Hello Gimli,
I know all this technics well and use them. I have always ALL the non-comabt buff up all the time. The problem with the angle it's not really usefull when you priest gets an average of 150 damage. I did put my bishop in the most central position with the priest and bard.
My bard is a real tank (second behind the samurai) so he can get a lot, he has also high reflexion so he don't get hit much, but the priest get waxed often. The problem is at AP, most monsters use spells to attack end tend to love spellcasters. I have all the resistance of all my chars at 100, when the average monster have 120 or more

. The most insane magic resistant monster I saw was Al-Dorado (Al-Sedexus portal keeper), 150 to 200 in all the realms!!!