My opening combo is pretty much the same for most things. If fluffy isnt available I'll put darkest night on a boss or lt at the back/middle of the group. It will cause agro but with the reduced accuracy you don't get hit by much. Use twilight grasp if needed. Targeting the same enemy that has DN on, will then use fearsome stare and tentacles to hold them in place and put down tar patch. If I feel it necessary I'll then use petrifying gaze to hold anything, if not just start using nightfall while everything is clumped together. Then just cycle through my other attacks, petrifying gaze, if it looks as thought the fight is going to go on for longer than normal and my original anchor is down I'll pick another one. If fluffy is available at the begining of a fight I'll summon him into the middle of a mob so he can take the alpha and use his chill of the night aura to debuff.
For things like malta groups with sappers I'll try and hold the sapper with PG first. And things that are fear resistent like nemesis I'll use PG more than I would normally.
I do rely on fearsome stare alot. If something goes wrong and another group is agro'd or there is an ambush coming for instance, I'll try and target them and control that group until the original one is finished off.
When I'm having a good day I do think I'm more than capable of keeping a large team alive... theres always the bad days though when nothing I do seems to work out right 
What he said, except I tend to open with fearsome stare to try and prevent any aggro. FS>Tar Pit>Tentacles>whatever looks needed. Still lvl26 so no fluffy yet <sigh>.
"If there's anything worse than being sacrificed, it's being sacrificed incompetantly."
I witter on at frankly excessive length about various opening techniques I use here.
Dead Calm's Defender Manifesto
That's an excellent guide Dead_Calm
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Good stuff!
My "standard" chain, whether teaming or solo, given a good clump of mobs, is Fearsome Stare - Darkest Night (on lt. towards back) - Tar Patch, then usually Tenebrous Tentacles - Nightfall, etc. Recently I've been playing around with using the combination of Dark Pit and Howling Twilight and then using TT-NF. That way, with TT on top, the total combination is a psuedo hold.
Dark Pit or Howling Twilight on their own aren't that impressive as disorients, but the two together stack to make an awesome, safe disorient that covers nearly everybody (all minions and lts.). In fact I've been toying with opening with these recently.
Another idea I'm toying with is actually putting some damage enhs into Howling Twilight. The TT-NF combo is a pretty good AoE - in combination with a damaging HT, it should bring up arresting efficiency a fair bit
Wondering what "combos" Dark Miasma and/or Dark Blast Defenders favour (and for what situations).
More specifically, I'm curious about what DDDs reckon is the most aggro-free opening combo (in general and/or re. specific mobs, in both solo and team contexts).