[To my players: Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I read the situation]
Anybody else but me writing here?
I take it you refer to the first encounter of the evening, the ogrekin(?) with his trained lots-of-hitpoints rats? (Those must have been made out of neutronium, or something...)
Did not really pay that much attention to it, because it wasn't until after it that I got do do some real fun non-combat stuff to cheer me up, and I had settled in expecting to have to wait out a full evening of grindy stuff, as implied by the previous gaming session...
(sorry!!)
There were never any urgency in the fight; I don't think I even used my Majestic Words until very late in the fight, when it was a foregone conclusion. The ogrekin never managed to capitalize on his hook pulls, and the challenge in the encounter was mostly maneuvering to maximize the number of rats in close blasts / close bursts in the tight space available, while still catching the ogrekin somehow in the area.
Taking out the "small fry" first, even as tough and hard-chewed as these rats, or Mommie's undead in the previous session, seems to be a very good tactic, but it resolves the encounters very early. Then you end up with something very akin to a City of Heroes archvillain fight. Compare with Statesman's Taskforce - once you take out the towers, the fight against Lord Recluse himself isn't very interesting, unless you go for the badge. (And with the badge, it isn't excitement, it's frustrating nervousness, but that is digressing...)
The third encounter, repeatedly throwing the three drunk ogrekin into the pond using various slide maneuvers was much more fun, but in a kind of slapstick Keystone Cops manner, and by then I had also been cheered up by the second encounter, which we managed to turn into a non-combat one...