Oh I died many times with the first group of Mantraps you meet in the Shire and I certainly wasn't ready at that point for "rush and gush or slice and dice" but by the time they respawned this method seemed to work very well - my first two characters would keep doing weapon attacks making it more difficult for the mantraps to release spells on us while my magic users would use spells which do not also harm the party (probably why I've always favored Elemental Blast over spells like Meteor). The other explanation is that I'm perhaps a bit whacky!
Wyv