Strange Magic - a bad joke?

Never pay,
What was your crew first and what is your crew now?
Sounds like you added a new guy to your team to help get through this

mh.. got that after the ideas here while the corpses of my crew piled up. I did the first ones the hard way - first the minis while offtanking the big guy, then the minis (mostly after a wipe, invis in, rinse repeat). It seems like the Fight Fire thing. With AE-Root its a cakewalk if there is enough practice in handling the guys. And with the positive faction it is even easier.

Don't forget that you have to have decent gear (T3) in your case. In my case it was the last mission (also gear at T3). Even if you use AE-Root you have to deal with the big guy and I must admit that I never had such a pile of corpses in a mission - so it was hard enough. If I have to do it again then I am sure, this will not work without some corpses.

Everything which has been done victorious will be a kind of "easy" after that. If I think on others doing it for the first time and/or don't have a clue or the gear then I would never call that one easy. It was one of the hardest parts. But the hardest by far seems the Ash Trials. I still have not beaten this despite I have now all the progression up to Jann's Veil and the port lamps. But I don't complain about the difficulty of the last ones. They are possible to make and a challenge for a first timer (which should be). I saw Tucohs Warrior always dualwielding. I never tried it. Now I have a button to change from time to time and it is a nice option if the damage spikes are not too high and a bit more dps is needed, but a 2HS is too squishy. I still have to little control over the healing, dps, aggro and mitigation possibilites of the warrior. Mostly I care about aggro and mitigation - healing and dps are only spammed sporadically or intentional with changing the weapons. There is probably much more potential possible

Standard:
Dru, Enc, War, Clr, Mag, Rog

Now:
Dru, Enc, War, Clr, Mag, Sk

War is nearly full T3, while SK is T2/T3 mix. All others don't need to be very high geared, despite it would be nice if the Druid and Enchanter wouldn't be so fast OOM after a bit of fighting. But a Tank with T3 can struggle but mostly does well. I imagine having EoK Ultrarare with more DPS would take me over that sweet spot to beat the Ash Trial. I came up to around 50% of the third mob till wipe so far.

The reason for SK/War is simply fast and easy aggro-management, like I said before.
The weapons and gear and aggro-buttons are choosen in a way, so that the War, SK, Mage Pet and Enc Pet (which are both on taunt) round-robin/alternating the aggro. That means that every of them gets only a part of the damage. Even if a named is ignoring the pets (e.g. Trials) then there is a round-robin aggro between the War and the SK. If there are too many adds who are not CCable then offtanking 2-3 and even 4 parts is possible because the real cleric can compensate much with his healing capability but also with Group-Retort/Celestial/AE-Heals/DI and the AA-Healing stuff.

The expansion seems to react (in opposite to former expansion) also extremely on stun. So if a Cleric or Pally uses stuns extremely well then they seem to work very often to your advantage (more than usual). So the Cleric uses his Stun-Heal-Lines. A Pally has not only Stun and Mitigation but also decent healing abilities. I tried him in the line but for additional DPS my SK seems a bit better suited for that. Despite for fail pulls the SK can FD and loose aggro easy.

The SK is not only offtank and second aggro-partner, he can burn very well in a short time and can sustain his health well if the warrior needs more attention. A rogue may have more sustained DPS (around 110-140k) but the SK compensates that with more safety. I don't care how long I need for average mobs. But the critical named or mission mobs need a fast burn in a short period of time. And the rogues tanking ability does not last very long (e.g riposte disc).

Enchanter is mainly for mitigation. I tried without it and the tanks get creamed fast in a "limit" scenario. To much DD and DoT damage from mobs - the Enchanter is perfect for that little bit of protection. And with additional mezzes (which only worked so far sufficiently when enough time for single tash and single mezz) he does well. His DPS still sucks btw.

Mage is a wonder in the new expansion. His damage for all kinds of elementals (Nukes against elementals with additional 120k/78k/71k damage, depending on spell level) and his AA against them a sweet. And sometimes the mage pet is useful outside the trials - inside e.g. Trial of Three they a pretty useless but in other cases he is DPS, Tank and most important - easy port of the group via CoH - which is badly needed on zones like Stratos or Smoke where you fall over the ledge and need to get ported to the group fast.

Druid is the travel guy, buffer and the constant good DPS in the group. Druid and Mage do the most caster damage while the Enchanter enhances them.

That is my group at moment and with that I can do nearly everything except this nice feature to SoS into areas and scout them ahead (which was perfect with the Rogue in RoS).