And IMHO various AOE spells/effects are much less useful with that much armor currently
Flat out stop using Contamination and Conflagration (or whatever the fire version is called). They do poor damage and instead rely on hitting many enemies over single. The only time they do decent damage is on enemies who have lost their armors (at which point... there are better choices)
-Mind you, they aren't THAT bad... their main advantage is that they recharge fast... They just have low priority. There are few skills I'd slot before that.
If you want everything out of AoE Fossil Strike and Fireball for the earth + Fire combinations. Typically that will strip magic armor off just about any enemy pretty much immediately... with Magic Poison Arrow.
This definitely can and will start to take down multiple enemies.
Water + Air are a bit trickier... If Fire + Earth are the big damage dealers... Then Water + Air are the big CC. Those skills you usually want to keep in reserve until magic armor is stripped.
Hail of Ice, because it doesn't freeze anymore, is a great skill to dish out on enemies who are not currently engaging anyone. It does a lot of damage and leaves them open to slipping.
Of course you can also go double wand which essentially gives a mage a high magic damage attack. I personally prefer Wand and Shield and to instead make my magic base wide (all four elements)
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Mind you remember that you are talking about the first game. Think back, when did the first game REALLY start having AoE?
Level 10.
When does this game start REALLY having AoE? Level 4
As well, what was the MAJORITY of damage done in the first game at least until level 10?: Environment effects
So now you have fights that are won not through mass CC-Spam and Environment flooding and you are seriously noticing the slow down now that enemies don't walk through fire and die instantly.
