Auto-attack is a step backward.

[Dubont]

Uh i see from your levels, you are mostly a mage, your battle classes are sub 20, you either just got, or havent got the 3rd and 4rth basic attacks. Why would a mage be spamming phantom dart, shouldnt you be curing, sleeping, debuffing to make weak to and nuking? If you get by pressing 1 its a failure of the sp system, rewarding you for fighting crappy monsters, not the way the game is best played.
Ill tell you that the best way to play pug is basically not to spam, if you spam, you will miss the oppurtunity to land 2 skills on sucessful evade. if you are not tanking, you get enough tp in one attack to do a 500tp weapon skill, and in 2 to 3 button presses to do a 1000 tp skill. if you are just pressing 1 you are playing like someone who doesnt know how to play very well.
If you can play just spamming 1 button either your party is covering for your scrubbiness, or you are fighting mobs that are too easy, you are definetly not maximizing your potential within the party.

you haven't played mage long if you think that's what we do in this game lol. I'm a CON. CON has horrible nuking damage on NMs. I'm not allowed to nuke unless during BRs (I could but it wastes MP). DoTs aren't used because, since I'm a CON, I'm always on healing duty. Due to the MP cost and no real way of restoring MP, I have to save my MP for the cures (This was my idea and so far, it's worked pretty well) so the THMs take care of the DoTs. Why do I spam spirit dart? Only when I'm not cure bombing the hell out of the pug, I spam spirit dart for some good dps (compared to my nukes...) and then I have a levinbolt up for BRs.

Even on battle classes (Pug being the exception) you spam 1 2 or 3, depending on where your attacks are. You're almost always spamming a button where as with auto attack, you press a button and it's done.

[Physic]

you haven't played mage long if you think that's what we do in this game lol. I'm a CON. CON has horrible nuking damage on NMs. I'm not allowed to nuke unless during BRs (I could but it wastes MP). DoTs aren't used because, since I'm a CON, I'm always on healing duty. Due to the MP cost and no real way of restoring MP, I have to save my MP for the cures (This was my idea and so far, it's worked pretty well) so the THMs take care of the DoTs. Why do I spam spirit dart? Only when I'm not cure bombing the hell out of the pug, I spam spirit dart for some good dps (compared to my nukes...) and then I have a levinbolt up for BRs.

Even on battle classes (Pug being the exception) you spam 1 2 or 3, depending on where your attacks are. You're almost always spamming a button where as with auto attack, you press a button and it's done.

On glad you have to be constantly putting shield up, using phalanx, or tanking skills, On lnc, ideally youd be moving around a lot trying to maximize pierce, heavy trammel and doomspike to hit multiple targets, and to keep yourself out of most aoe range. (problem is we only fight groups in leves) archer, well they dont really spam much, they are generally doing multi shot and buffing and offloading tp.
Marauder is probably the most basic attack heavy class, when it isnt tanking.

I will say that mages seem to get the least excitement in the current system, But for DoW i can say with certainty, that you should be using multiple types of attacks and skills fairly often, if you want to maximize your potential. I play my lancer fairly lazily, partially because i dont want to spend massive time reassingning skills from pug, and also because i usually play with an archer friend who is higher level, and thus everything is usually dead before i even get there, but when i see him playing his lancer well, he is all over the place trying to get multi hits on peirce, which leads to instant tp for WS, aligning himself to take the best advantage of his various multi target skills, as well as using survival skills, because while he hits multi mobs easily, Pug is mostly single target.

i wouldnt mind an optional auto attack function, for say mages, to whom it is mostly annoyance, but building the whole system aropund auto attack seems like a bad idea