I'm having some trouble with my wizard casting AoE's and cones.  The problem is, my other characters, particularly melee, tend to run right into these spells at the start of the fight.  Is there a way to avoid this?  Do I have my wizard start the fight by casting from the front, then run him to the back of the pack?

 

Thanks!

Best way to avoid this is to turn off the auto-attack option, then go to one of the custom formation things and turn it into a big V with your aoe/cone casters at the bottom of the V. Have them spray the enemies on the approach and then pause after they've all blown their loads, send the tank in first to grab whatever's left, and then select all and left click for cleanup.

The yellow part of the cone doesn't deal friendly fire damage. With high intelligence, you can actually make the yellow part pretty big. I find myself fan of flaming through my front line and hitting all the enemies that cluster around Eder.

I found that having two tank type melee guys initiate combat with ranged weapons before switching to melee works good for obtaining the enemies attention and stabilizing the front. Then I can fire AoE or arcane assault such that my guys are not in the damage area. For cones I either back up such that both my frontline and the enemies are both in the light shaded area or run around to the flank and hit the enemies from behind with the cone.