Arcane Advice: Gaaaahh!

I'd like to focus this issue of Arcane Advice on taking a look at one of the most obnoxious features of the new patch, a development which has haunted me in every dungeon and battleground I've been in since 3.0.2's launch, and which has left me confused, frustrated and wanting to send a little bill to Blizzard asking for my 10 silver back.

Yes, fellow mages, I am talking about none other than the evil, nefarious, hell-twisted monstrosity of Fel Intelligence over-writing Arcane Brilliance.

This new issue reared its ugly head when I got on my level 69 mage, entered my first post-3.0.2 BG, buffed everyone with Arcane Brilliance and was just getting on my mount to go kick some butt, when some level 70 warlock sauntered into the BG, pulled out their felhunter, and replaced my happy little buff with one of their own.

This surprised me. Mages, perhaps more than any other class rely on intelligence. It therefore makes sense to me that in a group setting, we'd be providing the intelligence buffs. But I knew that Fel Intelligence was, like Paranoia before it, an aura ability, so I assumed that as I moved away from this warlock to target greener pastures his buff would fade from me and my own buff would replace it again.

I was completely wrong. His buff had not just replaced my own while I was near his felhunter, Fel Intelligence had completely erased my own Arcane Brilliance buff, leaving me without any intelligence buff of any kind when I went off on my own. Worse yet, by targeting other players in our BG, who I was sure I had buffed with Arcane Brilliance, I saw that they too were bereft of any intelligence buff, unless of course they happened to be fighting in the same area as the warlock.

When I took a little time to work out why this was happening, I discovered this: mages gain new ranks of Arcane Brilliance at levels 56, 70, and 80, while warlocks gain comparable ranks of Fel Intelligence at levels 52, 62, and 72. This means that for 8 levels before level 70, and 8 levels before level 80 Fel Intelligence eats Arcane Brilliance for lunch. And let's not forget that at 62 and 72 Fel Intelligence not only tops mage intelligence bonuses, it also gives all party members increased spirit. So this is really my biggest beef with Fel Intelligence, that for a total of 16 levels it is so much better than Arcane Brilliance it basically makes mage buffs obsolete.

Now, there's a ray of hope at level 80, when Arcane Brilliance gives +60 intelligence, while the new Fel Intelligence, learned at level 72, only grants +48 to intelligence. But until then, when we mages try to do anything in Northrend, we are in constant risk of having some gluttonous felhunter eating our buff the moment a warlock walks into the room.

So really, this column is a piece of advice, nay, a downright plea to Blizzard. Give us back Arcane Brilliance. Don't feed it to the warlocks.