My focusless/leaderless setup

[hb]

Hello everyone. I've been reading a bit about the FTL and I keep seeing this overly complicated setup. Why does everyone use these modifiers to specify their leader? Whats wrong with simply using action bar (http://www.wowwiki.com/ActionBars) pages (http://www.wowwiki.com/ChangeActionBarPage)? I will try to explain (and I am a very very bad at explaining anything) my setup so lets see if anyone figures it out :). Sorry for the lack of screenshots/good pictures but I'll update them when I'll get back home.

Lets start with my KeyClone windows layout
http://hbserver.ath.cx/pub/layout.PNG

One might be wondering what does the bar=n mean. I'll be using the term home bar in my macros. This is the bar page that is active when a specified character is leader. So for example if 'char1' is my current leader then all my characters have ActionBarPage 1 active, or if 'char3' is leader everyone has Page 3 active and so on. This allows me to use /click in my macros and as long as you have a bar addon (Macaroon) that can ignore bar paging there is no problem what-so-ever. There is also no need for some fancy keymaps to get the setup working.

Any comments? Ideas? Is this good? Pure crap?

And now some macros which I hopefully did not f*ck up when editing this post.
I'm using both account and character wide macros. The macros should be quite self-explanatory so I really don't know what else to tell about them. Anything inside or after ** are obviously comments so remove those if you are actually going to use these macros. I'm in a progess of writing a c++ program that modifies the character specified macros in a way that you can mix your teams without having to manually modify any of the macros. This program does currently (kind of) work but it is very crude and it's in no way properly coded but I suppose I can publish the source (when I get back home) code if someone is interested.

Account wide macros contain 4 macros that are associated with the setup, here are those 4 from CHAR1
Anything inside ' ' is either macro name (or rather the buttonid that contains the macro), character name or spell name.

[B]These two are the same on every account althought they are really not necessary
MACRO 13 "xassistclick" Ability_CheapShot
/click 'xassist' ** assists the current leader **
END
MACRO 15 "xclearf" Ability_Creature_Poison_02
/clearfocus
END

These two change from account to account. Here are the macros from CHAR1
MACRO 14 "xcleart" Ability_Druid_ChallangingRoar
/cleartarget [nobar:1]
END ** this characters home bar is bar:1 so we don't want to clear his target if bar1 is active **
MACRO 1 "xfollowc" Ability_Druid_NaturalPerfection ** this is the button you want to press to get you chars following
/click [bar:2] 'xfollow2' ** there is no bar:1 because
/click [bar:3] 'xfollow3' ** it is this characters home bar so
/click [bar:4] 'xfollow4' ** we do not want him to follow
/click [bar:5] 'xfollow5' ** anyone when bar1 is active
ENDCHAR2

MACRO 14 "xcleart" Ability_Druid_ChallangingRoar
/cleartarget [nobar:2] ** this characters 'home' bar is bar:2 so we dont want to clear
END ** his target if bar2 is active
MACRO 1 "xfollowc" Ability_Druid_NaturalPerfection
/click [bar:1] 'xfollow1' ** notice that now there is bar:1 but bar:2 is missing
/click [bar:3] 'xfollow3' ** because this char's home bar is bar2
/click [bar:4] 'xfollow4'
/click [bar:5] 'xfollow5'
ENDCHAR3


MACRO 14 "xcleart" Ability_Druid_ChallangingRoar
/cleartarget [nobar:3] ** same as before, if bar3 is active we do not clear the target **
END
MACRO 1 "xfollowc" Ability_Druid_NaturalPerfection
/click [bar:1] 'xfollow1' ** do not follow anyone if bar3
/click [bar:2] 'xfollow2' ** is active
/click [bar:4] 'xfollow4'
/click [bar:5] 'xfollow5'
ENDCHAR4

** CHAR4 **
MACRO 14 "xcleart" Ability_Druid_ChallangingRoar
/cleartarget [nobar:4]
END
MACRO 1 "xfollowc" Ability_Druid_NaturalPerfection
/click [bar:1] 'xfollow1'
/click [bar:2] 'xfollow2'
/click [bar:3] 'xfollow3'
/click [bar:5] 'xfollow5'
ENDAnd CHAR5

MACRO 14 "xcleart" Ability_Druid_ChallangingRoar
/cleartarget [nobar:5]
END
MACRO 1 "xfollowc" Ability_Druid_NaturalPerfection
/click [bar:1] 'xfollow1'
/click [bar:2] 'xfollow2'
/click [bar:3] 'xfollow3'
/click [bar:4] 'xfollow4'
ENDCharacter wide
These are the same on every character on the same team

