Is there a better way than using the 'orb' ability?

I have a few units that have an ability for their attack. For instance, one units normal attack acts like the shockwave attack (well basically). The question I have is, is there a better way to do this than giving the unit an 'orb' based ability with the special attack as it's effect? Normally I wouldn't care if it was the cleanest way, but it seems that using the orb ability for a normal skill causes the ability icon to appear as disabled ( darkend). It still has the right info for the tooltip and everything, but if there is a better way, or maybe someone knows of a way (other than replacing the disabled icon) to make it not darkened I would appreciate it.

This is kind of confusing to explain, so if that was unclear let me know and I'll try to clear it up more.

I spouse you could detect the attack and have an invisable unit cast the spell, i dont think it would be too hard to trigger, but then i may be missiong something important...

Nope, that is the problem of orb of slow (I suppose you are basing the ability on that), it uses the disabled icon of the spell that it uses with the attack. The way around this would be to import a new icon that, for it disabled version, had a not-darkened picture. (it is otherwise not clear to me, why blizzard made it so that every icon must have a disbled version, a passive version, and an autocast version; couldn't they have made just one generic icon and then let the game transform it into any icon-type they needed by altering the borders? That would also allow us mapmakers to get an autocast or a passive button out of any icon...)

the WCIII engine just wasnt designed to run that way i guess, who knows, you should ask blizzard. Personally i'd use the disabled icon as a way of saying that this unit is special and casts shockwave on attack, but otherwise triggers or a change of icon would work.

I seriously recommend that you use Orb and change the icon (by importing a new one), because triggers that work on attacks can cause serious lag.

Hrm, okay, I was hoping there was another way. My map is still small (only 168kb) and I wanted to try to keep it very small, but I guess a few more icons won't hurt.

I did just think of something though.... is there a way to just somehow make the icon point to the one I want. Kinda like importing a new icon, expect all I am really doing is importing a new path.... hrm, hope that was clear, but doubt there is a way to do it anyways, so oh well if not :P.

Thanks for the replies :)

the only problem with making a new disabled icon to replace the old one is that when you click on the menu or pause the game (anything that causes the icon to look disabled) it wont be darkened, both ways have advantages and disadvantages:
No Custom Icon:
Is dark all the time, but looks fine if its disabled
Custom Icon:
Is light all the time and looks rather stupid if disabled