Basic Focus Help

[Seldum]

Hi Guys/Gals,

I have a basic focus issue. I actually think its an problem understanding how it works.
I have read some stuff on this forum, and theres some really good tips around, but I still don't understand it.

My problem is, how do I shift the focus to a toon? And how does it work?

I want this: I have one toon which is the party leader. I want the rest to set focus on him.

Is there a keybinding that will target the party leader or something, so I can hit that pop the macro which sets focus to this toon?

Theres a description in one of the stickies, where he says he binds the assist, focus script to F11, and he hits F12?

If I manually choose a target and hit the focus, assist script it works fine. But I want something where I hit fx. one button to target the group leader and anotherone to assit and set focus.

I also use Jamba, but is it just me, or is it only half finished? I cant make the follow module work at all.

Thanks for all the help in this forum! You guys rock.

[RobinGBrown]

I just wrote this:

Simple Focus-Based MultiBoxing Setup and Macros Guide ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=16772')

It should help

[Golle]

Make a macro like this to focus a toon:


/target nameoftoon
/focus target

[Seldum]

Thanks for the link, ill definetly look into it.

Currently, I need the leader to target a mob, and start attacking, and then I have to press a macro to get the rest of the toons to assist the leader.

Do you guys build in macros for all spells? Or simply use the assist command to get all characters to attack?

My other alternative is to setup macros for all spells, with something like this:

/Focus LEAD
/Assist Focus
/Cast spell
....

Then I guess I woulden't have to target a mob with the leader, start attacking, then hitting another macro to get all the toons to assist, then press the button for the spell I want to cast.

[Golle]

I have my setup like this:


/target mainchar
/focus target

I have putted that macro on Shift+8 and I press it once all my chars are logged in, I never touch that macro after login.

To make my alts cast spells on the same target as my main I use this macro:


/cast [target=focustarget, harm] [target=focustargettarget, harm] [target=focustargettargettarget, harm] [] Spell

It is pretty simple and every [bracket] act as an IF statement. So, if my focus' target is harm (enemy) i will attack him. If that statement is false, I'll check if my focus' target's target is harm. It goes on like that until it finds a statement that will work and cast the spell, or if none of the staements work, return an error (You have no target).

[Ualaa]

For a focus based assist system, you have a hotkey to switch which toon is active.

If you have a program with PIP (Picture in Picture) capability, such as Keyclone, you would have the same hotkey for both switching which toon is in the foreground (Keyclone PIP key) and for a warcraft macro to switch who your leader is. The warcraft macro would include, "/focus NewLeaderName" and possibly, "/script PromoteToLeader("NewLeaderName") ". For a focus based leader system, you'll have one hotkey per toon and every toon will click the hotkey. So if you have a 5 box set up, you have 5 macro's for leadership changes on each character. Pressing the macro for #4 will have all toon's, even toon #4, press the macro which makes #4 their focus.

Now that the correct leader is the focus, all of your spells cast on the target of your focus.

If you want to have your slave toons target the leader's target, your spells will look like this:

/assist Focus
/cast Spell Name

/assist Focus
/castsequence Spell 1, Spell 2

If you would prefer to have your slaves hit the focus's target without a target themselves, instead use these:

/cast [target=focustarget] Spell Name

/castsequence [target=focustarget] Spell 1, Spell 2, Spell 3......

[Seldum]

That’s sweet info. I think I understand now. I will look into the PiP thing tonight and hopefully ill get it setup smoothly!

I can see why you can easily drown in macros while 5-boxing, and I want to get a good setup from the beginning so I don’t have to change my setup all the time, because THAT’S time consuming.

Im also starting to get a feel for the JAMBA mod, and it really helps me a lot.

Thanks for the help guys.

It took me 5 min from activating my 5 druids, to the first player accusing me of cheating and hacking! I never laughed so much before.

And two people actually started arguing. One guy wanted me to prove I wasn’t cheating, the other said I was 5 boxing and it was legit. That’s so fun!

[wowphreak]

Here's something else to think about.

How about doing an ftl setup
http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Focusless_Targetless_Leaderless_Setup

that way yeh don't have to worry about whose the leader and can switch chars on-the-fly and yeh can still use focus for something else

One of the things I would suggest is having a separate assist button that way all the other macros don't get to complicated

[davedontmind]

I also use Jamba, but is it just me, or is it only half finished? I cant make the follow module work at all.
I think it's just you - Jamba works extremely well for me and many others.

