This is a stupid question, but please help.

[PerzianPenguin]

I still dont see the difference between a /assist macro
and a /focus macro.
Please help me out here?
ive searched read stickies yadayadayada

so please explain?

[Coltimar]

I don't understand your question. Do you mean using focus for targeting [target=focustarget] vs. an assist macro /assist toon1 /cast frostbolt?

I used a focus system for ages, and still sort of do. I use [target=focustarget,harm][target=party1target,harm]. If I set my main as my focus, as I would with my pally 4 shammy group (I don't use cc with them) they assist Colt. If I have my mage or priest in the group I don't use focus, they use it for cc.

From everything I have used the focus targeting system was the most reliable. I never accidently hit the wrong target with my clones, as I sometimes do without focus. If I tab to target my clones tend to shoot errant targets when I use party1target.

You need to hit the stickies, again. And the Wiki. This is all covered in great depth and detail, over, and over, and over . . .

[wolpak]

Are you confused with focus is? Focus and target are the same thing. They hold a unit in memory for you so you can refer to the variable focus or target instead of typing in the name. I think it was designed just to allow people to target an enemy but still have another enemy to CC or a friendly to heal.

[Ken]

You can use focus to remember a target or someone from your team:

/focus Moderator
Now 'focus' can be used as a unit in other macros. This way you don't have to hard-code "Moderator" into your macros, which makes your system a lot more flexible.

Then you can assist a friendly unit by using the focus:

/assist focus
or you could assist directly giving a unit name:

/assist Moderator

And then it's just the usual casting:

/cast Ban
Because of the assist, you can basically attack whatever enemey that focus(Moderator) is attacking.

[heffner]

Think of it as two different variables. You have your focus target and your player target. Each can be set to a different target. So, you can have two things targeted at once. These commands are for that purpose.

/assist will set your "player target variable" to whoever you are assisting. You can use things like /assist party1, /assist Joeblow. This variable resets with a click of the mouse or the mob dies or you reissue the command. Although /target is more appropriate in this context than /assist, but both set the same variable.
/focus will set your "focus target variable" to whatever target you want depending on the command that follows it . This variable will remain set until you reset it by reissuing the command or a reset command.

There are other more complex arguments as well ,as others have pointed out above.

You may be referring to assisting and following your main in a Boxing group. In this case, the whole benefit of a "focus targetless leaderless" (or FTL) macro setup is so that if your main dies you will still be able to function because you just end up getting your target information from a different toon. This takes advantage of the /focus target variable. With just a simple /assist based macro, if the person you are assisting dies, well, you no longer can set your player target without using other means. At least, that is what I understood it to be. Never used it. I think it has more use in a PVP environment. Of course, there are more than one way to do this and you don't necessarily need to use /focus at all, but would likely require more macros etc..

[Nisch]

You can use focus to remember a target or someone from your team:

/focus Moderator
Now 'focus' can be used as a unit in other macros. This way you don't have to hard-code "Moderator" into your macros, which makes your system a lot more flexible.

Then you can assist a friendly unit by using the focus:

/assist focus
or you could assist directly giving a unit name:

/assist Moderator

And then it's just the usual casting:

/cast Ban
Because of the assist, you can basically attack whatever enemey that focus(Moderator) is attacking.

That's some good lolz right there.