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.