Ideally the whole game would have been reworked so that elemental damage matters and casters had access to the elemental abilities they needed; smart play would involve spells with correct elemental affinities while avoiding those that were terrible (aka no more casting Fire on Ifrit because it was the only direct damage spell worthwhile under the old system).

Of course that won't happen. I don't know what I'd have done, but I definitely wouldn't have restricted the next tier of your ordinary elemental spells to a ridiculous timer system with micromanagement upkeep requirements. That feels less like a black mage and more like the dev team just giving you something to do for the sake of doing something different.