[2019] Questions Thread - May 31, 2019

It counts as using a fire skill (it's a fire skill and you used it). It does not count as casting a fire spell (summoning a totem is not casting the spell).

Totems (and minions that don't require you to consume anything to create them) are summoned. Mines are placed. Traps are thrown.

When you use a totemified fire skill, you used a fire skill, and the result of that is you summoned a totem.

When the totem casts the spell, it is casting a fire spell, but you are not, and it probably doesn't have any stats that benefit from doing that like you might.

is there a support gem that adds the 'Fire' tag?

No. Gem Tags cannot be changed or added.

Just like how Arcane Surge adds Duration tag.

It does not do this. Gem Tags cannot be changed or added.

Arcane Surge is changing the skill so that it grants a buff with a duration. This means that skill now has a duration effect, and can therefore be supported by supports that modify such. That's seperate to having the tag, which is a property of the gem. The gem hasn't changed what tags it has, the skill has changed what it does. Supportability only cares about the later, not the former.

Supportability and Tags are different things. Summon Phantasm support changes a skill such that it now creates minions, so supports that affect minions will then be able to apply. That has nothing to do with tags.

Adding Summon Phantasm support to a skill does not make that skill benefit from modifiers such as "x% reduced Mana Cost of Minion Skills" or "x% increased Minion Damage if you've used a Minion Skill Recently", because that skill is still not a Minion Skill - it doesn't have the tag.

This comment chain started by talking about exactly this kind of bonus which distinguishes on gem tags (in that case fire), which is why the distinction is relevant here.

I.e. does summoning a HFT count as “casting a fire spell”?

No. Just like the fireball case, this is using a fire skill, but not casting a fire spell. Summoning a totem is not ever casting a spell.

Thank you for the reply. That seems like a bit of semantics to me though - having a tag that says "support," and adding a duration property effect to a gem should really be the same thing.

Tags have never been about suipportability, and they are not adaquate to describe supportability. Tags are there to let effects distinuish skills on broad categories, so we can do things like "+1 to level of Minion skills", or "Do X when you use a Fire Skill".

and it still doesn't explain why this interaction suddenly decided to exist after a random patch and discovery a year ago with no prior (or indeed, post) indication it would/could/should.

It didn't. Supports have always worked this way, even since before gems had tags. Supports change skills to do new things, and they support skills based on what those skills do. If a support changes a skill such that it does something new that another support cares about, then the second support can then apply. That interaction is a natural and predicatable result of the system that PoE has been using since before the initial closed beta.