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.
