Item Curse

Well, I do not mean "the curse of items(sound like a legend^_^)", but mean I am making this ability. What I want is a wand-like item when cast upon an enemy unit it will be cursed, just like Banshees' Curse. What I did is, create a custom ability from Banshee's Curse, set "Order String - Turn On" and "..- Turn Off" to NONE, set "Stats - Item Ability" to True, and create an item based on lightning wand using the ability I just created. But that failed in game, when I click on the item nothing happened. The item seems pressed, but with no effect. Any ideas what I did wrong, please?

Why did you change to Order code?

Why don't you make it passive using the Slow (orb) ability.

1) The reason I changed "OrderString - On and Off" to NONE is that, if I don't do so, you will hear a nice sound "ding-dong" as you attempt to pick the item up in your inventory using right-click. It's as if you start auto-casting that item, but how could it be possible? And I see no golden stars moving around.

2) Well, what d'you mean, passive orb? I think I described clearly enough, it's CURSE! How could you turn Curse into a passive ability ;-) Also in fact a passive Curse is not something I want. I want a wand, manually cast wand.

Still thanks ^_^

Well, I have an idea. Instead of using Banshee's Curse, use Panda's Drunken Haze, setting its missile art to none, missile speed to 0, AOE to 0, missile homing to TRUE (or it will not work), removing the speed reduction and changing the buff/range/mana/cooldown to match Curse's one. I hope it helps.

Yay! It worked! Thanks so much!
*.1) The Missile Homing needn't be set, it worked.
*.2) So why does Curse not work? Who can think out?

I've always had many problems trying to set an autocast ability as a normal ability, I think it's a hardcoded issue that we can't solve :( and the same happens when you try to make a normal ability autocast, it just doesn't work.

I suggest you to set missile homing ON, try what happens if the target unit is moving fast when you cast the spell without homing (

Hidden information: it will miss :)

).
Maybe curse doesn't work cuz it's an autocast ability (I hate them).

What a hide! ^_^ But I think why it still worked was because the missile speed was 0, or say INFINITE, so no matter how fast the target runs, he can't be faster than infinite ^_^

About Curse
Well I can understand that if we put a normal into an autocast we'll surely fail, 'cause we don't have order strings for on and off. But when we delete orderstrings for on and off and cast it manually how could it fail? Well what's orderstrings after all? (Am I being annoying? ^_^)

For reference:

For most skills, the fact that it shows the orderstrings is just a courtesy to you, so that you can see what orderstrings the ability sets off when it's used. Changing the values in the object editor has no effect whatsoever on the ability. There are a couple abilities, like Channel, that can have their orderstring set to something else, but this is actually a separate "Data" field and not the orderstring field itself.
Incidentally, orderstrings appear to be the thing that determines whether you have two of the same ability on a unit (which causes the abilities in question to behave erratically).

Secondly, it has been adequately shown that autocast abilities simply do not function correctly as item abilities. However, as you have seen, there are almost always other abilities that have the same effect that can be used instead. If no such ability can be found, you can always create a dummy ability and trigger a caster to cast the autocast ability.

Point of interest:

Changing the order string in the object editor may change it, but that field simply has no relation to anything, so has no effect. For example, the Breath of Frost ability has by default the string 'breathoffire' as it's order string.

But guess what? The actual order string is 'breathoffrost'. That field simply has no effect, and is merely there for in-editor information purposes. Or, alternatively, it was never properly implemented, and was origionally going to be functional, as with spell book and channel.

So you mean, orderstrings are in fact no use? ;-) I've ever tried changing the orderstrings of an ability and the stats and data didn't change correspondingly indeed. But... (Don't be annoyed, another question ^_^) When I set the orderstrings on/off of that "Item Curse" to NONE, the item couldn't be "autocast" anymore...(See the above post) Seems it still affected, who knows why?

Thanks to all who came along!

It seems you don't exactly follow. Changing the order strings has no effect on the ability whatsoever. It literally does nothing.