is sticky targeting a dps increase on shaman teams?

[zenga]

Myself I'm using a system of the form

/focus toonx
..
/follow focus
...
/assist focus
/cast spell

The downside for shamans is, that when you are tanking and thus often tabbing through mobs to keep aggro, the shammies fire on the target of the tank. Obviously when flame shock is on the previous mob, you don't want your lava burst to go off on another mob, as you'll lose the crit.

So you either wait till Lava Burst went off to tab through another mob, or you got with sticky targeting. The first way requires some more micro management though (cause of differences in haste level, procs, etc).Now with current gear and dps, 9/10 mobs in heroics are getting 1 shot, so it's not really an issue. But for farming ICC trash, or running with an undergeared toon, I definitely see the win that your dps stay on the same target.

However what I'm unsure about is this: sometimes an add shows up in combat that needs to go down asap (for example the skeletons on dreamwalker). There it looks like a disadvantage to have sticky targeting. Or I miss something here?

Hence my questions:

- is anyone still using sticky targeting and why?
- an idea about the dps gain compared to a focus / assist based system on the average dungeon
- how do you switch mobs when a higher priority mob pops up? I.e. is there some fallback system or do you run both an assist & sticky targeting based system together (and thus having 2 different dps buttons)?

Any insight appreciated

[Daeri]

Just in case someone else is wondering what is this "sticky targeting" stuff, let me save you a search :

Sticky Targeting - How I target my team (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=26656) by lacitpo (http://www.dual-boxing.com/member.php?u=10305)

[valkry]

I find I dont need to keep tartgetting through mobs to keep aggro on them, pally aoe threat is insane.

[zenga]

I find I dont need to keep tartgetting through mobs to keep aggro on them, pally aoe threat is insane.

Not if there are other dps in the party. Consecrate, hammer, AS, even with seal of command, is just not enough to keep threat on 2-3 adds that you are not hammering when a geared lock/mage is burning them down.

[Daeri]

A quick thought now I've got the time to read the explanation of the concept : if you want the best of the two methods, would it be possible to add a modifier key somewhere in the macro in order to force a target change whenever you press (let's say) shift while pressing the dps button ?

[David]

/assist and /follow macro ftw. Never used anything else and it works for me. I really don`t like my shamans taking the same target as my pala. I want my pala to be ahaid of them :-)

[zenga]

I'll try to explain it better with an example. This is a theoretical example btw.

Imagine a fight like dreamwalker in icc:

- 4 types of mobs A,B,C & D
- they run in from 2 sides, in a random order
- they can run in alone, or they can popup with 2-3 at the same time
- there is a kill priority: lets say A has highest priority, then B,C and D
- D is nasty and the only mob that can be cc'd.

Now I'm tanking the left side, and the other tank is on the irght side.
-> mob C comes on my side, with sticky targetting my dps switch to C and start to nuke it
-> mob B & A pop up, obviously i pick them up with my tank; with an assist system my dps would switch to the ones i pick up, the alternative is that i stop dpsing and tank only (which is kinda stupid as mob C is close to being killed).
-> so with sticky targetting & some sort of reset of it, I could switch to mob C, but then my dps should stay on C (so sticky targetting should be active again)
-> mob D shows up: what i want now is 2 dps keep hitting mob C (sticky targettings stays active for them), pickup D with the tank, and hex D with my 3rd dps
-> switch back with my tank to C and my 3rd dps uses sticky targetting again on C

note: if i was to hardcode the target to hex in 1 shamans macro, then he would try to hex the mob that show up on the other side as well, while it's not his task and while it's out of his range

So basically I want to switch back and forth between sticky targetting and an assist system, as this would give me/us ultimate flexibility over what toon is on what target. I have an idea how to do this, just asking if other boxers have tested / used some setup like this and what their experiences are. Before i go through the trouble to setting it up for myself.

[David]

Isn`t it smart to just use /assist. This way your dps stay on the intended target. Then use the /focus option on the mobs that need CC and hit your /target focus /cast hex key. Guess I don`t really understand what your looking for haha;)

I don`t know really, I`m a noob with macro`s and I`ve allways been happy with the simple versions:D

[Klesh]

/assist and /follow macro ftw. Never used anything else and it works for me. I really don`t like my shamans taking the same target as my pala. I want my pala to be ahaid of them :-)

This. Hit assist once, burn mob down while the tank can target what he wants. Hit assist again when mob is about to die.

[Sam DeathWalker]

You will need a lot of buttons to do all that.

