Suggestion: Auto-Cast support gem

Here is an idea for a support gem for very niche use cases:

Auto-Cast Support
Triggers linked instant skills with +x second(s) to its cooldown when you move without the use of a skill.

Basically this is the same concept as binding an instant skill to mouse 1, but in trigger form. Whenever you move (walk), the supported skill(s) trigger and a cooldown based on the level of the gem is added to the skill's original cooldown (if any). If the skill has no cooldown of it's own, it receives one from the support gem.

I came up with the idea of this support a while back when I had to decide between which of two different instant skills I should bind to mouse 1. With this support gem, players are allowed to trigger multiple instant skills by moving. I feel that with a mana multiplier to the triggered skills, as well as an extended cooldown, and the loss of a gem socket, this is sufficient enough of a downside to offset the ease of use that the gem introduces.

Thanks for reading.

sadly, this is WAY too powerful. This is essentially exactly how old triggers used to work and GGG put a stop to that by adding back in mana costs to triggers, removing mods, increasing mana costs, and a bunch of other ways to STOP overtrigger abuse (even though it still happens).

Triggers as they exist now are already super OP. Mark on hit, Curse on hit, CwDT, CoCS. All of these are fairly ubiquitous among the builds that exist. Now imagine a trigger with NO opportunity cost (attack, hit, mana, etc.)....

I don't think you fully grasp the overpowered-ness this would entail, even with a sufficient cooldown. Automatic debuffs of any kind with no thought, planning, or requirement except 2 gem slots? It would be mandatory in every single build.


Not only all of the above, but you can bet there would immediately be someone who exploits this to create the ultimate autobomber that has ever existed in the game....

All that said, I do love the trigger playstyle and would love to just be able to walk and autokill things.

If you haven't already tried it, I would look for a Heartbound Loop build and copy/paste it. It is almost exactly what you want, with just the cost of being good at math.

I'm not going to pretend I have any idea on the implications of introducing such a mechanic, or that I could properly balance it, I leave that for the devs to decide... But just out of curiosity, could you give an example of how this differs from simply binding a skill to mouse 1 and/or which of these skills would be problematic with the support gem: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Instant (Let's go ahead and assume the Vaal skills and maybe even reservation skills would not work with this gem). Only one that comes close to raising an eyebrow is maybe Detonate Mines, but that seems more like a QoL thing if anything.

If it is just the amount of skills possible to throw onto a build, they could just add "limited to one skill" or give the support itself a cooldown. If it is the act of simply "triggering" and how certain things may interact with that, it could simply not be a "trigger" but an "auto-cast"

But again, I don't know what is best for the game, I just wanted to share an idea that came to mind.

Sure I can give an example.

Currently, the only skills that can be "bound" to lmb are instant cast skills. Instant cast skills are few, and are generally purely defensive with the exception of dropping pools of cold degens (which I think even that deserves a nerf...).

Examples of skills that could be problematic with an autocast:

1) any kind of curse: completely nullifies curse on hit and hextouch. There's a reason hexes were NOT included in the "mark on hit" support gem, and also a reason why that support is limited to attacks. These are dev reasons, and is the reason why those two distinctions are made to begin with re: hextouch vs mark on hit.

2) Nerfs to socketed spell cast craft on weapons: this points to devs already deciding autocast spells were too powerful and HEAVY limits needed to be placed. 150% mana cost, and the big cooldown. Again, this new support gem would totally invalidate this.

3) Any skill + autocast + 4L supports, followed by other triggers on hit/cast/etc. This creates a fully automated, walking cannon of skills. This is something they can limit by simply saying "Skills supported by autocast cannot trigger other skills", but then that severely severely limits its usefulness.

4) As you already mentioned, multiple autocast setups. This can also be nullified but then again, what's the point?

5) Spells are generally the only thing that can be triggered, except through a few unique items. Which means this gem would only support spells. And spells already have: hextouch, mark on hit, curse on hit implicits, arcanist brand, cwdt, cocs, cast on death, cwc....you get the picture. There are so many ways to autocast things already, and the simple introduction of this support gem invalidates them ALL.

If they were to account for all of these things in the creation of the support gem, you are left with a support with a crazy long timer, a bunch of limitations, and ultimately a waste of two gem slots that can be better served with a simple arcanist brand or cwdt 2L setup. Or link them all together and bam you have a way more effective automated system that activates more reliably and more often.

Don't get me wrong, I'm poo-pooing the support gem, not you personally. I also feel like someone might be able to abuse this in other ways that I can't even predict. There has already undoubtedly been much developer reasoning behind WHY they decided all triggers needed some kind of "catch" to them, rather than being totally automatic on a timer.



I guess, after writing this, my main issue with this support gem is that the means to "autocast" skills that already exist do everything you want this gem to do already so there's not even a need for something like this.

