[Help!] Breaching A Unit's Maximum Mana

How can I make a unit go past it's maximum mana?

There's an idea in my map that units can be flooded with mana but if they go X over their maximum they'll suffer great consequences because of mana overloading.

I want to be able to force it through in both one shot (so I can hit something with a spell and make it overload with a huge strike) and gradual build up (so I can make a unit regenerate mana beyond its maximum).

Unless I'm blind, you have to force it. I don't want to disrupt the unit in any way, shape or form. How could I establish this?

I would just try a dummy caster using siphon mana (make sure the option in gameplay constants to allow it to target allies and push their mana over the max is turned on) to burst their mana.

Then, you can do the gradual stuff by constantly using SetUnitX and SetUnitY on the dummy caster (this won't interrupt the channeling) so that is constantly near the unit it's supposed to be overloading.

For the instant overload, your best shot is to use another siphon mana but one that grants a ridiculous amount of mana per second so that it is nearly instant. For this, you'd need to use an expiration timer on the dummy to kill it at the precise moment so as to grant the proper amount of extra mana.

For the siphon mana, I'd be "reverse-casting" by using negative values, right? If I'm wrong... please tell me how... that'd be really nice.

To be honest, I don't know.

The regular siphon mana tooltip says it can be cast on allies to push their mana over the maximum and if you attempt to cast it on one with 100% mana it gives you an "invalid target" error.

Try it with positive values, and make sure the dummy unit is allied with the unit it's casting on.

I have no freaking idea on how to configure Mana Siphon and Steal definitely doesn't work (even with negative values)...

Mana Siphon won't target allied units... strange...

This aspect is VERY vital to my map... but I might find another way to do it...

In the gameplay constants: Drain Transfers Mana. You have to set that to true, even if it's already by default (so it has to look purple). It will allow you to target allies. You don't need to set any negative values, just use "Mana transferred per second".
There another field that says "Drain gives bonus mana", but it's not working for me at the moment. I remember it working before, so there is probably something I can't recall.

EDIT: Drain gives bonus mana only when draining from an enemy unit. So that means that the unit that gets mana over its maximum has to be casting siphon mana on an enemy.

For max mana could imo work the same trick like in blade.dk's max hp manipulation trick. Then you could set max mana through scripts. Theoretically...she only thing you should do is to use bonus mana abilities instead of bonus hp.

Make a unit with a lot of mana. Make Siphon mana drain less per interval than this unit's maximum mana, half of this unit's mana works I think. Make siphon mana drain each 0.01 seconds over 0.02 seconds. Remove the art and the unnecessary stuff. Set "Bonus Mana Factor" to the number of times you want the maximum mana of a unit to be added to it. Set "Bonus Mana Decay" to 0. Test.

Example: If you set bonus mana factor to 3, and a unit with 400 mana (max) uses siphon on the "mana pool unit" (enemy), it will be given an extra 1200 mana, which makes 1600 total.

But that's not exactly what he wanted. Your method would show mana as 450/450 whereas he wants it to read something like 450/300.

I don't quite understand... I'm having troubles understanding stuff lately. A demo map would be pretty nice, however if you want to just explain, then that'd suffice.

However, I need to make sure that the unit does not get disrupted.

@ Pyrogasm
Thanks for understanding.