Looping the art of abilities?

I'm trying to figure out how to loop the art of abilities when I cast them.

For example, say I want to make Thunderclap a spell that goes on and on for a specific duration, but needs to be channelled for the whole duration.

So I start with a spell that needs channelling, let's say Starfall.

Now I set everything of Starfall to null, except the duratioin of the spell, because I want the spell to go on and on. So now I have my dummy channeling spell.

I'm on the right track so far, right?

Ok, now on to triggers, to create the desired effect of my spell.

Using triggers, I need to make it so that enemy units around my hero will keep losing life every second as long as the hero is channeling the spell, right?


So this is what I have got right now:

Untitled Trigger 001
Events
Unit - Test Hero Begins channeling an ability
Time - Every 1.00 seconds of game time
Conditions
Actions
Selection - Select (Units within 300.00 of (Position of (Triggering unit)))
Unit - Set life of (Picked unit) to ((Life of (Picked unit)) - 10.00)


Now this trigger should cause all units around the hero to lose 10 life per second as long as he is casting the spell, right?

It's not perfect yet, for example, it doesn't distinguish between friend and enemy. But that's ok, because I think I can figure out how to do that later on.

So that's not the tough part.

The tough part is, my hero will do the animation of thunderclap once, and that's it.

For the remainder of the spell, he just stands there. The effects of the spell are still on, just that my hero is not doing anything to show it.

So my problem is, how do I make the animation/art of thunderclap loop throughout the duration of the spell?

OK, for the life loss, I would create a dummy caster that has a modified Unholy Aura set so the regeneration is -10 or so. If you do it your way, the Hero won't get experience\bounty for its kills. For the effect, you'll need to make a loop (For Integer A from 1 to <MaxDurationLength>). You'll need an If\Than\Else in this loop that will check to see if the order string of the triggering unit is the same as the order string for Starfall. (Order string of Triggering unit equal to starfall). If it is, do nothing, if it's not, skip the remaining actions and do whatever cleanup you need to.

Ability Editor>Starfall>Animation>Make this field read "attack,slam,loop".

If you don't understand how to do that take a look at the animation settings for other channeled spells.

Thanks for the helpful advice.

Rep for both.