[charlieluce]

One thing we learned in our post-UP games was that in terms of effectiveness Targeted Areas are almost always better than General Areas; not only do you get to use your Attack/Damage trade-off (great for the minion-sweeping that Area is often used for), but you get to avoid those near-impossible to reduce Reflex saves and the nigh-partial-immunity of Evasion in favor of the much easier to mess with Defense score. We ruled that Target Areas couldn't Critical Hit, but I don't think that's actually in the rules, so if your GM allows that it's even better.

You do have the disadvantage that you'll likely miss the potential targets that are Concealed, though.