Sometimes I wish there was a simple button you could press... to somehow indicate that you no longer stand by what you said.
Maybe you could ask Mitt Romney where he got his!
The difference in GW2 is that there are very few spells that just do pure damage. Most have secondary and sometimes very powerful effects attached to them, which means you will want to use them wisely and not just "as soon as your cooldown timer clears".
For example, one spell may have a blind effect which causes your enemy's next attack to miss. Another may have a knockdown effect. Another might launch you forward while leaving a trail of fire in your wake. Hopefully it's obvious how this forces smart use of skills and not just whack-a-mole whatever's off cooldown.
As a side note, I find mana to be a very bad resource system (large pool, slow/cumbersome to regenerate) and it seems to have stuck around only because it's "traditional". It is essentially unlimited in the short-term, and has a hard limit in the long-term, which means that in the heat of battle, you might as well not have a resource unless you are engaged in very long fights. And if you do run out of mana, it's a very unfun mechanic since there's basically nothing you can do except sit there and reflect on your character's poor life decisions that led to this point.
Energy (small pool, fast-regenerating resource) seems like a much more interesting resource for forcing resource management, as it forces smart, controlled skill usage and heavily prohibits button mashing. However, a purely cooldown based system like GW2 basically creates the same thing.
I'm guessing you've never played DotA or anything in the genre? The target dummies you refer to have this annoying habit of always ending up on your team. Considering that even one weak link on a team will usually cost the game, this is what creates the rampant noob-hostile community in the genre.
I actually think the opposite of what you said will happen - everyone will game the system to report the terrible players (skill-wise, not personality-wise) from their team, and new players will eventually be turned away because they keep getting reported and having to pay more.
You are a fool if you don't protect your good ideas in this way as you go about looking for someone to build out your magic application.
What could possibly go wrong?
Sincerely,
The Winklevoss twins
Of course in my experience, some people believe that everything which is written in a slashdot comment is true.
Well that's just silly - obviously only the comments that are +5 are true.
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.