Overlapping circle AOE's in dungeons?

In all the raid guide videos I watch, they say to avoid overlapping AOE's.

I can see not letting your circle touch another player, but is there any harm in letting the circles themselves overlap (but avoiding the players in them)?

Seems to me, partial overlaps would be beneficial in that they give everyone more room, and if they leave puddles, the space taken by them is reduced due to the overlap.

It's pretty much don't overlap the AoE's on top of players, the markers themselves can be overlapped with no issues.

Overlapping means getting hit with 2 aoes, not that the circles can't touch, unless there are specific mechanics where the aoes explode of they touch (Cid in orbonne, meteors in t9)

Drop your AoEs on top of Ley Lines.

It was so liberating once I finally realized this. I was one of those panicky people who thought the AOEs themselves couldn't touch; took forever to occur to me that without a person actually standing IN the overlap, who would it harm?

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Originally Posted by ZattanaWen

It was so liberating once I finally realized this. I was one of those panicky people who thought the AOEs themselves couldn't touch; took forever to occur to me that without a person actually standing IN the overlap, who would it harm?

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It's good practice to not let the circles touch anyway. But for a long time, I was one of those people, too. lol

I'm glad you brought this up. Annoys me when people step away when I'm trying to keep things nice and compact to make healing balls more efficient and hit everybody.

Also worth noting that very often as melee it's better not to run out too far. In most cases you can even stay on the edge of the bosses hitbox and barely move at all. Let the ranged run away from you and spread a little from your fellow melee/tank.

Not only is this far better for uptime (which is vital for melee dps), but too often I see melee running halfway across the arena chasing the ranged with aoe markers. It's unnecessary but easy to do if you're new and panic.

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

In all the raid guide videos I watch, they say to avoid overlapping AOE's.

I can see not letting your circle touch another player, but is there any harm in letting the circles themselves overlap (but avoiding the players in them)?

Seems to me, partial overlaps would be beneficial in that they give everyone more room, and if they leave puddles, the space taken by them is reduced due to the overlap.

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You are absolutely correct with this observation.... about 99% of the time.

What that means is normally you can stack AOEs and as long as there's no players in them, you're golden. Then there's going to be that 1% of the time where one boss will have AOEs that do stupid stuff when they combine. But I would say keep doing what you are doing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZattanaWen

It was so liberating once I finally realized this. I was one of those panicky people who thought the AOEs themselves couldn't touch; took forever to occur to me that without a person actually standing IN the overlap, who would it harm?

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You're certainly not the only one. I see this apply to someone in almost every Normal Raid or Trial roulette I'm in that has potentially overlappable AoEs.

Sure would be nice if there was just a little something more in-game to give a bit of clarification to this and other frequently present and frequently misunderstood mechanics and concepts...

On the note of avoiding overlapping AoE markers, there is something I have always wondered.

Why do the people that are clustered up and get them all move in the same direction? Just for example sake in an 8-24 man raid, 4 Circle aoe's could come out and no other aoes, and unlucky me I happen to be standing in the exact spot to have all 4 overlap on top of me thanks to the people they are on being in a somewhat box shape around me and partial overlaps on the others. Almost without fail, every single one of us will move left, keeping me in in all 4 aoes. Not even splitting up the AoE circles potentially leading to my doom if don't catch on in time and sprint to get out of the massive overlap, let alone out of the aoe.

Just one of those odd quirks I have noticed when large numbers of player targeted aoe circles go out, and how player groups for whatever reason tend to stay clumped for a length of time.