Nebulous
Legend
In general I've come to decide that for any one encounter, if there isn't a lot of running, shifting, pushing, pulling and sliding going on, and if there's isn't a respectable amount of 'terrain and hazards' type damage being dealt almost every round, then something needs improving.
I'll keep this in mind. I've run a good deal of 4e combats but have not hit the grind as bad some other people it seems. Maybe our players are just synergistically good, or maybe it's luck. We finished the last two full encounters of Keep on the Shadowfell in less than 4 hours, which was great i think. Not even the huge Irontooth encounter took that long.
I also agree that although PCs can drop easily, actually killing them takes some forethought, like throwing them against a solo well above their level, or pitting them against elites and traps with a wide variety of roles covered. I've actually started tracking just the Healing Surges for our group session to session. Their individual hit points don't matter anymore, let them deal with that. The DM can judge at glance how wounded a party is if their fighter is 2/12 HS and the rogue is 1/7. That's a TPK waiting to happen.