I agree, this is hideous. I almost died solo'g a leve I can do in my sleep. The main problem for me, as mage, is you have to close down your action bar to change target between party members and mob(s). In the process it's easy enough to end up setting this to something you didn't intend, so when you re-open your action bar, you discover you can't target an enemy or party member, causing you to have to do it again.
I know alot of this is habit, having used the down direction for self targeting, etc.. Maybe we'll be lucky enough some day to have macro's with <stpc> <stnpc> <bt> etc.. In the meantime, I sure hope they remove this, or at least make it optinal in the menu config.