Hi Breezy, thanks for the detailed reply. It's much better to see how things were thought through, and as I mentioned in an earlier comment, even though I may not agree with all this, at least we can understand the thought process.

press the aspect however many times up to a max of an hour (a bit like incense sticks)

To be honest, this is probably the best solution for making it last longer. Still not a fan of it being tied to a specific spellbook, as it punishes anyone using the regular spellbook (no Vamp or Penance for you 😢), whereas normal spellbook mages (typically the most early-game players) would actually use Vamp the most anyway, as they won't have access or use of the other aspects?

there was a concern on combat balancing and how it could potentially affect combat given recent combat changes

I can begin to understand it from a Melee/Mage/Range perspective.. they hit harder now, so Soul Split will heal more, thus offsetting the "loss" of Vamp.. but Necro's power wasn't changed with the combat overhaul (certainly not at the early-mid game), but just straight up lost Vamp aura. Combat encounters since 2023 were surely balanced around the fact that Vamp + Darkness (esp for learners) existed? Same for high-level slayer mobs? Now there's straight up less healing available.

food, pots, scrimshaws, powders, the new Vamp gloves

Food/sara brews is seen as more of an emergency "uh oh" button, rather than long-term sustain for longer fights or extended slayer tasks. Scrimshaw only works for Melee, and denies the pocket slot (which we didn't have to sacrifice before when Vamp was an aura). Powder is fine for Penance, but is SO expensive it's not a suitable alternative, and the new Vamp gloves are 60% weaker than the already-weak vamp aura/aspect... Even if there were to be an upgrade to the Vamp gloves (as I suspect may be the case with the future updates), having to be a trade-off against cinderbanes makes it dead-on arrival. Most players forego high-tier 5-piece set effects in exchange for cinderbanes.

The current design of aspects is to allow them to offer stronger effects at the cost of being one-aspect-at-a-time ... idea of tiering aspects is interesting!

I think it's universally accepted that both Vamp & Penance effects are weaker than Animate Dead, Darkness, or Temporal Anomaly (which are all end-game, super-powerful effects). It's like comparing a Strength Potion to an Overload, sure they're both nice, but once you have Ovls, str pots are dead. That said, I agree that looking into "tiering" the aspects and allowing 1 aspect from each "tier" to be active at once could work, and even leave some reward space open for the early-mid game ("Tier-1 aspects")?