Triggered Casting Animation?

I'm having a model using the Dwarven Rifleman as a base on my map, the unit is going to have an aimed shot ability, which has roughly 6-8 seconds casting time and after that it will deal a lot of damage and stun the enemy for about a second, I've based the ability on Frostbolt, and got it to work fine, except for one part, no matter what I do, I can't get him to play the Stand Ready animation for the duration it takes him to cast the spell. The whole point of him aiming for a long time to get an extremely good hit dealing a lot of damage is kinda pointles if he just stands there looking like he's doing nothing special at all, and then all of a sudden aims and shoots this killing shot in about a second. Anyone who can help me with this?

I've tried making him play the animation with triggers, as well as changing the animation used for the spell, haven't been able to get this to work though :(,

Edit: This thread might be better in the trigger forum, if it is, pls move it there.

If you have an exact time for the duration the animation needs to be played then just do

i can only guess the ability makes his animation to default and prevents u from changing it, one way is to use a dummy channeling ability and then create a dummy caster to cast storm bolt.

Ah you might be right. I forgot about that.

In that case you would use this trigger action but use a dummy unit for the actual ability.

oh and btw, if you use tim's suggestion about:

Animation - Play Unit's stand ready animation
Wait 6.00 seconds
Animation - Reset Unit's animation

then, dont use Casting Unit in those actions.
becouse of a wait there between, Casting Unit can change its value if another unit cast the ability after the first one. So if this would happen only the second hero will reset its animation.

Remove all animation tags from your spell.

or ofcourse, just add "Stand ready" as animation tag.