Boss Using Abilities

Greets.

So I have a computer-controlled boss for a boss fight. For some reason this has never really come up for me before. I know that units frequently know when and how to use their abilities, so I was hoping if I gave this boss mana-less abilities with cooldowns, he would cast the abilities roughly whenever the cooldown elapsed.

Of course, he doesn't do it the way I'd like, or I wouldn't be posting here.

Originally he belonged to a player that wasn't filled with a slot (player 12). Then, hoping that it might make him more cooperative if I made slot 12 a computer player instead of just empty, I did so. But he isn't using all the abilities yet, as far as I can tell.

He has Flamestrike, Silence and Acid Bomb. I have seen him use Acid Bomb a couple times, but neither of the other ones yet.

So the long and the short of it is, what do you think is liable to be the best solution? Should I track the ability cooldowns via timer and write triggers to make him cast the abilities? Should I base the abilities on other skills that are more AI-friendly? I'm very open to suggestions.

Thanks.

Ok, so the AI player has been able to do some usage, so the problem is the hardcoded AI.

FlameStrike and silence are activated by AI if there's a lot of targets clustered (+8 if I remember properly) and Silence add the limitation that most of them should have mana. So if there's not enough units, those AOE won't activate normally.

Solution: add some triggering to improve the abilities.

You can use a trigger which detects if units enter the spell range of the boss, if they are more or equal than X value, then activate any of the skills. Just an example.

I think the best (and easiest) solution is simply to track the cooldowns via a timer. If you want it used immediately, all you need to do is create a one-shot timer after the spell takes effect. Then you just need to do a simple event to satisfy the ability. (Mostly just checking if a unit is in range, you don't want your boss to randomly target the ground and cast the spell =P )

I don't think that the way the computer uses their moves has a particular pattern that you can find, it'd probably vary. That's why the most sure-fire method would be via triggers.