Help with AoE Orb Abilities

Maybe I'm being stupid, but I can't seem to get orb abilites to work with AoE spells. FOr instance, I took Orb of Ice (New), made it a unit ability, made it give no bonuses to damage, targets etc. Then I made a modded version of Chain Lightning, gave it no cooldown, no mana cost. I then put it on my new Orb of Ice (New) ability and gave it to my hero. That worked fine, when my hero attacked he cast chain lightning on the attacked unit. Next, I tried doing the same thing but making a no-mana/cooldown Earthquake the ability of the Orb. It doesn't work. I tried the same thing with rain of fire, and got no response. Does it just not work for AoE spells or am I doing something wrong?

It stands to reason that it wouldn't work for AoE spells, as they accept Points as targets rather than Units... When the orbed hero attacks, it's a unit that's being attacked, thus the AoE has no target.

That's my theory, anyway. Hope you can figure out some way to get it to work!

In thought that too. But I was hoping that it might work because when using a AoE spell you can actually target a unit (altough the AoE still takes place). Oh well....... If no-one gives me answer I could just use triggers.

It doesn't care about 'AoE' in paticular..

But it's finicky about spells which take a point. Orbs are meant to work against units.

Try sampling and make them work with Frost Nova. Boom, AoE.


I wonder if it's point or channeling that causes an issue? Someone try an orb with Aerial Shackles?

All those AoE spells have no specific target, just a fancy reticle thing, I'm guessing it needs to be a targeted spell such as chain lightning or firebolt.

Having never experimented, I'd guess that something like Aerial Shackles both would and wouldn't work. It targets a unit, sure enough, but it's also a channeling spell, and attacking a unit only lasts for an instant. It would stop binding almost right away, for no real effect.

Or else they may have simply disallowed channeling spells.
More useful would be something like mana drain, which is what I'd encourage some enterprising soul to experiment with.

i'm sorry to say but i am 99% sure you will have to go with triggers for aoe spells. a unit is not a point. plain and simple. maybe you could make a trigger that converts a unit to a location but i think it would just be all around better if you just made the trigger cast the spell. i don' know but i would say best route is triggers.

Only non-channeling Unit targetted spells work with orbs, Well blizzard invented triggers for a reason