Support Gems with Cooldown

How about powerful Support Gems with a cooldown on their effect?

In game, this would be represented by a hue or symbol on the supported Skill's Icon, indicating whether the skill is currently elegible for the bonus or not.

There might even be two types of such gems:
- One where only 1 of the linked skills can benefit from the bonus every X seconds (shared cooldown).
Encourages linking a single skill to it.
Example:
Insidiousness - Increases critical chance by an additional X% and any critical chance above 100% is added as critical damage multiplier. Only one linked skill can benefit from this bonus every 10 seconds. Does not go into cooldown if you fail to crit.

- One where each linked skill can benefit from the bonus every Y seconds (individual cooldown).
Encourages linking multiple skills to it.
Example:
Pestilence - Physical damage dealt by supported skills causes physical degeneration equal to X% of your maximum health over 10 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Each supported skill can only apply this effect once every 5 seconds.

Perhaps I didn't word it well, but the point being if you have Ethereal Knives, Summon Skeleton and Raise Zombie linked to it, if you cast, EK->SS->SS->RZ->EK in the span of 4 seconds:
- the 1st EK will apply the effect on all projectiles
- both minions from the 1st SS cast will apply the effect on all their attacks
- neither minion from the 2nd SS cast will apply the effect
- minion raised with RZ will apply the effect on all attacks
- the 2nd EK will not apply the effect on any of its projectiles

bump

No offense, I hope we never get any kind of 'cool-down' skills.

One of the best features of POE is the fact that you can use any ability at any time not having to wait for things like that.
I've never liked the limits of fun placed in games. It's like "Hey, we've given you all these great fantastic n abilities for you to have fun with! But you can only have that fun every x seconds."

I understand what you mean and I agree with you regarding active skills.

But I'm talking essentially about "procs", stuff you can dynamically react to.

It can offer a great deal of strategy if you know that ever few seconds one of your attacks will do something above average.

You can still spam the attack all the time, but every now and then it does something bajeezuz!

---

Compare this to Cold Snap and Flicker Strike.
They have cooldowns, but there is a mechanic to override it - you can ignore the cooldown by spending charges of the right type.

In this suggestion, the mechanic is that it's a passive, support effect, that is meant to give your gameplay a twist.

I think the Trap gem should be redesigned to improve damage as it levels, as opposed to its current form where it decreases cooldown. This would make it more interesting as a "cooldown skill" enabler.

Other than that, I don't really want cooldowns in the game, unless they can be bypassed by expending a charge. Perhaps you could add a support for each color that adds a cooldown that can be bypassed by expending an additional charge of the appropriate type ("an additional," because using the green support on Flicker Strike would cost two Frenzy charges this way). Oh, and sticking to the standard 4-second cooldown would also be wise.

Bump.

I am not a huge fan of cooldown on active skills, but I am fond of a cooldown period on passive effects.