Going back through the thread and picking up bits I wanted to touch on again or that I failed to touch on the first go around...
I think this is/was the big hang up with 4E. Too many people tried doing dungeon crawls instead of action set pieces. So something that's normally fun like combat just becomes a tedious slog.
Absolutely. Anything on the sheet is a fair target. And anything on the sheet has the potential to solve a problem, not just combat powers.
I'm not interested in endless slogs of combat. Even when we finally cottoned to how 4E should be run (big set pieces instead of constant dungeon crawls) the process of combat took too long for our tastes. Even the most fun encounter on paper that's well designed and complex in an interesting way become dull and lifeless after two (or more) solid hours of combat.
My response to that is that a combat which lasts two hours and is ONLY about fighting, and more fighting, is not really what I'm talking about. This was the danger of a lot of the 'big solo' model of encounter design. I question the use of solos in most cases. Of course there are plenty of other encounter designs that aren't great either. If you stick to the 'this is an action adventure scene' and make sure there is a solid 'encounter plot' with goals and characters, etc. then you shouldn't really be bored. The whole thing will include lots of fun RP, characterization, planning, etc.
As I said elsewhere:
"I fell in love with literally everything they did with this edition...except how it actually played at the table. I loved the lore changes, the points-of-light setting, big magic rituals for everyone, residuum, solving linear fighter vs quadratic wizard, roles, power sources, powers, layout, design, monster variety, monster stat blocks, monster roles, MM3 on a business card, the DMGs were amazing...I loved literally everything they did with this edition...except for how it actually played. We played from the start to the finish with this one but could never get a simple combat to be anything less than a multiple hour slog. We tried everything and nothing ever worked. If only they revised the combat rules for speed of play."
While I like the idea of having morale be part of the monster's hp and them running away when they hit zero instead of dying...I also like the idea of some monsters staying longer than others of the same type, the swinginess of the actual morale check. Some monsters stay and fight while others flee.
There's still plenty of variation when you take to-hit (remember, always gotta hit in 4e) and variations in damage rolls. I didn't, personally, find it necessary to have these much larger swings that arise when a single check can 'kill' a monster. If you think about it, this is a pretty big swing. Just obliterating one of the 5 standards in a stock encounter is enough to pretty much guarantee it will be an easy encounter. The PCs will focus on the most dangerous thing still standing etc.
The odd thing is, I always hear about "all combats are multi-hour slogs" but IME A) every other version of D&D has long combats. Maybe not always as long as the longest 4e combats, but AD&D (which is my main edition that I have mostly played) combats can be stupid long, even at low levels. Everyone needs a 17 to hit anything and you can grind through round after round of nothing at all happening. Not only that but EVERY substantial monster has 3+ attacks, which means plenty of rolling. Plus you have morale, and maybe obedience too (for allies). Depending on exactly how you interpret the rules on melee there's also a whole bunch of randomly determining who attacks who, and once you engage movement is impossible. I found it pretty often to be QUITE dull. Often you could cut it short by expending expensive resources, but clearly that is usually sub-optimal. B) 4e combats are just not necessarily, or even normally, some kind of slow slog. Exciting stuff is always happening, and when you DO make it interesting, the fights don't really bog down, everyone stays engaged!
So, in the first campaign I ran, levels 1-5 we sometimes ran into this 'slog' encounter. If you have some overleveled elite, especially one with good defenses like a soldier, then all of a sudden everything went into snail mode, assuming nothing else was going on. So this is why I invented the rule 'there is always something else going on' ALWAYS. Also don't use level +2 elite soldiers, just don't. Granted, this all does put a bit of 'know the game' on the DM. I don't think 4e is anything like a perfect game, but I don't think that burden is higher than for 1e, 2e, or 3.x.