I disagree about not using rains, and sometimes PBAE.
Rain spells are our single best dps tool for contributing noticeable damage without getting low on mana. A wiz can cast a rain, then sit while it tics, wait for the (short) cd, then do it again. There are even a couple special rain spells that can be cast simultaneously with the other "normal" rains, to have 2 rains tic'ing at the same time (this is mainly at higher levels).
A group that understands wiz rains and tailors pulling strat to use them has an advantage; mobs will appear to drop as if hit by an extremely strong dot. Just keep in mind the easy rules of rain spells:
- rains hit on and closely around the target mob - keep any mobs you don't want to hit parked a bit away (you get a feel for how far this is quickly)
- 1 mob gets all 3 tics of dmg
- 2 mobs get 2 tics each (this is the "sweet spot" as the only way you get a 4th tic)
- 3 mobs gets 1 tic each
- 4+ mobs gets 1 tic each on the target mob and 2 next closest mobs only
If a group is supposed to be using rains, and a mob gets inadvertently hit that shouldn't be, don't blame the wizard, blame the cc for not doing it away from the kill area, or the tank from not walking the kill mobs back from a late cc that happens to be too close. The wizard's job is to simply target a kill area mob and rain on them and those around it per group strat; they cannot control which mobs around it get hit.
The TAE spells that are point-blank centered on yourself (aka PBAE) that hit unlimited targets all at once, like Cast Force or Circle of Fire. These are useful when the group is structured to pull 3+ mobs at one time and not cc-parking them to kill them later. Since they are centered on yourself, the added danger of needing to be close to the mobs gives them higher dps than the "safer" TAE that are centered on a remote target (the infamous "Al'Kabor"-style TAE spells that frankly nobody uses, at least I never do). You have to have a group that knows what they are doing wrt color stuns and such, to keep mobs taunted/stunned so they never attack you though, which is why the group needs to have the right classes with the right mindset to do this correctly. Btw, this is how most high level PL services pull and kill an entire zone; they pull with a bard to gather a ton of mobs, clump them together and the enchanters start overlapping color stuns (which are also PBAE and affect unlimited nearby mobs) in rapid succession while the few classes like wizard use their PBAEs to kill them all in a few chain casts.