Weird things with Blizzard Spells

I want to make this a big list, for the reference of the people. What this list will contain is weird things Blizzard did with their spells; mainly fields that do weird things, although it can also be weird effects that spells can have when minor tweaks are made. These "weird thing" can be either helpful, hurtful, or just plain useless. When you post, I'll tack it up to the list.

It sounds like a stupid idea for a list, but who knows. Maybe it will be helpful?

Note: This list is for weird things with SPELLS/ABILITIES, and only oddities that can cause issues or are confusing (such as incorrect/weird fields). The Warcraft III Ability Guide is much like this, except it explains how to use the oddities of certain spells to your advantage. This list is so people know what spells can be troublesome. It also has some of the lesser-known fields/effects some spells have, be they good or bad.

General Oddities
This is for things that apply to most/all spells.

• Many times, Targets Allowed is hardcoded into Wc3, so modifying them may do nothing.
• Making a custom spell then setting its buff field(s) to nothing will make it default to the Blizzard buff.

Requested Abilities

Individual Spells
This little section is for individual spells that have a lot of oddities.
Channel
Probably the weirdest spell Blizzard gives you.

• Abilities based on Channel will not show up unless the field "Data - Options" has the "Visible" box checked off.
• "Channel - Follow Through Time" is the maximum amount of time the spell can be channeled for. Setting it to 0 makes it a normal spell; anything above it makes it a channeling spell.

Shadow Strike
A simple ability but it has a few weird fields.

• "Decaying Damage" is how much damage the target takes per interval after the initial damage.
• "Casting Time" is not actually the casting time. It's the interval for "Decaying Damage".
• I don't know what "Decaying Power" does yet.

Thunder Clap, War Stomp, and Shockwave
Three spells that all deform terrain.

• These spells will always cause the ground to warp when cast, even if you change the missile art, etc.
• These spells can cause Desyncs (due to the deformed terrain) if you're checking for Z height in triggers.
• War Stomp (Neutral Hostile 1/2/3) has a field for Terrain Deforming, which could come in handy.

Cluster Rockets
(Thanks so much IgnitedStar!!)
A spell that is known to have quite the array of weird fields and abnormalties.

• Damage Amount - Amount of damage that is dealt per Damage Interval.
• Damage Interval - Amount of time per when Damage Amount is applied.
• Effect Duration - The amount of time Damage Interval is accounted for before it stops checking every X seconds, X coming from Damage Interval. Or... This might also be the amount of damage any one Damage Interval can deal to all units within the Area of Effect.
• Max Damage - The maximum amount of damage any one unit can take from a single casting of the spell. Or... This might also be the amount of damage any one Damage Invertal can deal.
• Missle Count -
  Eyecandy only. Determines how many missiles are shown, so if there are more missiles than the duration lasts, missiles will be shown w/o damage, and vice versa. The only way to determine the right timing is by guess + check.
• Area of Effect - This goes hand in hand with Missle Count. Even if I extended the range of Cluster Rockets, I wasn't able to change where the missles landed or how they landed. A test with a large area showed that the missle art is truly just for effect: Even if you use an area of a thousand, the missles will only cover a small area of that thousand, but all units within the Area of Effect will still get hit.
• Spell Duration - Hero/Unit - This specifies the amount of stun is dealt as units get hit according to Damage Interval. This only happens once, as if the unit is hit at any Damage Interval. So, even if a unit gets hit by Cluster Rockets late, it will still be stunned for this amount of time. The same holds true for units that are hit within the area. Blizzard made it so that the stun ended just as the Effect Duration ended. Pretty smooth, if you ask me.
• Cooldown - I feel a need to put Cooldown in here. Cluster Rockets is a channeling spell; if the Effect Duration surpasses the Cooldown, then Cluster Rockets can literally run forever with sufficient mana.
  (Thanks Burning Rose for this tidbit!
• Buffs - I've found that if you give the Buff field for cluster Rockets (Which normally has 'Cluster Rockets', not 'Stunned') the 'Stunned' Buff, it doesn't work, the stun doesn't go off. If you, instead, give it a buff based off Cluster Rockets, the stun works, but the damage doesn't. However, the Cluster Rockets buff looks just like the stunned buff, so it doesn't matter as long as you leave it that way :o

Flame Strike
Flame Strike's fields are very simple. However, because of the way Blizzard made Flame Strike's default fields, it can be very confusing (For example; the spell's default tooltip says "45 damage per second", but the Full Damage field for level 1 is 15.)
Thanks IgnitedStar for Flame Strike's fields!

