Thoughts on a "Party-leader based" FTL (?) system

[Nyth]

The starting idea is that The FTL systems I have read about were usually quite complicated to setup and would not work too well with the way I like my layout, e.g. using the modifiers to reduce the number of keys pressed.

I then had an idea to create some kind of FTL system which would be much simpler to setup. However, it seems so simple that I am kind of suspicious I does not work as I have not read anything like it so far. Here it is :

Let's say I have Wow1 to wow5, with Toon1 to Toon5. PiP is setup to keys F1 to F5

My system would rely on a change in party leader (which, if I understood well, is not what we are talking about when saying leaderless) when changing windows (that is somehow the main limitation compared to other FTL systems).

I would create a macro like this for each toon
on F1 : /promote Toon1 ; /jamba setmaster Toon1
on F2 : / promote Toon2 ; /jamba setmaster Toon2
...

When changing windows using PiP, the current leader would promote the Toon from your new window, while the other party members would return an error (which can probably be hidden anyway).

Then in all the spells macros, I would just have to use "/assist party1" (however, this assumes that when ToonX is the leader he ignores the /assist himself and goes to next command, otherwise there maybe there is a way to do it with the target command ?)

Any chance my system would be working ? (I guess the biggest chance for it not to work is on the /assist party 1 for the party leader)

I can't test the system right now as I am at work so I would be interested if anyone has already explored such a system.

Cheers,
Nyth

[Maxion]

So in general you are just thinking about the classic "leader" setup, which the L in FTL is about not using. (Focusless, Targetless, Leaderless, setup)
And then by using /assist, you are going into the T part with targeting the leader.
Granted, FTL also targets the current leader for a split second to get the target for the spell, but immediately clears the target again.

[Nyth]

Well depends on what is behind the "leader" concept.

To me it meant that there is no unique leader giving order when speaking of macroes. It had nothing to do with who is the leader of the group.

My setup, if it works, would allow to you to cast macros from any of your toons, the others following its orders

But if the L in FTL refers to party leader, then you re right and I'm wrong ;) My mistake then!

As for your comment on the /assist, I do not really get it. It seemed to me the FTL setup I had read about were also relying on the /assist command as well...

Thanks for your reply anyway. I'll try to get the FTL definition clarified then!

Cheers
nyth

[Varmon]

I suppose it depends on what you want to do with your team, the major issue I see with a setup built around passing lead is what do you do when none of your character's have control of a raid group (BG pugs, WG raids, 10/25 man pugs, etc) :)

Also there's nothing stopping you from using modifer keys in a FTL targeting macro, I use them myself. You just need to define a hotstring/keymap+FTL macro for every modifer key combination your going to use that involves leader targeting

[Nyth]

I suppose it depends on what you want to do with your team, the major issue I see with a setup built around passing lead is what do you do when none of your character's have control of a raid group (BG pugs, WG raids, 10/25 man pugs, etc) :)

That is a very valid point I will have to keep in mind. However, at the moment, I clearly do not intend to raid in a near future, and I guess my setup will have evolved by then


Also there's nothing stopping you from using modifer keys in a FTL targeting macro, I use them myself. You just need to define a hotstring/keymap+FTL macro for every modifer key combination your going to use that involves leader targeting

I guess I just found the traditional FTL system quite hard to setup and was trying to find a simpler alternative.

[Ualaa]

In a party leader based system, the current toon is promoted to the party leader.
I basically use this system, and it works well enough.

I personally use keyclone as my software broadcast system and the Jamba addon.
When I change my leaders, these things happen.

1. I press the Keyclone hotkey to bring the new leader's screen to the front. This same key is my wow macro too:
2. I change my action bar, to the second action bar on my newly promoted leader, and to the first action bar on all other toons.
3. Each of my non-leaders runs the script /script PromoteToLeader("NewLeader'sName")
4. The new leader runs, /jamba Setmeasmaster all

In my set up, I 5-box, on one computer.
Because I have 5 toons, I have 5 macro's.
Each toon has one macro which is for themself and four macro's which are for the other four toons.
Pressing Shift-F1, runs promote that toon to leader, on toon's 2-5, but promote me to leader macro on toon 1.
Similarly Shift-F2 runs the promote macro on toon #2, but the promote another toon to leader on toons 1 and 3-5.

-Becoming Leader-
/Changeactionbar 2
/jamba setmeasmaster all

-Four versions; one version for each of the other four toons-
/Changeactionbar 1
/Script PromoteToLeader("NewLeader")

So, when I press Shift-F4, keyclone's maximizer brings my fourth toon's window to the front, warcraft has that toon click the Shift-F4 macro which puts them on actionbar 1 and runs the Jamba command to make them the leader, and the other four toons switch to action bar 1 (which they mostly will already be on) and runs the script to promote the new leader to party leader. The other toons get the error that they are not the party leader, but that's a minor detail.

