Automation Permanently Disables Skills

Two problems with Automation skill gem. First, when I add three linked skills that are supported by automation, automation only activates one of the linked skills, not all three. Despite all three showing a cooldown timer activated, only one has actual effects.

The second issue is that the above scenario leads to the other two skills to be (semi) permanently disabled. Here is how to replicate:

Place automation, immortal call, arcane cloak, and molten shell in a link. Activate automation. One skill will activate (for me this was arcane cloak). Remove arcane cloak from the link. Molten shell and immortal call are now permanetly deactivated and cannot be used.

They can be removed from the equipment, replaced by themselves, or altered in other ways, and they remain deactivated and cannot be used. The only way I found to reactivate them is to place arcane cloak and automation back into a link and activate and deactivate automation. Now immortal call and molten shell can be used again.

"Shares a cooldown with other Guard skills." is on every of those gems, and they are all guard skills. The moment you cast any of these, all others are put on cooldown - this is the same without automation

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"Shares a cooldown with other Guard skills." is on every of those gems, and they are all guard skills. The moment you cast any of these, all others are put on cooldown - this is the same without automation

Yeah, ok. That doesn't explain the skills becoming permanently disabled, though.

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You cannot use triggered skills yourself.

That isnt what is happening here. Once you use these skills with automation as I gave an example, of, you can put the gem into a slot of it's own, by itself- not triggered. But it is permanently disabled at that point. It wont work.


Seriously...follow the steps I listed to reproduce this. It leads to two skill gems becoming permanently disabled no matter what you do with them.

First problem

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Place automation, immortal call, arcane cloak, and molten shell in a link.

These 3 skills are all guard skills, no matter if they are linked to together, to automation, or in separate items, they will all share the same cooldown. So when one triggers the other two can't trigger and will also be on cool down. Which of the 3 triggers relates to the order they are linked in the items and sockets, the wiki has a diagram for linking order, I think its on the page for triggered.

Second problem

I'll try and recreate as you said and see if the gems get disabled

I think what you are experiencing is that automation is still running and linked to a guard skill, so if you have taken two guard skills out and placed them in another slot, you will never be able to cast them, because automation always has the remaining guard skill on cool down. If you remove that third skill or automation, you should be able to cast the two "disabled" guard skills?

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The only way I found to reactivate them is to place arcane cloak and automation back into a link and activate and deactivate automation.

This. When you turn off automation you stop casting arcane cloak, so the other guard skills are not perpetually on cooldown.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Guard_Skill

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This is not a problem with Automation. If you use a guard skill yourself and immediately remove the gem, remaining guard skills will also not be recharged. Other skills with shared cooldown and mod "This Skill's Cooldown does not recover during its effect" work in the same way, for example Blink skills.

Ah, yes. You are correct. At least partially. Any guard skills you have set/linked become permanently disabled when another guard skill is removed during cooldown. But it doesnt seem to affect guard skills that were not linked at the time the other skill was activated.

So if I set immortal call and arcane cloak in a link, activate then remove arcane cloak, immortal call is permanently disabled. But I can then set molten shell and use it fine. Even after cooldown of molten shell, though, immortal call is still inactive. You have to reset arcane cloak to make immortal call active again,

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So if I set immortal call and arcane cloak in a link, activate then remove arcane cloak, immortal call is permanently disabled. But I can then set molten shell and use it fine. Even after cooldown of molten shell, though, immortal call is still inactive. You have to reset arcane cloak to make immortal call active again,

This is correct, I was able to re-create the disable with three of the guard skills. Molten shell is acting differently for some reason, molten shell is disabled, but not creating the disable if it is the one taken out. The only way I could find to re-enable was replacing the guard skill that was removed(or another copy of that skill gem) or loging out/in to menu.

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Any guard skills you have set/linked become permanently disabled when another guard skill is removed during cooldown.

I think it is slightly different to this, unless i'm not doing it correctly. If the skill is removed during the cooldown, all cooldowns continue as normal, however if the skill is removed during the skill effect duration, the cooldowns never start and the gem is effectively disabled.