Best AOE move

[Captain Smith]

That's it. I've noticed that some characters use it. I've also noted that they don't usually work.

Dragon Ball folks have done it and the Bad guys usually survive.

The Guardians from OA try it. It was tried on Superboy Prime and just powered him up. Another tried it on Doomsday and it knocked him out and away for awhile.

Who else pulls it over and perhaps successfully?

[Captain Morgan]

When Silver Surfer blows up the planet he's fighting on, it usually takes the fight out of the other guy.

Cyclops makes quite a compelling case to stay off his lawn.

Superman Kentucky Fried Doomsdays. An army of them at a time.

Kyle Rayner nuked xenomorphs on Mogo. It's the only way to be sure.

[T51R]

[Sharpandpointies]

Small-scale stuff - close combat - it's pretty hard to beat Changeling, from CJ Cherryh's Morgaine Saga.

Changeling looks like a sword, but it's really a gate through space and time based on principles discovered by a vast civilization whose mucking around with space and time almost destroyed the universe. It forms the gate at its tip and drags everything around it but the wielder into the gate - howling winds, stuff drawn in, anything that gets close to the tip is snatched away (good luck with arrows, it makes a pretty good defense as well). One swing has 'taken' groups of people around the wielder, horsemen, that kind of thing.

And the gate goes nowhere. It has no other side. Basically, anyone tagged is sent...nowhere. They're gone, not coming back.

Pretty nasty stuff for a low-powered AOE.

Higher powered?

In a book where people obliterate worlds, fire off supernova-level energies, use devices like 'The Hammer That Smashes Suns' (which is a pretty good AOE weapon in and of itself!) and that sort of thing, Typhon (Creatures of Light and Darkness) is considered the scariest thing around. He, like Morgaine's sword Changeling, is a gate - the shadow of a dark horse, limed in flames. What he touches dies, and can never be replaced. Supertech that can resurrect people, bring back their souls, the whole business...does nothing against his power. He screws up someone's arm, it dies, they try to replace it with supertech cybernetics, they don't work. Attacks on him simply get swallowed up and vanish. People who understand universal constants and screw around with said universal constants, spiritual things, and actual souls with their tech, spend a thousand years working up a specific weapon to use against him...and it doesn't work. People who toss around those supernova level energies in fights know they can't beat him.

And Typhon, like Changeling, is a gate to nowhere. Skagganauk Abyss, the end of everything.

So, Area Affect?

He's capable of expanding himself to the size of a planet and engulfing it. And does, at one point, proving he can.

...but since he's engulfing

spoilers:

God

end of spoilers

...who is the only being who could possibly return, he basically inverts himself, sealing himself away forever. Didn't have to do it except because of who he was taking in, and normally wouldn't.

So, there's two AOE attacks, theme based, small and large. Both work. Rather well.

[Basara]

That's it. I've noticed that some characters use it. I've also noted that they don't usually work.

Dragon Ball folks have done it and the Bad guys usually survive.

The DBZ heroes and villains are all insanely durable. They usually survive full frontal energy attacks and assaults as well.

The Guardians from OA try it. It was tried on Superboy Prime and just powered him up. Another tried it on Doomsday and it knocked him out and away for awhile.

Who else pulls it over and perhaps successfully?

I'm pretty sure a focused frontal assault wouldn't have worked either on both cases.

There are plenty of instances where AOE attacks have worked very well. Storm uses hurricane winds and rain to great effect to defeat people. Hulk and Thing both use thunderclaps quite often and they work fantastic. The bat family uses sonics, gas, any number of AoE attacks to incapacitate people. The Human Torch's nova blast is basically a nuclear explosion. Quake swats groups of people aside in Agents of SHIELD. Red Tornado is a DC powerhouse with his tornadoes, the list goes on and on. And as Captain Morgan brought, people who stand in front of Cyclops when he rips off his visor pretty much always end up wrecked.

The key is that the AoE attack has to be more powerful than the defense or durability of the foe, same as a frontal or focused attack.

[Hazard]

Gallantmon Crimson Mode has Quo Vadis, a city-wide AOE Dimension Dumping Attack. Selective Dimension Dumping at that.

[rhyvurg]

My vote goes to The Moment, the ultimate Time Lord weapon that not only kills you now, it removes everything from space and time. It doesn't just kill everything, it kills everywhen. It was considered a miracle when Dalek Caan was able to get into the Time War again and save Davros, the Cult of Skaro only survived by being between universes when it happened.

[Captain Smith]

I should have added the COIE Anti-monitor who just filled your universe with anti-matter.

[The Drunkard Kid]

The Giga Slave, from Slayers.

Because nothing says overkill like hitting your opponent with potentially universe-busting force by way of throwing the Golden Sea of Chaos Within Which Multiple Multiverses Spontaneously Formed And Float Upon into their face.

[master of read]

this.

[master of read]

[master of read]

[Guy1]

[Guy1]

[The Drunkard Kid]

Would that count as an AOE, or just countless precision attacks?