As previously stated, there’s a difference between difficulty and tedium. The only difficult coming from finding Hecate Essence is the nature of the Far Reaches: Water Poisoning, Insanity, and Overleveled atlanteans. Instead, the limiting factor of Hecate Essence is how tedious and luck based it is to find it. Only 8.3% of islands have it, you have no way of knowing if it’s on an island, and you can spend a while simply searching the island for Hecate Essence. There’s always a good chance it won’t be on an island, or it spawned on a spire taller than Othyrs, or you missed it because you weren’t close enough for it to render. Searching the Far Reaches for Hecate Essence is no more difficult than it already is, it’s simply much more tedious. Such tedium isn’t needed for any other class.
However it’s accessible for every other class. Spirit Relics and Weapons just need to swap things out. Fighting Styles need a mentor, some galleons, and some time at Talos. At most, twenty minutes. Magic needs hours spent in a location we’re not meant to be, with a good chance you’ll come up empty handed. Why should magic classes have such difficulty changing a relatively uninformed decision they made at the start of the game? Magic classes are also the only ones who make their decision at the start, a possibly uninformed decision. 7 magics don’t work underwater, which isn’t told to a player at all. Once losts and ancients come around, they’ll be a factor too. Neither of those are communicated to a player at the start, not to mention that they don’t even know how combat feels yet. All they have to go on is an arbitrary number, which while decently helpful, has no standard.
I agree that a mage shouldn’t swap between magics every day just to keep themselves from getting bored or because of meta. However, they also shouldn’t have to spend 10 hours just to change the color of their first magic, or to rectify a poor choice they made at the start of the game (choosing water magic). Hecate Essence, in it’s current state, is objectively poor design on Vetex’s part and his refusal to change it is a problem. While this will not kill the game, it paints Vetex in a worse light - intentionally making a miserable experience for one group of classes that a decent amount of players use.