For following I do this:

- run /jamba and add your master toon to the Jamba team - do this on *ALL* of your toons.

- run /jamba on the master, add all toons to the team, making sure all are checked, then click the button to push the settings to all toons. Now all toons know about all the other toons in the team.

- on the master run "/jamba-follow master all" - now all toons with the "all" tag (which is everyone by default) should follow the master toon. I bind this to a handy key or mouse button/

To change master, on the new master toon run "/jamba setmeasmaster all". Next time you run the above follow macro, everyone will follow this new master instead. I create this macro on all toons, and bind to the matching keyclone PiP switch key, so whenever I change PiP the master automatically changes.

[Seldum]

ahh very nice!

I have setup Jamba for all toons (did that from the beginning) and I must admit after fiddeling around with it a bit, I have begun to absolutely love this addon! Autofollow after combat works, sharing of quest works etc.

I have also reworked my macros last night. I used some of the macros from the quick guide, using focus and assist. Maybe I diden't do it right, but I had to choose a target on the main, then hit the assist button and then hit the spell I wanted to cast.

Now I have simply setup a focus/assist button to assist my main, then build a macro for each spell with:

/target focustarget
/cast bla bla

and it works way smoother.

One problem though.

Sometimes when I loot on one of the slaves, they loose focus/follow, and hitting the Assist/follow button I have dosen't help. They just keep the target on the corpse and dont react. Then I have to click on the toon's own health bar, and then I can hit the general assist button.

I can live with this, but atleast once last night I "lost" a toon because he diden't follow.

[Ualaa]

I use Jamba for follow.
All toons have the "/jamba-followmaster all" hotkey.
It doesn't matter which toon presses the hotkey, because only one is the master, ie whichever is active.

If you're setting up a permanent set of hotkeys, which you can play with forever, I'd consider either a party leader system or the FTL system instead of a focus based system.
The reason for using either of these systems over a focus system, is that /focus is then free for other things.
In pvp, you can /focus your burn target and then "/cast [target=focus] Burn spells" without giving away who your target is to the other team (ie, you target each once, but only select one as focus), then they don't know who you will be burning down.
In pve, you can use /focus for crowd control by giving a mage a target as focus, a warlock a target as focus etc. Then have each toon cast their CC spell on their focus. If it breaks, hit their re-CC focus key and its fixed.

Honestly, if you're willing to put in the time to set up the FTL system, it is far and away the best assist system for a team.
The drawback is the amount of time to set it up.
If you persevere and get it working, its by far the best.
I don't use the FTL system, but its the best system to use if you can manage to set it up.




A leader system is based on having the current active toon also be the party leader.
Instead of your spell reading... /cast [target=focustarget]... it will read /cast [target=party1target]...
Or.. instead of "/assist Focus... /cast spell.... " it will read, "/assist [target=party1]... /cast spell...."

The switch keys require you to "/script PromoteToLeader("New Leader Name")" on each toon, with an error message on the non-leader toons.
That way, no matter who the leader was, any of your toons could have been the previous leader and is capable of promoting any of the other toons to being leader.

The only trick with a leader based system is that you need to page your action bars.
With 5 toons, there will be 5 switch keys.
Four of these keys will be switching to a toon other then the current leader. IE, if your current toon is A, then they will have macro's for A, B, C, D, and E.
The B-E macro's will be similar... with a script promotetoleader on each, differing only in the leaders name.
The A macro, which is their own, will differ.
It will read, "/jamba setmeasmaster all" instead of the script to promote the other toons to party leader.
On toon B, it is macro B which will differ, while A and C-E will be the promote macro's.

This leaves the paging function to be accomplished.
The reason for paging is because on all of the non-leaders, the leader is party1 (same as pressing F2, from within warcraft).
So for the slave toons, assisting the leader is fine. Their hotkeys can be on bar 1.
All of the slaves (actually all of the toons) will have slave macro's on bar 1.
The macro's will be assist [target=party1] or /cast [target=party1target]...

Each toon will also have non-assist macro's on bar 2.
This is because pressing F2 (in warcraft) as the party leader gets you the second party member.
If you tried to assist them for target, it won't always result in your current target.. if for example you had just switched to a new target.
So bar 2, will have almost the same macro's in it as bar 1, but none of the bar 2 macro's will have any form of assist.
If you have round-robin macro's, such as Thunderstorm, they can be the same macro on each bar, which means you have the same place in the round-robin irregardless of who the old/current leader is.

