Ground aoe issues, Caduceus Rise

how do other people deal with the very hard hitting ground aoe in this game? I feel like by the time the effects are visible toons are dead or nearly dead (some affects do a warning animation of some sort first, I don't have problems with those). In lantern hook I eventually beat the first boss by just running around like a chicken with my head cut off (with the team on follow) but that won't work for caduceus rise first boss because he also cleaves and I can't have him anywhere near the team. My other strategy that sometimes works is to spread the team members out a lot so that at least multiple of them won't get hit but that seems to get messy once I've had to run them out of a patch or two of bad.

I feel like this is not something I ever struggle with in wow and its making me feel sluggish and bad at rift. Maybe the problem is just the levels of my toons? 49/49/48/48/48


Alive: High Thane Hergen: How far is this stupid cleave affect going anyway? Also keep dying to ground aoe (5-6 attempts)

Dead: Faultwalker Alraj: Plenty of warning to move out of aoe, no trouble killing

Dead: Hookmaster Palos: Blood Pact sucks, but got it down in one try

Alive: Caduceus : Apparently my dispels aren't fast enough... or something. The ground slam movement is annoying (2 attempts)

I took a break from Rift a while back (about a year ago). Back then, ground AoE was only a real problem in a few special cases (like the lightning boss in Charmer's Caldera) but most of it was bad enough you wanted to move but not insta-death. Last week I ran a hunt rift with my bards and it was hugely more painful dealing with the final boss's AoE even though I out-leveled the rift by +2. Not sure what they did but it appears they toned down bard healing and made AoE more potent AND more prolific, kind of like what they did with the Cataclysm instances versus WotLK. I could be wrong but that's the way it felt for me. Granted, this was just with bards. My clerics only made it to 47 so I didn't get the chance to find out out how some of the 50 instances felt versus the bards.

Interesting you say this. I was initially (last year) running four hybrid ranged dps clerics and managed to get to level 45 or so just off of rolling hots but struggled this year when I got to the second boss in Lantern's Hook (first AOE). It is possible they made the base healing from trees weaker when they rebalanced around the new level 60 cap. From a few of the things I've read (most healing raid trees now require 61 pts in one spec) that would make sense.

It is also entirely possible that the level 50 dungeons were re-statted for the higher storm legion health pools. I've finally got the whole team to 50 and I'll be trying those 48-50 dungeons again today, although with the quest gear being so much better there is less of a point in doing it.

I have my team to 51 (in rather good SL gear so should just be crushing it) and still having trouble with the same AOE boss so I'm going to be switching my healer to a purifier spec tomorrow. I'll let everyone know how it works out. There is also a possibility there is something wrong with the boss and a heroic-only ability happening in normal (something cudgel).