Rebalancing Spellcasting 5e

[terodil]

And there is no resentment about a caster being MVP in a fight, it is that they always get first pick of which fights to be MVP in.

I believe that this is a deeply flawed argument, even if we disregard the excessively dangerous 'always'. It relies heavily on the assumptions that the mage in question a- has the spell learned/prepared, b- has saved the spellslot during the entire day of adventuring, c- that this is the fight that 'matters' and not the one after. Or the one previous that the group managed with difficulty and that the meteor swarm could have made much easier. d- that the spell actually does something and doesn't miss / get saved against / fail for a myriad of other possible reasons, and e- that 'being the MVP' is the thing that matters to the mage, and not 'group success', 'fun RPing' or anything else. I don't think any one of these assumptions is trivial.