Allow wands to parry and block by spending mana / casting defensive spells

I think wands could be interesting if re-worked to have combat similar to Harry Potter movies. In its current state, commentary on wands describe it to be underpowered. I feel like this makes sense if its role is intended to be only for downtime to restore mana for staff spells.
My thought would be to enhance its gameplay to be viable beyond as downtime for mana.
The main part of the idea would be to allow the wand to parry. I would consider making the area the wand can parry larger, and the benefit to parrying would be a powerful multishot. Blocking (and so also parrying) would cost mana rather than stamina. Further, I would allow for a heavy attack. In my head, I am thinking of a mana costing ray that guarentees a crit to trigger the special abilities in the mage traits. Finally, I think this would work well with the blink skill (I forgot if it cost mana or not).