Raising the Lower Reagent Cost

So I'm doing a Lord Oaks champion spawn last night with our guild. It gets to second second stage. I start summoning Earth Elementals to deal with the wisps. There isn't much going on so I start thinking about the act of summoning an Earth Elemental and how it is funny to create something out of nothing (because I have 100% Lower Reagent Cost, it takes not reagents to cast any Magery spells). I jump to thinking that it might be an idea to change Lower Reagent Cost to be less effective on higher level Magery spells.

You see, ever since LRC (the abbreviation for Lower Reagent Cost) was introduced 6 years ago with the Age of Shadows expansions, it has been a disease on the game. When the people who designed item properties did so, they expected that it would be impossible for players to get 100% of anything. They even let you get as higher Lower Mana Cost as you want. If a cap was never introduced, we could be casting spells using no mana today!

So getting 100% LRC was probably thought to be virtually impossible. And if you did manage it you would be sacrificing other properties in the process. But here we are today where neither has proven true. Virtually every magic caster runs around with 100% LRC and every other important property.

Over time a few developers have expressed opinions that LRC needs to be dealt with. Reagent use was supposed to be a key balancing factor in casting magic spells. It prevented players from fighting indefinitely and more importantly acted as a gold sink due to only being able to acquire reagents from NPC vendors. But, of course, players have gotten so used to running around with no worries that any time it is brought up there is a huge backlash.

Well back to my idea. What if higher level spells required reagents? For example you need 2 reagents to cast an 8th circle Magery spell. None of the 8th circle spells are vital. You can still use your full array of healing and attacking abilities even if you run out of reagents. You just can't resurrect other players, summon elementals or cast Earthquake. All of which are very powerful spells and should require physical items to pull off. This system can also be applied to 7th circle, requiring 2 reagents or 1 reagent. Then 6th circle would be 1 reagent. For example. If you try to cast Resurrection under this system it would randomly select 2 reagents you must have and use.

I haven't seen this type of solution proposed for balancing LRC before. It could also be expanded to high skill Necromancy spells. I think this proposal could be sold to the general player base if it was thoroughly explained how the removal of reagents has negatively impacted the game.