I guess I would turn that question back around to you: what "multiple" instant skills are you trying to use at the same time? And how would they interplay when the timers inevitably line up and you try to cast 2 instant skills at the same time which is impossible or illegal by game engine standards (only 1 action may be performed at once).

Oh man...I didn't even THINK about the fact that you specifically mentioned instant skills. Non-instant, automated skills would stutter your movement and be a HUGE pain in the ass. If you've played Last Epoch and automated skills there, you know what I'm talking about....it is absolutely awful. But for instant skills:


https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/Instant

these are all the instant skills:
1) movement skills all share a cooldown so you cant really automate two of them at once.

2) guard skills share a cooldown so you cant bind two of them.

3) auras are permanent effects, unless you turn them into blessings. Automating blessings defeats the downside of turning the aura INTO a blessing in the first place...so there's no way devs would allow that.

So I guess this leaves vortex, convocation, detonate mines, etc as the only contender for secondary automation which i GUESS could be cool for like 3 builds...but those builds likely already have a CWDT setup built in that is far more effective. Why would I swap a 2L cwdt setup that casts every second for an autocast 2L setup with a specific uncontrollable, likely long cooldown?

Same with movement skill + guard skill combo: if you need/want a movement skill on your lmb, the guard skill is likely optimized on a CWDT 2L already. Same if you have the guard skill on lmb and the movement skill on CWDT.

Given your first point, curses, I think you may have misunderstood what I suggested as a support gem... What I am suggesting is only instant skills can be supported by this gem, meaning no curses as they have cast times. The link I posted is a list of instant skills (though I am certain it does not include skills acquired without gems). This support gem would merely allow you to auto-cast what you can already auto-cast via putting on mouse 1, just as an alternative method or to allow one more skill auto-casted. It would likely be a VERY niche-use support gem if it came to be (assuming no unintended interactions).

But you are right to assume that there could be some broken interaction out there that almost no one would think of.

EDIT: Missed your new post while typing... But yes, this would NOT be a very useful support gem. But I think having options is really nice if it doesn't require a lot of work to accomplish.

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D623932883 wrote:

But I think having options is really nice if it doesn't require a lot of work to accomplish.

ON it's face, yes: this can be seen as a strictly good thing. But if those choices do exactly the same thing, except one is inherently better than the other...then we have a big problem as that wouldn't really be an actual choice... PoE, for all its faults, tries to avoid this as much as possible.

The CWDT example is what I'm thinking. It is damn near impossible to take damage in this game, and equally damn near impossible to avoid taking the bare minimum damage of a lvl 1 CWDT almost every time you engage enemies. This gem would cast anything you want 4 times a second...the autocast support would have to be LESS than .25sec cd in order to be more useful and that would be ridiculous.

Also, you appear to misrepresent "cooldown" vs. "cast time" in your initial argument. Instant cast time doesn't mean the skill has zero cooldown. All instant skills have a cooldown. Your support would ADD to that cooldown whereas no other autocast system would do that, making it inherently inefficient no matter what the penalty was.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Also, you appear to misrepresent "cooldown" vs. "cast time" in your initial argument. Instant cast time doesn't mean the skill has zero cooldown. All instant skills have a cooldown. Your support would ADD to that cooldown whereas no other autocast system would do that, making it inherently inefficient no matter what the penalty was.

Yeah, I wanted to undersell the idea more than oversell it, if that makes any sense. Hypothetically speaking however, they gem could easily have no additional cooldown at higher levels, or even reduce the cooldown of the skill. I'm not a dev so I don't feel it is my place to decide what would make the most sense. I just wanted to pass along a concept that might be worth looking into.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

I guess I would turn that question back around to you: what "multiple" instant skills are you trying to use at the same time? And how would they interplay when the timers inevitably line up and you try to cast 2 instant skills at the same time which is impossible or illegal by game engine standards (only 1 action may be performed at once).

Sorry I missed this one earlier...

I can't recall all of them, but there have been a few occasions where I had to make the choice between two skills... Most recently as an example, I had a necromancer with Convocation and Bone Armour. I suppose you could make the argument that in this case, CWDT on Bone Armour would be the best choice. You wouldn't be wrong, but like I said before, I like the idea of having options, as long as the dev time spent on it is justifiable.

well....then we get into another area of difficulty. If it were to not do anything to the cooldown or REDUCE the cooldown, we approach the issue GGG already had with Second Wind Support pre-nerfs. Second Wind used to be abused for its CDR boost because of how powerful it was especially with guard skills, and GGG already nerfed it out of existence.

Also, if it were to reduce the cooldown it would make it near-mandatory OVER any other setup which is the same problem but on the opposite side lol.