I haven't seen this topic in a while so: The default hand waving gestures are nice. While we have access to this at any time... We lose some rather helpful bonuses if we don't equip a wand. Wand blast cards can be useful; they take out wards and negative charms. The bonus pip, and later the bonus power pip wands provide is essential.
I don't actually intend that KI actually cover our wizard's hands with mittens. If the hands appear empty and unadorned, that is perfectly fine with me. I mostly just wanted the advantages of a wand while having the animations used when a wand isn't equipped.
I had briefly thought about having the gloves only give the extra pip or power pip. (sometimes wand blasts get in the way, you draw blasts instead of the card you need) Then I realized that people could just stitch a regular wand to the gloves and they would have gloves with wand blasts.
I know that the bare hand animation can accommodate wand blasts. On certain months the regular gift cards give pets that give one wand blast spell card. If you have that pet equipped, but don't have a wand equipped, something has to happen. I haven't read any complaints about that, so it must be covered already.
I know that if I walked up to a snow cone vender and asked for ice without flavor he would probably refuse to sell it to me. He isn't going to charge me for no product, but he isn't going to just give away ice he could use to make a real snow cone for someone else. It sounds silly, but sometimes people don't want any of the flavors, sometimes they just want a scoop of crushed ice.
I want the hand waving animation while keeping the bonus pip... and possibly the wand blasts. I guess thy could make blank gloves to stitch wand stats to. The crown shop has blank clothing... lol or make them with very low astral damage, like five points per blast, for April fools. Then I would have the animation, and stats, I wanted, and people would make youtube videos trying to raise the damage as high as they could...