When the non leaders are on bar 1, their syntax is to assist party1 and then do whatever action. Every toon has all of their abilities on bar 1, as an assist because each of the toons can function as a follower who assists the party leader. There are two versions of the assist macro:

-1-
/assist [target=party1]
/cast Name of Ability

-2-
/cast [target=party1target] Name of Ability

These could be /cast or /castrandom or /castsequence, it doesn't matter. In the first case, the slaves will have their target targted. In the second macro type, they will be casting at the correct target (might need a moment after the main switches to a new target to account for latency) but they will not actually target the new target. In the 2nd case, they will maintain whatever target they had previously, but cast at the leader's target.

The command, "/target party1" results in all of the non-leaders targeting the party leader. It is the same thing as pressing F2 with the default wow keybindings. Unfortunately, the party leader is F1 for themselves with F2 resulting in a different party member. This is the reason for the paging actionbars. We do not want the current party leader to be on the action bar 1, because they would then be trying to assist while they should be the one picking targets. The party leader goes to actionbar 2, which is the same spells as action bar 1, but without any assist in them. Every toon has non-assist versions of their abilities on bar 2, because any toon can lead as well as any other.

Not quite as good as the FTL system, but any toon can lead and any toon can follow. Focus is free, for pve crowd controls or for pvp focus firing. The system is pretty easy to set up. For a new team, I spent about 20 minutes making macro's. Thereafter, its copy/paste, and then edit a spell name manually per toon, which takes less then 5 minutes after gaining new spells. Pretty simple and effective system.

[Sajuuk]

Ualaa has hit what I have set up for one of my teams right on, although since I have FTL set up for my druids, and I love it, the simplest thing I have to do is copy/edit two macros (/click targeting, /click follow. I should combine those into one macro) and redo my pre-existing macros (yaaaaaaay).

I do not look forward to switching my paladin/shaman and priest/mage teams. Mainly because I'm lazy.

[Dominian]

Cant see why anyone want a "party-leader based" system over FTL...

FTL might sound complex but it only takes a few hours to set it up.. (since the main job is to get the right macros into wow on all toons)

You would have to press a button to switch main everytime while i just drag my mouse over to another window and VOILA thats my main and it takes under a second.

Why do i want this?

When my main is CC' hitting F1 and waiting 2-3 seconds for the window to change will get me killed over and over. (Yes i quite a few mods)

When im invited into WG raids there are in rare cases people who decides to be c()cktards and either kick me since they imagine im a bot or just dont care about putting me into the main group.. Joining a BG and IF there is another 5 man group you might lose leader and all the control over your slaves.

Cant see why you would want to use 2 hours on such a system instead of maybe 4 on a FTL system but that might just be me..

[BobGnarly]

The reason that other people (still) use it is that it retains both target and focus to be used for whatever (unless focus based approach), and is much simpler than setting up FTL.

I've used this system from pretty much the start, and haven't really been in any situation that it hasn't worked out for me. I know how to get leader in AV, and that's about the only raid I run that I would have any problem getting my toons moved wherever I want. Now that AV seems pretty much a ghost town, it's even less of an issue imo.

It takes me nowhere near 2-3s to switch windows, more like 1/2s which is plenty fast for most scenarios.

I'll admit the leaderless is nifty once setup, but there really just isn't that many times a leader system has let me down to justify the complexity for all the different groups I run.

[Dominian]

If your not planning to do WG or Raid im sure this works out ok, but even 1/2 second is enough for me to lose track of my target in pvp..

FTL setup is a realy nice tool and its not THAT hard to setup. Took me about 2 hours, the real job was to figure out why it got fucked up.. (for some reason when i alt tab modifiers gets screwed and the toons assist wrong chars) Its just to click my wow windows tabs and its fixed.

Here are the advantages.

1. I can go raid with ANY of my toons since they are just like my main.
2. When it comes to PVE i just take my tank in and drop the FTL system and use normal assist since i dont always want my tanks target dpsed.
3. Once ive set it up, i can use it on my alts without much extra work. (apart from changeing the toons name and spell in my macros)
4. Dont have to be grouped.

[Bettysue]

In response the the alt tab messing up modifiers, keyclone only sends keys when the focused window is on the list in keyclone. For example you are in wow and switch to your web browser of choice using alt+tab with broadcasting still enabled. This will result in the alt key down being broadcast, then you switch windows and release alt. The release of the key is never sent, all you have to do is tab back to wow and tap alt to have it send and alt down and up to the clients...tada clones fixed.

I was under the impression the /jamba setmeasmaster all command combined with checking the box on automatically promote master to leader, meant you simply had to use the command on the toon you wanted to be leader and the appropriate toon would promote him without all the /script setleader shtuff.

I would probably steer you toward a focus based system vice the leader based. My reasoning would be it is simply going to be more versatile in the long run if you are adament about not using the FTL system. The leader setup limits you very quickly when joining raids. The focus based system will work in both party, and raid. You can use the "target" as a sort of focus while using the focus based system the only drawback there is the "focused target" will know who they are in PvP. In PvE the use of target as focus will not make a difference. In the end the best system is always going to be the one that causes you the least frustration. I like programming and find the occaisional puzzle presented while using the FTL system to be entertaining, for others it might be a game breaker.