I have been playing this game pretty much since the beginning of beta, and I have noticed in the newer spells that the animations for aoe spells take far too long nowadays, a good example of this are death spells such as Khrulhu, my suggestion is that perhaps for this spell rather than damage one dip under water and then come up again to heal, that it deals damage to all targets and then heals the wizard for the total amount, which I feel would save time for players.
I agree all the multi hit spells should attack all targets at once. Deer knight could attack using a larger swing hitting all four targets at the same time.
I actually like the longer spells. It makes the game more interesting, in my opinion. Maybe there could be an enchantment to make spells faster, but this enchantment is useless and probably hard to program, so overall not worth it.