I'd just go with /assist and fire 3 hex's at the mob you want to cc, then get back to whatever mob you want to dps, and use an aoe to keep the other 2 on the tank (as you are not dpsing them tank should keep agro I assume if its like EQ). Or you could

/targetenemy
/cast hex

and hope to hex a bunch of mobs and with luck the one you actually want to cc, heh. One shaman could have /targetenemy 1 so he is sure to get a different target then the other.

Thats not to say you could not set it up as you want but seems just to complex to get 2 extra seconds of dps from two of your dpsers. It wont take long to cast 3 hex on the mob you want to hex and then get back to dpsing.

[Ualaa]

Rather then building a macro for dps like these:

/assist Tank
/cast Something

/cast [target=FocusTarget] Something...



You could go with straight spells for the DPS.
And a specific key you press for Assist, or FTL Assist or whatever.

That way, whenever you want a target switch, you press the assist macro.
But until you do, the other toons stay on whatever they have targeted already.

[zenga]

You will need a lot of buttons to do all that.

I'd just go with /assist and fire 3 hex's at the mob you want to cc, then get back to whatever mob you want to dps, and use an aoe to keep the other 2 on the tank (as you are not dpsing them tank should keep agro I assume if its like EQ). Or you could

/targetenemy
/cast hex

and hope to hex a bunch of mobs and with luck the one you actually want to cc, heh. One shaman could have /targetenemy 1 so he is sure to get a different target then the other.

Thats not to say you could not set it up as you want but seems just to complex to get 2 extra seconds of dps from two of your dpsers. It wont take long to cast 3 hex on the mob you want to hex and then get back to dpsing.

That is what I could do right now, but I'm just trying to maximize out my dps (and flexibility).

To give you an idea about the theoretical dps loss in an example: tank does about 5k dps in icc, my shammies while standing still 12k+. So selecting the new target, hit assist, cast hex on all 3 (dumb to blow 3 cooldowns, but even with a round robin hex it takes same cast time), 1 sec+ cast, switch back, hit assist again, and you lose 5 seconds before next spell goes off. Assuming you didn't stop a spell on one of the dps that was being casted, which is very likely due to different haste levels. That is 205k damage i'm missing out on those 5 seconds, whereas if I was to only target switch my tank (to pick up) and 1 dps, i'd lose 85k damage in the same time frame. You can see that in a fight that lasts a couple of minutes this would be a pretty huge loss.

The sticky targetting way and the ability to swtich for an individual toon to an assist focus system would mean a lot in such a fight.

[zenga]

Rather then building a macro for dps like these:

/assist Tank
/cast Something

/cast [target=FocusTarget] Something...



You could go with straight spells for the DPS.
And a specific key you press for Assist, or FTL Assist or whatever.

That way, whenever you want a target switch, you press the assist macro.
But until you do, the other toons stay on whatever they have targeted already.

To be honest I don't really want to press an extra button (assist) for every mob I want to kill while boxing. In this particular example fight I wouldn't be too bad. But for general use I don't think that is an option for me.

Currently my setup is such that ..
- they are equal for every team
- I can swap whatever toon around that i want
- i can run tank + dps + healer, but as easy run 4 dps and set my focus on my current leader to any tank in the encounter
- there is no difference for pvp / pve
- I can play a toon solo without having to swap anything around

Keep in mind that I use a raw key broadcasting script, I don't use any fancy multiboxing software (like isboxer and whatnot). It just sends a keypress to a predefined set of windows. That's just my preferred way of boxing and so far i can say it worked out pretty well.

I shifted away from click / comma macro's and basically play my toons as I would play them solo i.e. cast the spells I want. Every spell is a macro of the form
/click button1
/cast Lightning Bolt

Where button1 contains my /assist focus + modifier stuff. So I can just blank out button 1 whenever I want to play solo.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well then you will need a lot of buttons and a metrodom, or IsBoxer.

What I would do then is make a macro set spicific to the encounter.

For IsBoxer:



Step one (first press of key)

/target lowest priority mob to dps by name
/target next lowest priority mob to dps by name
/target highest priortiy mob to dps by name
/cast dps spell

do not advance to step two for hex duration time (say 20 seconds I dont know what it is) [this is a powerful feature of isboxer you can set it wont advance to step two until the first keypress after the time has expired}

Step two (first press of same key after time expires)

/target mob to hex by name
/cast hex spell

[if you spend more time you can make some kind of lua if then brach to see if the mob exists and if it dosnt then just do step one}

do not advance back to step one for hex casting time or 1.5 seconds whichever is greater

So you have one key you can spam and the above works for the dps/ccer

The others just have the first step repeated each time the key is pressed. So your encounter is basically one key mash, if you use and you know the exact names of the mobs you will encounter.