The only AOE that I ever got working well was the AOE heal ability of my sage. Mainly because I could drop it at her feet. If needed while fighting, I'd pull her in (using Follow) and click the "AOE Heal" button I made. The next mouse click would be sent to her screen so all I had to do was click the bottom of my screen (right above the default hotbars). She'd heal the group then, but the downside was if we were getting hit with an AOE attack she would too. 99% of the time though it's not an issue.