances was that they stopped CCing.
You’ll notice CC is pretty much not necessary any more and no one does it.
This, in and of itself, isn’t a problem.
The problem is that people are neglecting their utility abilities more or the more ‘inventive’ use of their abilities.
They don’t want to interrupt their dps rotations, thus lowering their scores on dps meters, to make life a little easier for the party on a whole.

People are no longer thinking about their full ability range, just their DPS rotations.

Targeting:
With AoE’s you don’t really have to specify a target and that’s nice.
Unfortunately, you kill each mob slower than if everyone targeted one at a time.
Remember, each mob is just as (or more so with enrages) effective at 1% health as it is at 100% so dropping a mob sooner is going to lower damage taken by the party.

The main problem here is that people see bigger total damage with their AoE’s so they stick to them.
The next problem is if people do single target mobs they often don’t focus on the same mob.
Raid Icons and the /assist function come in handy here.

Just switching from AoE style to a single target style and hitting the right mobs can turn say Halls of Reflection from nearly impossible at times to a quite manageable instance.

Utility Abilities Useful In Combat:

This is where I expect people to start speaking up and saying things like ‘But I keep Faerie Fire up!’ or ‘I always Mark my targets!’. Some people will keep these kinds of buffs up as they increase dps in longer fights.

The kinds of abilities I’m talking about are things like Distracting Shot, Kick, Counter Spell, Typhoon, Sacred Shield, etc.
They fall into several categories (leaving CC out):
Interrupts – Stopping an enemy spell cast can spell the difference between a clean kill versus fighting the mobs involved several times or having your party haemorrhage large amounts of hit points at once.
Stuns – Useful as the poor man’s Interrupt as well as putting mobs out of combat but still leaving them ‘ok’ to attack with all those lovely AoE’s.
Knock Back – Also often useful as an Interrupt, knock back abilities are frowned on for spreading out mobs and lowing AoE damage. On the flip side of this, as long as the tank has good threat on the mobs, this lowers the mob’s outgoing damage for a few seconds allowing heals to catch up some.
Damage Decreasers – Decreasing mob damage output or reducing the damage a player is taking can ease a tough fight. Tanks usually have a cool down or two to handle some of this but other classes can help with with things like Sacred Shield or Demoralizing Shout
Roots or Slows – Stopping or slowing the movement of mobs, even for a second or two, can be a life saver (especially to clothies). Frost Nova or Entangling Roots with root your target while things like Chains of Ice or a Frost Trap will slow them.
Taunts – Be careful with these because they can kill you really quickly but maybe it’s better you die than say your healer?

Inventive Use of Abilities:
Using abilities in ways they’re not necessarily meant for can really save your party. This is

extremely

class specific.
As my primary DPS character is a Hunter that’s who my example is for but be inventive. (Sorry, I’ve rolled heals and tanks the most.)

Distracting Shot is normally used to pull into a Freezing Trap for CC.
You can use it to peel a mob off your healer and to you. It taunts for 6 seconds so you’ll want distance between yourself and your healer so the taunt has time to wear off before the mob really gets to you. When it wears off, the mob will head to its highest threat. This gives your tank time to pick it back up without your healer dying and minimal damage going to you (if done well).

Let’s add some safety to this tactic. Place a Frost trap so the mob you’re Distracting will trigger it and take longer to get to you.
This takes a little more preparation time and doesn’t work well against things like ranged mobs or casters but adds survivability into the tactic.

Here’s my favorite version:
Distract the Boss. When the boss gets into range hit Deterrence. Bam, you’re a 5 second tank!
If you’re Marksman, you can pop Readiness and repeat this Distract + Deterrence combo for 10s of tanking fun.
The purpose of this combo is when your tank is about to drop and some time is needed to get them healed back up.
This is, obviously, extremely dangerous so use it carefully.

Summary
In summary, we have a lot of options on how to handle situations besides AoE and careful application of these options can turn a hard situation into an easy one.
Be aware of the fight and what you have at your disposal, not just your dps output.