Conflagration is just a modified Aether Ray… In my case, I’d want to make a channeled flamethrower akin to some skills in the game that currently have a set duration (can’t remember off the top of my head… maybe it’s the Hellhound final skill)
Ohhh something like that. Ok.
Well carry on brainstorming then, I have no more ideas (yet). lol.
I’m going to post my answer here since the PM would only do one person any good.
We tried a lot of different options, and nothing so far seems to working.
An entirely new skill type requires code to work. Grim Dawn’s skill system is not modular, but rather a series of unique cases with templates. So whenever we added a new skill to the game, like Shaman’s Savagery or Primal Strike, those were new templates with code to back them up.
Aether Ray is the only truly channeled skill in the game.
I’d also love if you could tell me where I can find the old template for Devastation because the skill used to be channeled and this is the only skill that I can think off that was channeled and not a beam.
The old Devastation template is used quite frequently still: Skill_AttackProjectileDrop (example: skills/attackrain/humanpossessed_devastation.dbr).
It is not a channeled skill however. We “faked” it using multiple “hits” in the animation. To use the old Devastation’s animation, you need to add Hero/Heroine01_Sword1h_Spell_AoE_A02.anm back to the PC’s animation sets (it will also need its asset remade). That animation is longer and has 3 hit calls.
However, if you try this with other skill types, you will likely run into a potential problem: the spell will cast 3 times, but it may charge you energy again as each cast goes off (essentially 3x the displayed energy cost). For Devastation’s template (and I think Attack_Path), we created an exception on the backend that only charged the cost initially.
Hope this helps, though I can’t help but feel like I may have shredded a few dreams. :eek:
I appreciate the answer Zantai as now I can focus elsewhere. Will try to squeeze more out of beams then 
Perhaps for the expansion consider making a variant on wave templates that allows channeled. Just a thought.
PS… you shattered my dreams 
Have you tested out autocasting, LuxDelux?
My channeled lightning concept (concept, haven’t tried this yet) was going to channel a short-range beam that proc’d chain lightning on-attack with autoCast skills and autoCastControllers.
Edit: Forewarning: for some reason the engine REALLY doesn’t like autocasting Torrent. Always freezes up when I try to use a skill with a Torrent-based skill profile. So I’d recommend trying a different chain lightning, like that found on item procs.
Hope this helps, though I can’t help but feel like I may have shredded a few dreams.
I think a beacon of light in the darkness is more important here, you’re helping them out of a dark, dead end to move on to find other options.
Lol.
That was my first thought as the solution now that I read Zantai’s post. In fact also for chain lightning lol.
Am currently working on a god damn dual wielding huge Aether zombie pet for Arcanist haha so will get to that later. (PS Pet Skills are a nightmare with all the branching out)
Had success with autocast with my other modded skills so I have hopes
Can you also please tell us how the skillchanneled.tpl can be used correctly to create a channeled skill or are we miss understanding this template?
I’m really sad if we can’t create channeled spell at all… (except for beams of course)
I was thinking about creating a cone-shaped channeled skill to create a Fire Breath and Freezing Breath skill but without channeling the only work-around I found was to remove the cooldown of the skill and adjust the effect.
It also looks dumb because the character constantly move his hands forward to cast the skill and the sounds get annoying. Not what I wanted 
I really appreciate the quick and honest answers Zantai!
If there’s a workaround you can think off, that would probably be better than what I’m doing, let us know.
I have a feeling this is possible still… (a man can dream)
skillChanneled was a work-in-progress that I believe eventually turned into attackSpellBeam and was just never taken out. I don’t think you’ll be able to do anything with it.
Okay, now you definitively crushed my dreams… :o
EDIT: If you are still here, I have one more question for you.
Or maybe someone else can answer me, but when you edit a skill, for example skill_attackwave there’s a field called skillSpecialAnimationName under Skill Config. On another skill that field contained FrostBreath (on a pet skill iirc) but when I had that to my character skill nothing in particular happens.
Is it because this animation doesn’t work with Player Character and only with certain models (like Hellhounds or Yetis)?
skillSpecialAnimationName is not described in the guide and doesn’t have a description in DBREditor.
EDIT: Gonna post more in my thread on this, found some pretty interesting stuff! 
If you guys are able to (Not a modder) the mob Chillmane Alpha uses a type of Ice Breathe, that hits AoE in front. Not sure if this could help.
Yeah, already looked at it
It’s just a projectile with 100% chance to pierce and explosion damage.
It only hit once.
EDIT: (maybe it once per target but the explosion make it so each enemies caught can trigger a small explosion and hit an enemy multiple times?! Need testing)
The animation is slow and the effect also fade slowly which make it seems like it’s a channeling.
I just learned about skill animations.
But like the Dev said, we can’t make channeled skill apart from Beam-type skill.
People are probably going to find workaround and develop templates that pretty much mimic a channeled skill.
Just need to give it sometimes, it’s all about experiencing and finding bugs that can actually help you
Just trying to help with what I see in game. Hope you guys find a solution!
Yeah, thanks man.
Like I always says, I appreciate any help, hehe!
You gave me an idea to revisit the skill.
I also checked the 2nd modifier for Primal Strike (savagestrike.dbr I believe) and even went so far as to creating a custom template for Skill_AttackSpellBeam that also included the default projectile and buff templates that Skill_AttackLightningRadius uses. And changing the targeting of the beam, etc, etc. I can get the stats to show up fine, but it looks like the skill class may have to be Skill_AttackWeaponRadius, or end up there, for the chain lightning to proc. My beam has projectile stats, a radius (which doesn’t work, at all), and other stuff, and it still won’t proc the SkillSecondary_ChainLightning.
And, since I was mostly drunk when I did a lot of this… not sure. I had them replace the existing Arcanist skill (Disentigration?) for the Chain Lightning… and it could be since I changed the template for skillchanneled, instead of skill_attackspellbeam. Anyway, here’s all the crap I have atm, if anybody wants to look at it.
You can use the console commands to quickly level up and have the points necessary to get all the way, too. Hit tilde, ‘game.IncrementLevel’ a bunch of times.
EDIT: And, reading previous posts, apparently useless. Okay, nevermind
cheatengine allows for neat debugging, like raising levels, skills to max, points etc.
afair there were some blacklists for devotionskills, ie my loved aethertendril itemskill cannot be assigned to any devotionskill, even filed a bugreport believing this was due too many skills at the time.
anyhow, i think i can disable the blacklist via ce, but there is probably little point to doing that.
but i am able to assign ie to potions, their skills to be exact, with devotionskills, secondary skills. Well, I was a month ago, now I’d need to remake the code and look if anything changed.
For chain lightning it’s no prob as Ceno suggested. For example
records/skills/itemskills/item_lightningchain_01.dbr
records/controllers/itemskills/cast_@enemyonattack_100%.dbr
though that one procs from the player when used with Aether Ray. Need to check all the options once I get around on doing a Shaman rework.
Even then we could use tricks like use an empty texture to hide Aether Ray… though I’m not sure we could get a continuous flow of lightning.
You ought to, there’s lightning textures and settings in…one of the dbr that calls them to basically ‘extend it’, same as it does with the beam. In theory… just replace the aether ray with one of the lightning ones. And you could get rid of the start/stop animations/textures, the green poof thing.