D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Deset Gled]

Statblocks are an abstraction of a snapshot in time. Your statblock might be X right now, but, tomorrow, it might be Y. And, again, 4e D&D was very clear on the notion that the mechanics were absolutely NOT meant to be used if the PC's were not present. If you're applying cats to minions, that's your fault for not using the system as written or intended.

As you say, the statblock is a snapshot. But the effect of applying "roles" in 4e means that the snapshot changes based on who's looking at the snapshot, with no passage of time or change to the thing the snapshot was taken of. There is no change to the monster, yet it has different stats based on who/what is interacting with them.