I think it’s this specific area that has the problem versus something with the skill. If I go there on my sorcerer, my static orbs won’t travel and will immediately blow up on me. I found that if you walk past that red goop your skills will stop hitting whatever invisible hit box is there.
I was noticing a very similar effect with Mage’s Lightning Strike in the early campaign areas (like Chapters 1 and 2). Something like 85-90% of the time it would work perfectly fine, and then in those random 10-15% situations my character would fling his arm out for the cast animation, but nothing would happen at all. It’s like the lightning blast failed to spawn whatsoever.