[Spell] Quickest way of adding a dispel-able buff to a unit?

[A Rather Wily Beaver]

Hello all,

I'm making a skill-shot projectile that explodes upon contact with an enemy, lighting the target and all nearby enemies on fire, dealing no immediate damage but dealing a lot of damage over time.

It works great 80% of the time, but unfortunately, 80% isn't quite good enough haha.

I believe the problem is that, to do damage, it checks for a debuff that the explosion applies (it picks all units in a set radius, spawns a dummy for each of them, and then the dummy casts a modified Curse spell on the picked unit).

I believe the issue is that the dummies sometimes aren't quick enough in casting the spell maybe? I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I've eliminated pretty much everything else.

Is there a quicker way to apply a buff other than spawning a dummy and having the dummy cast a spell? If not, which spell is the quickest?

I have thought about instead adding an ability to the target (like an aura) that bestows a buff, but I want this debuff to be dispel-able, so I unfortunately don't think that that would work.

Thanks for reading!

Edit: I did briefly try making it so that it didn't check for a buff - it only counted down the duration, and it worked 100% perfectly then. However, I would like for there to be a debuff, and I would like for it to be dispel-able, so that method is a no-go.

Edit 2: The skill shot is based off of Carrion Swarm, if that matters.

 

[Macadamia]

Hello there.

I don't understand why you don't simply pick all units in the set radius when the projectile explodes on a target, and then create your dummy for each unit and use a custom damage over time spell like cripple for your dummies to apply it on the picked unit ? You need to remove movement and attack speed reductions, dependencies, mana cost, cooldown, etc... then nothing should stop your dummies from applying the damage over time, and it could be dispelled.

 

[A Rather Wily Beaver]

@Macadamia thank you for your comment! That's actually exactly what I attempted, and it didn't work at first until I set the dummy's cast backswing and cast point to 0.

I have no idea why that fixed it, but it did, so I'm happy

 

[doom_sheep]

of course dummies' cast point affects how fast they cast. you can also do stuff like removing move ability to eliminate the delay from turning.