Holmes in my D&D: dealing with Perception+Insight optimization?

[hirou]

I apologize for taking my time to answer all who posted, be assured that I read all the answers. I just want to restate that I was afraid mostly not of the player breaking the game, but that his supersenses will trivialize some parts of it and make it boring. I've gained many ideas how to circumvent that from your responses, and I appreciate your input.

Considering RAW, it's PIA to link old WotC forums, but there was a thread discussing the wording of this feat there, and the consensus was that it indeed allows to replace passive checks with Arcana as they're still "checks" according to Compendium.

 

[Jhaelen]

Yep, I hate this feat already and would probably ban it from my table. Practically all other skill substations in 4e are encounter powers or limited in some other fashion.

Well, it's a Paragon feat after all. My Dragonborn Dragon Magic Sorcerer has it, and his Perception is still lower than our group's Ranger's. Unless a character is investing all of her resources to boost it, it's not a problem at all. And if a player does that, he definitely deserves a bit of an advantage, imho.

I've found that Sorcerers are feat-starved anyway, so this is quite far from a no-brainer choice. Usually, you'd be better served picking a feat to maximize your damage output.
The reason I took it for my character was because I prefer well-rounded characters that can also function well if they should happen to get separated from the party. It's also why I took the Templar background (it's a Dark Sun campaign) and picked a few healing powers.