Assist? Target? Focus?

[matthewordie]

I'm confused by this. I've just started dual boxing and I'm using HotKeyNet and Jamba. And just been playing around with macros myself. I'm using a Warrior(master)/Priest(slave) combo.

Right now I use /assist Mastername before using any DPS spells. Then I use /target Mastername for my heals and buffs.

Is there a better way to go about doing this? Should I always be targeting my Master and just use focus to cast DPS spells? What about for healing spells?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

There are many answers. None are wrong. All depends on your playstyle preferences. Only real way to find that out is to pick the option that makes the most sense to you and try it. If you find things aren't working so well, look at other methods.

Search for the "no focus manifesto" here on the forums for one alternative method.
I personally use focus because it works well for me.
Some folks use floating targeting with focus for keeping track of the main char.

As I said, hard to know what will work best for you until you try 'em. ;)

[ElectronDF]

I'm confused by this. I've just started dual boxing and I'm using HotKeyNet and Jamba. And just been playing around with macros myself. I'm using a Warrior(master)/Priest(slave) combo.

Right now I use /assist Mastername before using any DPS spells. Then I use /target Mastername for my heals and buffs.

Is there a better way to go about doing this? Should I always be targeting my Master and just use focus to cast DPS spells? What about for healing spells?

Trust me, most of us have started out with really crappy, mouse clicking and only doing about 1-2 attacks a min. It goes up from there. Think of some things like school levels. You learn more are you go along and don't be scared if someoene mentions things from college and you are still in elementary school.

My main suggestion is start small and work your way up.

My opinion after learning stuff is I hate targeting. I don't like it and don't want to do it. So my macros are built on focus. Focus is just a variable. You can set it to what you want, a friend, an enemy, etc. I use it since I use multiple teams (4.5 now) and I don't want to redo my macros when things change. I just use "/focus" on my alts when selecting my main and then my macros are:
/cast [target=focus-target] DPSSpell
/cast [target=focus-target-target] HealSpell
Simple, small and easy to adapt to new situations.

Next is /assist, it lets you target whatever you are assisting. If you do "/assist party1", it targets whoever invited (leader). If you do "/assist focus" it targets whoever the focus is targeting. It is important cause melee, channeling spells and a few others need a target (can't put target in option, need an actual target).

Next is target. I use target in my options for spells, like "/cast [target=Charname] Spell". You can use a crapton of choices for target (best to get it from Wowwiki under options in macros)
pet
target
(add target onto any item, like pet-target) and even do it again like (pet-target-target)
focus
Charname (put in character name)
party# (put in number of person in party)
raid#
Can't think of anymore right now, but again, check Wowwiki under macros and options and target.

Hope that helps and good luck.

[matthewordie]

So with
/assist focus my focus is always my Mastertoon. And I target enemies from that?





Side question: Is there an addon that will show me my slaves targets on my master screen?

[ElectronDF]

When you do any /assist, you target whoever you assist has targeted.
So Mastertoon has Orc1 targeted.
Toon2 has boar1 targeted.
Toon2 does /assist mastertoon.
Toon2 has Orc1 targeted now.
Then just cast and attack.

I started with CTMod as my UI (party). It works really well and is small, effective and shows what I want. I moved up to X-perl when CTMod wasn't updated for a little. I have just stuck with X-perl rather than go back. In the party area, you should be able to see....Yourself and your group. Your pet and your groups pets. Your target and its target and your party's targets. In other words, you can see who your chars are targeting. I would use it a slow mob (one you outlevel that doesn't hit hard) to find out if you have the targeting/attacking right. But during a fight, watching 3-5 mobs, 5 chars, and who is targeting who is information overload for me. If I watch that much, I am missing something else (patrols, heals, etc).

Hope that helps.

[Ualaa]

With only two accounts, you can easily get by with the priest assisting the warrior.

I'd personally go with a focus system.
As that is the easiest to set up, and is still a powerful assist method.

Whatever boxing software you use, you will have PiP keys to switch from one character in the big screen to another.

In warcraft, on the same hotkey that PiP swaps to Toon A, have every toon make a macro which makes Toon A their focus.

Repeat the process for a macro which makes Toon B the focus when you press the hotkey to PiP swap to toon B.

So every toon has one macro for each member of the team. And whichever toon is being PiP swapped to, has the macro which makes that toon the focus on the same keybind.

So you can switch from any toon to any other toon, via the PiP swap, and have the new toon as everyone's focus.

Then you need generic macros on every toon, which use Focus or Focus Target. These will work for most of your toons:

/Follow [Target=Focus]
/Cast [Target=FocusTarget] Nuke
/Castsequence [Target=FocusTarget] Nuke A, Nuke B, Nuke C
/Cast [Target=FocusTarget, Help] Heal; [Target=FocusTargetTarget, Help] Heal.

Melee/Hunters will adapt this slightly:
/assist [Target=Focus]
/Cast Nuke





I use Pitbull for my unit frames.

With Pitbull, I have:

Master.............. My Target.... My Target's Target.
My Pet.............. Pet Target

Slave A............. Pet A
Slave B............. Pet B
Slave C............. Pet C
Slave D............. Pet D

Slave A Target
Slave B Target
Slave C Target
Slave D Target


The scaling is different.

The Slave targets are very thin, displaying only the name.
Which is used purely to visually check the same target.

Slave Pets are very small, just to check it is alive.
And to have a frame to target it.

My frames display my current/maximum health/mana.
The same for my target.
For my party it displays how much health they are down.
And how much mana/rage/energy they have.

[Simulacra]

my focus/target/assist journey
I started off using focustarget which worked well for a long time, then I moved to targettarget and even though it has some downsides I was a convert and shouted that this method was the best and if you didn't use it then you were gimping yourself (boy did I get flamed lol) after a long time using targettarget and for reasons that are beyond me I switched to assist and focus with /click macros and except for the very occasional lag in targeting this method works best for me.

looks like this:
when changing leader this macro:

/focus Aztrid
/assist focus

then pew pew:

/cast Lightning Bolt; Lightning Bolt

so there's no specific targeting here, I use targeting for heals like this:

/stopcasting
/cast blood fury
/cast elemental mastery
/target [target=withthose]
/cast Chain Heal
/targetlasttarget
which targets my heal target, heals and then switches me back to my last target - don't know wether the last line is necessary since I'm assisting focus but meh