MACRO 16777236 "xfollow1" Ability_Ambush
/follow 'char1'
/petfollow
/script SetView(4)
/script SetView(4)
END
MACRO 16777218 "xfollow2" Ability_Ambush
/follow 'char2'
/petfollow
/script SetView(4)
/script SetView(4)
END
MACRO 16777219 "xfollow3" Ability_Ambush
/follow 'char3'
/petfollow
/script SetView(4)
/script SetView(4)
END
MACRO 16777220 "xfollow4" Ability_Ambush
/follow 'char4'
/petfollow
/script SetView(4)
/script SetView(4)
END
MACRO 16777221 "xfollow5" Ability_Ambush
/follow 'char5'
/petfollow
/script SetView(4)
/script SetView(4)
ENDCHAR1

MACRO 16777224 "xassist" Ability_Druid_ImprovedMoonkinForm
/assist [bar:2] 'char2'; [bar:3] 'char3'; [bar:4] 'char4'; [bar:5] 'char5'
END ** again all but bar:1 (or 'char1') is present ** CHAR2

MACRO 16777224 "xassist" Ability_Druid_ImprovedMoonkinForm
/assist [bar:1] 'char1'; [bar:3] 'char3'; [bar:4] 'char4'; [bar:5] 'char5'
END ** same as in global macros. now there is bar1 but bar2 is missing CHAR3

MACRO 16777224 "xassist" Ability_Druid_ImprovedMoonkinForm
/assist [bar:1] 'char1'; [bar:2] 'char2'; [bar:4] 'char4'; [bar:5] 'char5'
END ** you should get the idea by now: we do not want to assist anyone when bar3 is activeCHAR4

MACRO 16777224 "xassist" Ability_Druid_ImprovedMoonkinForm
/assist [bar:1] 'char1'; [bar:2] 'char2'; [bar:3] 'char3'; [bar:5] 'char5'
ENDCHAR5

MACRO 16777224 "xassist" Ability_Druid_ImprovedMoonkinForm
/assist [bar:1] 'char1'; [bar:2] 'char2'; [bar:3] 'char3'; [bar:4] 'char4'
ENDDamage Macros are macros inside Macaroon and they consists simply of

/click [@focus,noexists] [@target,help] [@target,dead] [@target,noexists] 'xassist'
/cast 'spell'Which goes something like /click if focus=noexists or target=friendly or target=dead or target=noexists.
This allows me to use focustarget to lock my target which could be usefull in some situations.

Healing Macros are located in character specified macros and they should be also very straightforward. These are bound to various keys in numpad.

/cast [target='char1', modifier:alt] Healing wave; [target='char1', modifier:ctrl] Chain heal; [target='char1', nomodifier] Lesser Healing Wave"
/cast [target='char2', modifier:alt] Healing wave; [target='char2', modifier:ctrl] Chain heal; [target='char2', nomodifier] Lesser Healing Wave"and so on until I have a heal for every character.
or

/cast [@focus, modifier:alt] Healing wave; [@focus, modifier:ctrl] Chain heal; [@focus, nomodifier] Lesser Healing Wave"And here are my macros-cache (http://hbserver.ath.cx/pub/wow_macros.zip) files but beware, they are not that clean :).

[Fizzler]

I will agree that the modifier method for FTL always seemed overly complex to me.

I know a few folks have looked at using the bar paging method. I thought about it once but it just seemed like too much work. Having to navigate around possession and stance/form bars gave me a headache.

I use ISBoxer now so it is very simplified but before that I used macro's or focus targeting. Not perfect but I made it work.

I am trying to get my head around your macro's it looks solid but it is Christmas Eve I will have to look closer this weekend.

[Akoko]

I too just switched over to the action bar page method to implement my own "FTL".

I really like it, except that you're limited to only 12 spells on that page. And I could see the setup becoming really tedious with more than 2 or 3 characters (I'm currently only 2 boxing), since you have to manually enter each character's name into as many macros per character as you have characters. i.e. If you want to make a Frostbolt macro you have to make it 25 times if you are 5 boxing.

[hb]

I too just switched over to the action bar page method to implement my own "FTL".

I really like it, except that you're limited to only 12 spells on that page. And I could see the setup becoming really tedious with more than 2 or 3 characters (I'm currently only 2 boxing), since you have to manually enter each character's name into as many macros per character as you have characters. i.e. If you want to make a Frostbolt macro you have to make it 25 times if you are 5 boxing.

Well, you are doing it somewhat wrong. You should not put any spells in your primary action bar (the one that keeps changing) but instead put the spells in those that do not change. But because vehicles/possess/whatever uses the primary action bar this method is not really an option. Therefore I'd suggest you to get Bartender/macaroon so that you can tell when the primary action bar changes (in other words make it ignore paging). And because there is really no need to put those spells to your primary bar there is also no limits on how many spells you can have. Also you do not have to write character name on every Frostbolt macro you write, just use /click 'xassist' in your macro. You can find out which button you want to click with this macro: /run print(GetMouseFocus():GetName())