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First of all, full credit goes to Deceased for this. He came up with the idea and the method for doing it, I merely copied and adapted it to my own use, but now I want to write it out in complete detail for everyone else to use. The original thread I read it in is here. But I think this amazing setup deserves its own thread and a more complete writup, so here it is.
What can this setup do:
- Doesn't use either Focus or Target for assisting or following, leaving these for other uses.
- Allows seamless main switching without anyone dying or having a different macro per character, can be done in combat.
- Each character is always set up for solo play.
- Very easy to recover from the death of your current main.
Now, this is going to be a long read, and it looks pretty damn complicated at first, I know. It took me the better part of a weekend to get around it and implement it. But its well worth it.
The following guide outlines the setup in keyclone, other programs have their own methods of setting this up.
So how does this work? I'm gonna give the example of 5 shammies, because my setup is close to this (4x shammies and a pally) and its probably the easiest to understand.
Lets say you have 5 shammies, ToonA, ToonB, ToonC, ToonD, ToonE.
Now lets say you want to do a lightning bolt on some toon, and have the rest do a lightning bolt on said toon's target.
You bind the lightning bolt to whatever you want on each toon, lets say the "2" key, then make a separate macro bound to some unused key, lets use the "]" key.
You then make the following hotstrings, you'll need 5 per character per spell.
ToonA:
2 --> LBAT
Ctrl-alt-] --> LBBT
Alt-Shift-] --> LBCT
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-] --> LBDT
Ctrl-] --> LBET
ToonB:
Ctrl-Shift-] --> LBAT
2 --> LBBT
Alt-Shift-] --> LBCT
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-] --> LBDT
Ctrl-] --> LBET
ToonC:
Ctrl-Shift-] --> LBAT
Ctrl-alt-] --> LBBT
2 --> LBCT
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-] --> LBDT
Ctrl-] --> LBET
ToonD:
Ctrl-Shift-] --> LBAT
Ctrl-alt-] --> LBBT
Alt-Shift-] --> LBCT
2 --> LBDT
Ctrl-] --> LBET
ToonE:
Ctrl-Shift-] --> LBAT
Ctrl-alt-] --> LBBT
Alt-Shift-] --> LBCT
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-] --> LBDT
2 --> LBET
Notice that the 2 goes down the list on each character.
Bound to ], ingame on each toon, you need the following macro (3 lines total):
/target [mod:ctrl,mod:shift,nomod:alt,target=ToonA]
[mod:ctrl,mod:alt,nomod:shift,target=ToonB]
[mod:alt,mod:shift,nomod:ctrl,target=ToonC]
[mod:ctrl,mod:alt,mod:shift,target=ToonD]
[mod:ctrl,nomod:alt,nomod:shift,target=ToonE]
/cast [target=targettarget,harm] Lightning Bolt
/targetlasttarget
And bound to 2 you can just drag the lightning bolt spell from the spellbook, or use whatever macro you would use if that toon was your main or for solo play.
So what have we done here?
If you target something on ToonA and hit 2, you start casting lightning bolt on ToonA as you would during solo play. You also send out a LBAT (stands for Lightning Bolt toonA Target btw) hotstring to each of your other toons. So they recieve Ctrl-Shift-], which hits their macro with the Ctrl and Shift modifiers down, which makes the macro target ToonA, so they assist ToonA.
If you did the same thing on ToonD, for example, each clone would get Ctrl-Alt-Shift-], which makes the macro assist ToonD.
So you've just made your toons assist your active character without setting anything up prior to shooting off that lightning bolt, and without a macro having to choose which toon to assist in a specific order.
You can then use this setup for any other spell that requires assisting. Note you don't need all of this for non-targetted spells, for example totems or AoE spells.
Why is this useful?
This takes away the idea of a set Main character. Whichever window is currently active when you press your buttons all other toons assist automatically.
I'll give another example, for the follow macro:
My follow key is set to ` (key to the left of 1), with its hidden macro key being O.
