Today, I played in a session where my group of 4 level 26s took on Yeenoghu (after 3 other fights). We only had a few dailies left between us (3?), and the demon lord had an elite soldier backing him up, but the fight still only took us 4 rounds and around 45 minutes to finish. Rather than grind, it was actually kind of easy. We could talk at length about why this was (I believe in one round the rogue dished out about 300 damage), but my point (anecdotally, I admit) is that there really isn't any reason to assume that fights are going to last 6-7 rounds at minimum. And while there is a lot of bookkeeping, if you play with the same characters over and over you ought to quickly get pretty familiar with what everyone can do and figure out ways to make that bookkeeping trivial. Observations about hit points and bookkeeping are exactly the kind of thing that we should be talking about in a thread like this, but they should at least be couched in a helpful manner.
Do you actually, in practice, only hit what you're "swinging" at in your 4E games about 50% of the time? Is it really, on average, taking 5+ hits to drop any given opponent?
If so, then I really do feel your pain. That really would make every combat a grind. In practice though, you ought to have things like combat advantage or bonuses from leaders to turn that 50% miss chance into something more like 30%. You ought to have strikers who can jack an enemy for more like 33% of it's total health. You ought to have access to controlling effects that speed combats up by limiting the options of your opponents (daze, immobilize, knock prone, etc.)
That's not in any way to say, "You're playing wrong." But those numbers you're using are supposed to be a starting point, not the end result. If it's the end result...yeah, those combats are going to drag.
I think grind is encounter / PCs / DM dependent, but something any group can fall into easily enough.
Let's take your example above:
Yeenoghu has 1032 hit points.
Yeenoghu has an area effect attack that can stun foes. It has a 50% recharge, so in 4 rounds he should be able to use it at least once and often two or three times. This stun effect does not have a save, so extra save powers do not affect it. Only "remove an effect" powers would affect it.
A level 26 elite soldier has ~480 hit points. I do not know what level the soldier you encountered was, but the PCs are level 26, so I am assuming same level here.
That's over 1500 points of damage in 4 rounds by 4 PC or an average of 94 hit points per PC per turn (hit or miss).
PCs some of whom should be stunned part of the time.
Even with none of them getting stunned and them ALL having a 70% chance to hit a foe that is 2 levels higher than them (the average you quote above as typical), that's still an average of 134 hit points per PC per successful turn (i.e. accumulation of hits per turn). Not just the striker(s), but everyone. If even one PC gets stunned for one single turn, that means that the rest of the PCs have to average 143 points of damage per successful turn. If more than one PC gets stunned, ... It's a lot more if the hit chance is < 70% for a higher level foe and a soldier.
Sure, the Rogue can do this with a critical and an action point and a daily. Maybe. But do you have all Strikers in your party?
To me, this illustrates that your game is unusual in some way. The PCs are doing mega-damage and the foe is not stunning (no save) or immobilizing (again no save) or otherwise significantly hindering the PCs.
This seems extremely odd to me.
A 45 minute 4 round encounters is also 11 minutes per round for 6 creatures or close to 2 minutes per turn each. Your game is complex enough that it takes close to 2 minutes on average for one player or DM NPC to do its actions. 2 minutes is a lot of time for someone to use one or two powers. Our game with 6 PCs and maybe 6 foes averages about 10+ minutes or 1 minute per PC.
So yes, something doesn't sound quite right here. And, that could explain why you don't see the grind. Your minutes per turn seems high, but your number of overall rounds and encounter length seem really low.
Maybe your PCs are super optimized or something. Or maybe the DM is not playing your foes effectively. Yeenoghu can stun, and immobilize, and teleport all over the place. He should never stand around and duke it out with PCs, some of whom can do "300 damage in a single round". 26th level NPCs typically have 200 to 250 hit points. According to you, your Rogue can one shot same and even higher level standard foes. 300 points is huge.
Maybe your PCs have anti-teleport powers, or can stun lock foes, or have other things that just shut Yeenoghu down, but a 4 round encounter with Yeenoghu and an Elite Soldier sounds excessively quick for 26th level PCs (like half or less as long as it should take).
Granted, if you have a super optimized Stun Orb Wizard that can lock down Yeenoghu for 4 rounds (which some DMs would not allow in their games), yes, I can see the PCs doing a lot more damage per turn.
