[Jamba] Changing Follow Strobing on the fly.

[OzPhoenix]

I run a 5 x Paladin team, which was originally 1x Prot and 4x Ret. With raiding options opening up to me, given the large number of 5-boxers on my realm, I've converted the last Ret to Holy. This has necessitated some changes to the way I run the team.

Firstly, I've now managed to build the ISboxer routines to allow me to get the Holy to drop out of Jamba Follow Strobing on the click of a key this way:

1. Add a "Holy" tag to the Holy Paladin in Jamba.

2. ISBoxer Keymap: Follow Strobe Holy Toggle
Step 1:
...Wow Macro Action: ./jamba-follow strobeoff Holy
....Popup Text -> self "Holy Follow Strobe OFF"
....KeyAction "S" -> HolyPaladin (s is configured as the "move back" key on all my followers)
Step 2:
....Popup Text -> self "Holy Follow Strobe ON"
....Keymap Follow/JambaStrobe (turning strobing for all back on)

So, that's working fine. I hit the Keymaps key (Ctrl-A) and the Holy Paladin stops dead in his tracks, and breaks away from the Follow Strobing, allowing him to stay out of all the melee stuff while he heals the team.

What I want to do is build a Keymap that allows me to toggle the Rets Follow Master between the Prot and the Holy Paladins. The thinking behind this is that by having this key handy, it will allow me to clear the Rets out of damaging AoE/cleaves etc as they'll go running to the Holy Paladin which I'll have parked some safe distance away. When I want them to run back in again I want to toggle the Follow Master back to the Holy.

However I try it though, it just doesn't work.

What I tried (last) was the following:

1. Define a "Rets" tag in Jamba, and add all 3 Rets to it, on all 5 toons.

2. Define a keymap which issued "/jamba-follow setmaster HolyPaladin Rets" (HolyPaladin being the toon name, Rets being the tag).

3. Define a second step to the keymap which resets the follow master back to the Prot.

Whatever I try seems to have no effect and I can't seem to find much by way of documentation on exactly how the tags work, as well as the various /jamba-follow command options.

For example, what's the difference between "/jamba-follow master <tag>", "/jamba-follow setmaster <name> <tag>" commands? What for example is the difference between the "strobeon" and "strobeonme" options?

If there's detailed documentation somewhere that I've missed then I'm happy to go combing through it, as I don't like to occupy cycles in the room here asking questions which might already have answers, but so far I can't really find any.

I've tried using all the various follow commands, playing around with the windows they're sent to, whether or not FTL assignments were used or not, (still can't find doco on whether doubling up on "Ctrl-Shift-Alt-F11" as the key combo is an issue or not, but that's an ISBoxer thing) but at this point nothing seems to work.

[Lax]

The Key Combination for a WoW Macro Action is used by the ISBoxer Addon, to bind the macro you define, to the given keystroke. You do not want to double up on a Key Combination; only one of the macros would work.

The ISBoxer equivalent to Jamba tags is Action Target Groups (ATGs for short); you can create an ATG by right clicking "Action Target Groups", rename it (e.g. to "rets"), and then drag characters to it from the top pane into the bottom left pane. The way Tags work in Jamba, the command gets broadcast to all of your characters through the in-game Addon channel (note: this is dependent on your ping to the WoW server, Addon communication throttling, etc), and is ignored by the ones that don't have the given tag. ISBoxer sends keystrokes directly to the target windows instead (note: this is NOT dependent on your ping to the WoW server), which might be interpreted by the game as a WoW macro. So for example instead of sending "/jamba-team setmaster holypaladin rets", you can make your macro in ISBoxer "/jamba-team setmaster holypaladin" and send it to the rets via an ATG.

If you want your guys to follow someone besides the guy you are playing, you will need a different version of the follow macros. Without strobing, it's a matter of making a copy of "FTL Follow Me" and changing a couple details. An undocumented feature of the ISBoxer Addon is that when you /follow, your follow strobing target is automatically updated to whoever you're following -- so if strobing is already on, all you need to do is issue a follow command. That makes it easier to leave strobing on and have them follow whoever you like. So make a copy of "FTL Follow Me" in the General key map, and do the following: change the Hotkey to something else, leave the Key Combination and the macro as-is, and change the Target of the action to whoever should do the following (not the person to follow... for example, "others in" an ATG called Rets). Then you can make them follow any given character by using a Do Mapped Key Action, pointing to this new copy of "FTL Follow Me", with the Target of the action set to whoever they should actually follow (it should only be ONE specific character!)

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[Jafula]

What you have there would have worked; you just needed to check the "Use different follow master" option in the Jamba-Follow options and push the settings to all toons.

