There is an annoying bug with Elemental Affinity in terms of updating AP costs on skills. If you have exactly enough AP to cast a skill and you just generated a surface under you, the game won't let you cast the skill even though you have enough AP to do so.
Example: A pyromancer with Elemental Affinity starts their turn with 4 AP. They cast Flaming Daggers, with one dagger targeting themselves to generate a fire surfaces under them. The UI correctly updates to show the cost of Supernova to be 2 AP, but the skill is greyed out and unable to be cast even though you have enough AP to do so.
I think (although I can't confirm) that if you walk out of the surface and then walk back in again it updates itself properly. I should think, though, that it'd be a fairly manageable problem to solve coding-wise... it's really pretty frustrating tbh.
Thanks for the post, man. Weirdly enough I've never had it show up in that situation- it mostly works fine when I walk into a surface. It consistently, 100% of the time bugs out like this when I cast the surface on myself, though- to the point where planning around it is a common fight strategy for me >.<
Yup. When I try doing that, Laser Beam will be greyed out and unusable despite me having the required number of action points. The trick with walking into fire is to work out whether the game considers a specific location a fire surface or not. If you hover your mouse over any point, the game will tell you what surface is there after a brief delay. If it tells you that there's fire there, then (at least in my experience) Elemental Affinity will work flawlessly. At times, with The Pawn I've actually walked out of my own flame daggers fire pool and back into it in order to get Elemental Affinity working.
Yup. When I try doing that, Laser Beam will be greyed out and unusable despite me having the required number of action points.
So, did you try the workaround that works for me - switch to another party member and back to your active character, to see if the skills get enabled?
Originally Posted by Ithuriel
The trick with walking into fire is to work out whether the game considers a specific location a fire surface or not. If you hover your mouse over any point, the game will tell you what surface is there after a brief delay. If it tells you that there's fire there, then (at least in my experience) Elemental Affinity will work flawlessly.
Of course you have to confirm with the mouse cursor that you are looking at a fire surface. That's a given. The part that comes after that is what doesn't work 100% for me. I think I figured out the pattern though. It's all about exactly when the character steps on the fire surface in relation to when the action points get reduced to below the minimum required for a given skill, as the character is running.
Here are two almost identical situations showing the character running onto a fire surface, with 2AP remaining at the end of the trip, to cast Laser Ray with Elemental Affinity. Laser Ray normally requires 3AP.
In the two clips below there is a very subtle difference. In the first clip the fire surface is close enough, so that the character steps onto the surface FIRST, and THEN his action points get reduced to 2AP, and then he comes to a stop. In that situation there is no issue. Laser Ray remains enabled the whole way, and never gets grayed out.
In the 2nd clip the fire surface is just a little farther, so that the AP reduction from 3 to 2 occurs first, and THEN comes contact with the surface. That's where the problem is - Laser Ray gets 'disabled' the moment the AP is reduced to 2 because there is no Elemental Affinity just yet, and then Laser Ray should get re-enabled after stepping on fire, but it doesn't. It seems like the sequence of spell states (enabled/disabled/enabled) is changing too fast, and the spell icon fails to 'catch up' and respond. I dunno. It's definitely a bug.
And again, it's nothing too serious, because as I showed in the 2nd clip, when I switch to a different character and then back, the skill gets enabled. I wonder if this will work for your situation.
In fact, I bet that your issue happens for simialr reasons. When you cast searing daggers at your feet, there is probably a very short delay between casting the spell, and the formation of the fire surface under you. The moment you cast daggers you lose the 2AP, so Laser Ray becomes disabled, and fractions of a second later the fire surface is ignited at your feet to activate Elemental Affinity. Laser Ray then shows only 2AP requirement, which means Affinity is working, but the skill icon hasn't updated to 'enabled' state because it happens so fast. So I think all this is just a visual glitch on the icons on the hot bar.
I just don't know why it wouldn't happen to more people. Or maybe it would, if players were using this tactic more often to notice at all... Or maybe hardware has something to do with it.
You know what I would try if I were you, set your game to the lowest graphics settings so everything will be more 'responsive'. See if that makes a difference.
