Having to confirm every spell is somewhat of a pain (though minor).

But TBH I think the current AoE system is somewhat broken. The primary challenge the system presents is managing enmity, but with careful timing, Softspeak, and -enmity traits, this is almost a non-issue (not to mention you can pretty much heal your entire party for very little mana). Additionally, given that party sizes have been almost halved, it just becomes bad design IMO.