Buffs - How to get the most out of them?

Not referring to buffs in the sense of spells that improve units, but buffs literally in the editor. It seems enigmatic at best, to me, how to fully utilize them. I am hoping you folks could explain to me how to:

-Have buffs actually appear in the status of a unit, through both active and passive abilities (for instance, for some reason my passive abilities even as simple as evasion don't actually produce a buff note in the status informing others the unit has evasion)
-Have buffs themselves provide graphical effects, such as sprite attachments, etc.
-Use buffs to properly inform triggers of states for units--i.e. all units with oil = take more damage from fire type sources, etc.

Many thanks for continued education efforts!

1. Not sure but most should so
2. Yes
3. Yes

-Av3n

Heh, I was asking how

1: add a dummy aura based of from Tornado Aura, fix the buff (icon, tooltips), set the targets allowed to Self, set... 'slow rate' to 0. If the ability itself shows an icon when given to the unit (not sure if Tornado Aura do) then add the ability to a spellbook give the spellbook ability to the hero and then disable the spellbook for the player(s).

2: just change the fields on the buff :)

3: not really sure what you wish for

It depends on the spell, some spells use the buff data to add FX, buffs and other things, some do not. Experimentation is probably your best tool.

In order to do this, all of your triggers must have If/Then/Else functions to detect wether or not the unit has a specific buff.
...or you could build a custom buff system...

If you're referring to attack types (like is used in those dumb Pokémon maps), you could do it by fiddling around with the different attack types (seige, normal, spell, etc.) and then changing the bonus % in Gameplay Constants.