In my opinion for spring of life to be a viable skill, it needs to work the same (or better) than an idol. This means that:
1) The spell needs to be instant cast. A player can instantly click the idol button (assuming they haven't died a lot), so why cant we instantly use spring of life?
2) Reduce the cooldown time.
3) the level req needs to be taken off. This means that at level 1/35 spring of life can rez anyone no matter what their level is. Putting points into spring of life should affect the amount of health the person has when they are rezzed. There are just too little skill points available to even consider wasting them on this spell as it exists now.
Do this, and people will actually start using using spring of life which will lessen the affects of of the death penalty without having to redo the entire death penalty concept.
I would like to see spring of life instant cast with a short cool down. Just enough so it's not spammed. Maybe 3-5 seconds.
I also think it's a great idea to have the skill points increase the amount of energy and health you get back. This would make if viable for bossing.
As to the original post I think that within a very short amount of time people will learn to balance thir play style to not die the 3rd and 4th time. New strategies will resolve a lot of this and help encourage balanced groups to play together.