So the leader adds to their switch macro, on a second line, "/changeactionbar 2".
On everyone else's switch macro they add the second line, "/changeactionbar 1".

So when you become leader, you have Jamba make you the master... and you switch to action bar 2.
Which has no assist, just the normal targeting as if you were a one-box toon.

When you make someone else the leader, you promote them to party leader and change your action bar to bar 1.
So they are promoted to party leader and you're on the action bar to assist the party leader.

End result... your bar 1 and bar 2 have very similar macro's in them on every toon.
So you lose one of your six default bars. If you're short on hotkey slots, bongo's/bartender/macaroon can create more bars for you.
You also create some almost duplicate macro's, which means each toon will have 5-6 (my case) less macro's to play with.
But then any of your team can function fine as a solo character and each can use focus for pvp or pve purposes.

[Seldum]

Very nice info, ill definetly look into this.

I have looked at the FTL system, and since im 5 boxing druids, I think this would be beneficial to me as any druid can heal etc. Ofcause im goind 1 feral, 1 resto and the rest... well maybe balance. Atm. im running a focus system and I like it. But as things get more complex with more spells etc. I think I will need to setup something more flexible.

I tried fiddeling around with the PIP system for keyclone last night. Does anyone know if this works for 2 monitors aswell? I coulden't quite make it work last night grr! Followed the instructions in wiki.

Thanks for the help, it much appriciated.

I had thought about how I would setup my healing, as all toons can heal. This is what I came up with so far.

I use F1-F5 to heal my toons.

Group Setup:
Toon A: Tank/main
Toon B: DPS/backup healer
Toon C: Healer
Toon D: DPS
Toon E: DPS/backup tank

For the Tank(Toon A):
No healing macros. The tank shoulden't heal.

For the DPS/backup healer (Toon B):

F1: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal Toon A, if not then do nothing.
F2: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal SELF, if not then do nothing.
F3: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal Toon C, if not then do nothing.
F4: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal Toon D, if not then do nothing.
F1: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal Toon E, if not then do nothing.

For the healer (Toon C):

F1: Heal toon A, 1st click small heal, 3rd click rejuvenation.
F2: Heal Toon B the same as F1
F3: Heal self
F4: Heal Toon D the same as F1
F5: Heal Toon E the same as F1

Toons D+E, no healing macros other than self.

So basicially if my Main healer dies I have a backup healer. If my main tank dies I can swich to char E for tanking, and continue.

Theres probally better ways to do this, but for now it OK.

Also, I have setup "7" to heal self, meaning if I recieve a AOE damage and everyone should heal themselfs I hit 7. If my Main Tank, healer and backup tank dies im probaly gonna wipe anyway so I havent build in any stuff to take in this scenario.

The above will probaly be redone at some point to make it even more complicated (including stances etc.) but for now this works okey.
Any input?

[Ualaa]

I'm a big fan of reverse target heals.

On my druid I have Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Swiftmend and Regrowth as targeted heals, plus Tranquility on my emergency key.
My druid is dreamstate spec, because I like her to contribute to the dps when the heals are not needed, but to still be a strong healer when needed.
If dreamstate healing ever becomes insufficient, she could spec deep resto instead, but dreamstate has been more then sufficient for my teams.

The heal format is:

/cast [help] Regrowth; [help, target=targettarget] Regrowth; [target=player] Regrowth

Same for each other heal.
When my druid is leading the party (I use a paging/party leader assist method) that is her macro.
When any other toon is leading the party, her macro changes to:

/assist [target=party1]
/cast [help] Regrowth; [help, target=targettarget] Regrowth; [target=player] Regrowth

This allows the healer to assist the current active toon, and heal their target if its friendly.
If the target is hostile, and the tank's target is almost always hostile, then it heals the target of the tank's target, which is almost always the tank.
If both conditions prove false, then the heal defaults to the healer; you could modify the last part to read [target=tankname] so the heal defaults to the tank if you'd like.

I can see the value of a key to heal Toon A, another for Toon B, another for Toon C etc.
But 95% of the time, letting the macro choose who gets the heal works great.
For those times when it isn't optimal, I use Tranquility which because of talents is completely threat free and is available every 4 minutes.

[Seldum]

I can see theres many ways to handle this. I guess I have to fiddle around a bit to see what fits me personally the best.

Dreamstate spec. what is this? (im new to playing with druids)