First of all, I want to say that the ideas I will present here are not mine; they come from these posts:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/401719/page/1/#2840106

https://forums.elementalgame.com/401719/page/1/#2840122

and I don't deserve credit for them. But let's discuss why these ideas are the most simple and elegant solutions to the current problems plaguing magic in Elemental.

-They're simple to implement. They can be done with XML tweaking and don't require anything else. That's a lot less work for devs than if it required C++ changes.

-They're elegant. They don't require complicated mechanics and aren't difficult to grasp. They give a lot of flexibility in spell design and balancing.

-Scaling spell power with Intelligence for most spells is a good idea to avoid spell obsolescence. Spells should seldom become outdated. It's a lot more fun to have your old spells and new spells used together to answer all situations. The current nerf of heal was brought because the spell was "overpowered". But it is only overpowered for 100 turns. For the rest of the game it's become near-useless now. Having it scale with intelligence would have solved that issue: heal 6+1/4 Intelligence, problem solved.

-It gives an incentive to raise intelligence for caster heroes. For now... well, all you want is enough mana to spam combat spells.

-Spell cooldown is a superb solution to the current spell-spamming issue of Elemental. Devs has to nerf arcane arrow because it was too powerful. And it was, but not intrinsically. It's the fact you could easily cast 3 of them (more with the help of a shortsword and some mister-T bling ) which made it so powerful. The issue is, right now, it'll feel like we're casting weak spells and that magic, in Elemental, is about throwing firecrackers at the enemy 'til they die. With spell cooldown, you can make spells powerful, while keeping things reasonable (sure, you can deal 30 damage to a paladin in the blink of an eye... but then you have to wait 4 turns before you can do it again !). You can also add some usefulness to spells that otherwise feel redundant. A second direct damage spell, with less power but a smaller cooldown, doesn't feel superfluous anymore. Oh, and those crazy spells like "volcano" could have a 50 turns cooldown. This is not the kind of magic you should throw around easily, after all. Mana costs are very relative to the amount of mana you have, and in some of my games, 400 mana was nothing, so yeah, a cooldown would keep things in check too. And finally: it forces the players to make choices: who am I going to cast this awesome spell on ? The sovereign ? The archer hero killing all my light troops? The legendary level 4 full-plate lordhammer wielding mounted superunit ? With cooldowns, you'd have to make tactical choices. 

Oh, and it also prevents Teleport abuses ... and solves the "imbue champion" cheese. You can't imbue 5 champions before a battle and then dis-imbue them after the battle.

In the end, it plays quite a few of the roles "casting points" would, but is easy to implement and brings a lot to the game.

So please, Elemental dev' team, think about this. There's a lot of gameplay improvement to be found in those ideas.