Okay so here it goes....
With a little research I've determined I'm not the only one who has had this problem... the sad part is every post I saw about it had zero replies...
When my main Hero --> the one being controlled casts a spell I made called *Shield* for example onto any party member it casts fine, with both a cast animation and a target animation + effects, party is in the caterpillar formation, but when said Hero casts the * Shield* spell on himself there's a cast animation + effect but no target animation, it looks really cheesy like he suddenly just has the effect... please help XD