I LOVE the new direction.

[Reaujien]

btw
I played also with a lot mages in leves, partys and the dungeons and only one mage had MP issues and only because his actions weren't always the smartest (AoE without a good reason, healing while my HP was full and so on).

...which is exactly what this patch helped pave the way for - people actually having to play their class/role "smart". Prior to 1.18 DoM classes could essentially spam their spells without regard to what they were actually doing: "What, you took 10 points of damage? Let me spam my highest healing spell three times JUST to make sure you're topped off!" Instead now players of DoM (and, in reality, DoW classes/roles too) have think about not only how they're going to equip their actions, but more importantly how they're going to make use of them.

So far, just as an example, a few [loud and obnoxious] people have just been overly critical about the MP cost of cures being too high and always running out of MP, and have formed fallacious blanket-statements that "1.18 ruined healing for me!" or of the sorts. If I were a healer and I was running out of MP trying to keep people alive, there would be a NUMBER of things I would first consider before initially blaming the game (which, imo, is a sign of a bad player - sorry) such as:
- Is the tank holding proper aggro?
- Is the tank using the appropriate damage mitigation abilities?
- Are the rest of the party members managing their aggro levels?
- Does the tank have the mob positioned incorrectly and causing unnecessary damage to party members?
- Are the party members standing in incorrect positions?
- Is the mob properly debuffed? (Para, Slow, Blind, Atk-Down, etc. etc.)
... and so on, and so on.

The same strategical thinking could be applied to any class/role who - due to the patch - feels they are now somehow magically unable to perform their role in order to get the job done efficiently and effectively. Sure there will more than likely be tweaks to things here and there in future patches/updates, but nothing that would turn a bad player into a good player just because he/she simply couldn't play their class/role well-enough without unrestricted resources (i.e., high MP/TP pools/accumulation, low MP/TP cost, low cool-downs, etc. etc.).

I love the direction that Yoshi and the dev team(s) are taking with this patch, and I simply can't wait for future patches yet to come. Bring on the challenging gameplay and content; bring on the fun and rewards obtained by careful strategy and skillful GROUP playing!