Assuming encounter 2 is less than five minutes from encounter two. It's actually happened to us where while my longtooth shifting was on, after killing the bad guys, the bad guy's boss joined the picture. S i didn't need to turn it back on, of course i was at half hitpoints with all my encounter powers used up. Stretching an encounter long buff at the cost of not replenishing encounter powers is a BIG trade-off.

The fact that a longtooth shifter can always heal himself up to half is why they are sky blue, asuide from the double whammy of trait bonuses.

And minotaurs can prevent themselves from dropping. They both trump the elf.