• Full Damage Dealt - This is the amount of damage dealt per Full Damage Interval.
• Full Damage Interval - This is the amount of time Full Damage Dealt deals its damage.
  (It's .33 by default.)
• Half Damage Dealt - This is the amount of damage the leftover fires deal.
• Half Damage Interval - This one is the amount of time Half Damage Dealt deals is damage. (It's 1 by default)
• Maximum Damage - I'm 75% sure that this is the maximum amount of damage any unit can sustain from Full Damage. This might also count for Half Damage, but I doubt it.
• Casting Time - For Flame Strike, this is the amount of time it takes for the whole spell to fire off.
• Duration Hero/Unit - This one is wierd for Flame Strike, too. I believe it's the amount of time units stay on fire, but it has to be tested.

Undead Gold Mines
Apparently there's some stuff with these gold mines
Thanks for these MCV!

• The Blighted Gold Mine ability only works on Undead structures and anything else will make it contain 0 gold.
• The unit that has the "Gather Gold (Acolyte)" ability must be undead
• The unit that builds a Blighted Gold Mine must be undead

Other Abilities
This is for any other spells that only have 1 weird thing associated with them.

• In Metamorphosis, the "Duration - Normal" field determines how long the user "holds" until the morph takes place.
• When using Carrion Swarm (and I think Crushing Wave), there will always be a black plume effect on units hit by the wave, regardless of the effects or buffs you use. However, if you change the Art - Special field on the STANDARD Carrion Swarm (the one you used to make a custom spell, not the custom spell itself), then this can be changed. (Thank you Midiway for the clarification)
• Devour will NOT work on "Demon" class units.
• Human repair will only work on Buildings classified as the human race.
• When using Locust Swarm, only units with Locust will move around.
• In "Earthquake", setting "Data - Final Area" to a really high number can crash the game.
• In "Cannibalize", setting the Cast Range to anything above/below the default will cause the ability to bug, making it only work on rare occasions when the caster is DIRECTLY over a corpse.
• In "Chain Lightning" the Art - Missile field doesn't work. This is a huge nuisance since with it, Chain Lightning would be the perfect 1-hit damage spell (No buff, no side effects, just damage).
• Attack manipulation abilities (Pulverize, Critical Strike, Cleaving Strike) can be used to show a unit's Slam animation whenever they attack (assuming they have one).
• Casting "Sleep" on yourself (if you make it able to do so) will cause it to loop; every time sleep ends, your unit will automatically recast it on itself.
• "Spiked Carapace" has a "Damage Taken" field that allows you to make units take % of damage (for example, setting it to .90 would make units take 90% of attack damage).
  

Not an actula oddity, but I once managed to bug cluster rockets so bad than whenever you casted it, instead of the rockets flying to random points in the target AoE, they would form an evenly spaced out circle around the caster. (If the radius was 300 and there were 4 missiles, the missiles would all fly to points 300 away, each 90 degrees away from the surrounding 2.)

i made cluster rockets shoot in a line going back and forth with like 60 projectiles and no arch. it also didn't do any damage but would stun. when i disabled stun it did absolutely nothing but looked cool. i don't think effect does any thing for storm bolt either, a bunch of the art values don't.

Sounds like the Warcraft III Ability Guide... :P

you can change the black plume effect through the field Art-Special of Carrion Swarm

Tried that, it didn't work. (I think, if I remember)

Oh fuck you =p This is different. Warcraft III Ability Guide was all the abilities and how to use them. This is the oddities of the abilities.

I've got a good one (which made me suffer for one month): Devour doesn't work on demon race units.

well that sucks, maybe because they're supposed to be so big.

Thanks for that Moyack, I'll add it right up. Keep them coming!

This/these may not be an ability per say... but it could assist.

- Creeps above level 6 (with race creep) are treated as heroes.
- Crushing Wave is a graphics change of Carrion Swarm
- Human repair only works on human units
- "Armor Ring" or "Damage Claw" abilities can be used to attach effects without animation interruption (e.g popping on death or Sphere's problem upon attack)
- Auras will naturally flicker whenever a new unit is added into its radius (or on the map)

I think there's a few more points that I know but I can't think of...

Actualy, the ability guide mostly focuses on how to use the oddities of abilities, so it qualifies. However, if you want to make this thread about useless oddities, then there's no overlap.

They're not useless if at least one person finds it useful. :)

My tips:
Spells that deform terrain (Shockwave and Thunderclap) are laggy and can cause desyncs. Use Carrion Swarm and ? as alternatives.
Locust Swarm only causes units to move around when they have the ability Locust.

Also, as mentioned, these could probably be added to the warcraft III ability guide.

I like to think of them more as obstructing oddities and weird fields (which can obstruct progress if you don't know what they do)

I picked a couple more from the ones listed and added them on, as well as updated the first post. I'll make a list of requested abilities later.

~Bump~

I updated the first post with some new information (thanks Burningice255), and organized the post better.

Does anyone else have any weird abnormalities with blizz spells they'd like to add? I'm also looking for details on the fields for Cluster Rockets and Flame Strike.

If I can accumulate enough information here, I'll make it into a tutorial, perhaps to be coupled with the Warcraft III Ability Guide.