Black Arrow Bug

Long time reader first time poster, and you guys seem to know your stuff, so heres one for ya...

I'm not sure if this is a new bug with 1.15, but giving Black Arrow (the dark ranger skill that makes skellies from units killed while under its effect) to a melee unit makes the unit use black arrow every attack and without mana cost.

I know things can get kinda specific around here so I'll clarify: by Melee, I mean a unit with "Combat Weapon Type" set to Normal

When Auto-Cast is enabled, the melee unit does lose mana, but i'm just wondering if there is a work around.

I'd like to give a melee unit a black arrow-esque skill, and also give him vamp aura, and vamp aura wont do a thing if he's ranged. (I know I can tweak vamp aura, but I'd rather work on black arrow)

Also, what do i change to make a skill be auto-casting by default? Like when the dark ranger learns black arrow, it pops up with auto-cast already on.

Thanks guys.

Ummm I can't help you with the skill itself, but if you want an autocast skill to be on by default you set the "Default active abilities" field to include the spell. Take a look at priests and you'll see that they have their heal ability listed in this field.

Melee heroes with autocast attack based abilities are a pain, I know. The black arrow is the only thing that I thought works, frost arrows don't work at all (except for the damage bonus). The easiset way around I see is to give the unit attack type - missle and simulate any melee effects with triggers. In your case that would be life gain, it could also be thorns or anything similar. It is a slight problem that you only have the "unit is attacked" event, which happens slightly before actual damage is dealt, so the attack can be interrupted and the trigger still runs, but if you have minor effects such as a little life gain, that isn't so bad...

Vamp Aura is sooo much easier to do with triggers. Give the unit a ranged attack with only like 100 range or whatever and then just modify it so each time they deal damage, they gain a certain amount of life.

Yeah, you most likely put it in the Default Active Abilites field.

Try moving it to the Defautl Abilities field. That should work.