So I then have the following keymaps and macros:
ToonA:
` --> FOA
Ctrl-alt-O --> FOB
Alt-Shift-O --> FOC
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-O --> FOD
Ctrl-O --> FOE
ToonB:
Ctrl-Shift-O --> FOA
` --> FOB
Alt-Shift-O --> FOC
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-O --> FOD
Ctrl-O --> FOE
ToonC:
Ctrl-Shift-O --> FOA
Ctrl-alt-O --> FOB
` --> FOC
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-O --> FOD
Ctrl-O --> FOE
ToonD:
Ctrl-Shift-O --> FOA
Ctrl-alt-O --> FOB
Alt-Shift-O --> FOC
` --> FOD
Ctrl-O --> FOE
ToonE:
Ctrl-Shift-O --> FOA
Ctrl-alt-O --> FOB
Alt-Shift-O --> FOC
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-O --> FOD
` --> FOE
You won't be binding anything to ` on any of the clients, and have the following macro bounded to O (3 lines total):
/target [mod:ctrl,mod:shift,nomod:alt,target=ToonA]
[mod:ctrl,mod:alt,nomod:shift,target=ToonB]
[mod:alt,mod:shift,nomod:ctrl,target=ToonC]
[mod:ctrl,mod:alt,mod:shift,target=ToonD]
[mod:ctrl,nomod:alt,nomod:shift,target=ToonE]
/follow
/targetlasttarget
This would follow whichever toon's window was active when you pressed the ` button.
As you can see, basically identical to above, but you need a separate set of hotstrings for each ability.
The hotstring naming convention (which again, Deceased gets credit for) is just used to keep everything organised (I have about 30 hotstrings per character now). First two letters are the spell, last two are the target.
So FOllow toonA, Lightning Bolt toonC's Target, etc.
As you see, this leaves your Focus free to do other stuff, like be in charge of sheeps and other CC, or to watch for an interrupt. Also, since each macro includes a /targetlasttarget line at the end, you get your Target unitID free for your clones to do what you will with. Every time you cast a spell, your clones target you for a split second and go back to their old target (or to no target if they weren't targetting anything). You can use this like you would focus, so can set your mages to have focus as sheep targets and targets as counterspell targets, etc. I think it's best in arenas for just having every character target a different person of the opposite team, thereby confusing them.
My clones typically never target a thing, unless I have something special in mind.
Using this setup, pitbull with alphabetized party members and having my UI look the same on all toons, I can switch between mains using a PiP hotkey and continue playing without ever changing a thing. In fact, I often forget which character I'm playing. You can seamlessly switch mains without your toon dying and a macro deciding who your next main should be.
One use of this is for arenas, changing mains every match or even mid-match would certainly confuse the other team.
Another is for drop quests, I finish it on toonA, then PiP change to toonB and loot everything on him, etc.
If a team member dies, you can just mouse over or PiP to a different screen (doesnt matter which screen) and continue playing like nothing happened. Assisting doesn't depend on hitting your follow key anymore.
Also, if you're just solo playing you don't have to change a thing, as your main abilities are already there for use without any assist macros.
Note about round robin: To use round-robin for targetted abilites (eg earthshock) you now need to use the macro'd one, rather than the keyclone one. As in, make a macro with a castsequence of staggered earth shocks.
Regarding healing macros, using pitbull with alphabetized party members and "show self in group", you can set the same macros on each toon (if they all have healing spells), and it'll look the same no matter which toon you're controlling.
In battlegrounds, this setup will work fine for following and dpsing, but if you want to see all your toons you have to arrange to be in the same group somehow.
Notes about macro length: With macaroon or other macro extenders, length isn't a problem. Even without that, you can use /click to link macros together. Set up one big /target macro, then have other macros call it with /click.
Since you can put the exact spell on your regular bars, this setup still only uses 1 macro per ability, the same as any other setup. If you combine different abilities (eg heal/dps depending on target) then its 2 macros instead of 1.
I put all the hidden macros on an extra macaroon bar, made it very small and set transparency to 0.
This setup takes some getting used to. If you mouseover to a different screen for tells or bag management or whatever, you won't be assisting the same person anymore, so will have to retarget on that screen. For example, when you lose a toon to that annoying table outside the scryer Inn, and run him back to your main, you need to have your main window active before hitting the follow key. Hitting it while you're still controling your stray toon will make the rest follow him.
Troubleshooting: The main problem I found, if you're using a hidden key, make sure nothing is bound to that key, or any modifier combination of that key. If you find something not working, that's usually the problem.
As before, full credit for this goes to Deceased. He thought everything up, I'm just writing a guide for it.
Also a big thank you to Keyclone, for an amazing program thats worth many times what I paid for it.
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