The command /jamba-follow setmaster is for this seperate follow master. Otherwise, you need to change the actual master and issue a follow command.

Hope that helps and you get it working (with with Jamba or ISBoxer). Please let me know if I can make improvements to Jamba to help you with this as well.

[OzPhoenix]

Lax and Jafula,

As always thanks for your prompt responses and informative ones to.

When I get back home tonight, I'll try out both strategies you've come up with.

One question I can think of right now (without access to my home PC) for you Jafula, is what is the effect of turning that option of in Jamba that says "Always use Master as Strobe Target"? I was figuring that if I turned that off, then the Rets would accept a Strobe Target that wasn't the Jamba Master - correct?

I must have missed the "Use different follow master" option, so I'll be sure to check that out when I get home.

Lax - when you're talking about the undocumented feature of ISBoxer with regards to follow, are you saying then that simply issuing a "/follow Holypaladin" to a Target Action Group in which only the Rets are defined would have been sufficient to switch them from the ProtPaladin to the HolyPaladin?

I must admit, I hadn't considered that solution (if indeed that is a solution). I'm always amazed at how powerful ISBoxer and Jamba is, and how I keep finding new and interesting ways to do stuff with them.
Another question Lax, if I may, what is the purpose to the key combination in the "Wow Macro Action"? For example, if I were sending say "/follow Thrall" to each my toons for example, and used the Wow Macro Action feature for that, why is it necessary to assign that Action a key combination? Aren't I effectively just telling ISBoxer when it hit "x" send to toons "y"? Since I already have to give the key assignment in the keymap in which the WoW Macro Action exists, isn't the key combination definition inside that keymap redundant?

[Jafula]

One question I can think of right now (without access to my home PC) for you Jafula, is what is the effect of turning that option of in Jamba that says "Always use Master as Strobe Target"? I was figuring that if I turned that off, then the Rets would accept a Strobe Target that wasn't the Jamba Master - correct?

Yes :-)

[OzPhoenix]

Yes :-)

Jafula,

Thanks for the clarification. :-)

This does still leave me with two things I'm still unsure of:

1. "/jamba-follow master <tag>" versus "/jamba-follow setmaster <name> <tag>" commands.

Is the effect of the first command to set any toons with the correct tag back to follow strobing on the Jamba defined master?

Is the effect of the second command to set any toons with the correct tag to a follow master who may or may not be the same as the Jamba defined master? If so, could this be set to a toon even outside the party altogether (I could see some usefulness for that in raiding by for example having my healer follow someone else's healer say).

Further, if I've correctly described these two commands, isn't the first one merely a slightly less verbose way of using the second command, assuming I were setting the strobe master for that particular tag to be the same as the strobe master for the group?

2. "/jamba-follow strobeon <target> <tag>" versus "/jamba-follow strobeonme <tag>"

It seems to me that the essential difference between these two (particularly if using ISBoxer) would be to have the first issued without FTL modifiers, and so define a specifically set strobe target, whereas the second would be found in a keymap with FTL Modifiers turned on to set a strobe target by the current window (whichever character they may be).

For example, if I want "Rets" (a tag given to the 3 Rets in the team) to follow the Holy Paladin (called say "Healerdude") the command would be "/jamba-follow strobeon Headerdude Rets", and this command could be issued to any party slot (does it matter which party member broadcasts the strobe change to the rest of the party??) and then communicated via the Jamba channels. Correct?

Likewise if I wanted "Rets" follow whichever Ret I changed to then I'd use the second command, and send it to the current window (being whichever Ret I switched to), with the ISBoxer FTL Modifiers option turned on in the keymap. Correct?

I'm hoping you (or Lax for that matter) say yes to this, because this would then allow the really tricky and nifty solution of using IWT to have the prot stay on a mob to be tanked, while the healer sits from a distance healing everyone, while simultaneously I switch to one of the Rets and have the DPS following the lead Ret for movement and the like. This would be, it seems, a very clever way to run against bosses that have heavy anti-melee characteristics like whirlwind and frontal cleaves and the like.

[OzPhoenix]

Well, the Holy paladin strobe stopper has stopped working, as has IWT. When I drink, two of the Rets immediately stand back up again (if I change which toon I am on when I drink, two different toons stand up as soon as they sit down). The Rets seem to flip a coin and decide whether to assist the Prot now and I've tried the suggested actions for changing strobing on the fly all without any effect. Also, Jamba keeps raid warning me about followers going AFK even though I have that turned off.

I thnk I'm just going to blow away all the ISBoxer and Jamba config and start again. Somewhere in there is something, some value, on some keymap maybe, that's just making this setup fall apart.