Problem with targeting

[scottig]

This is my problem. I like to use the mouse alot of the time to target mobs or other players in pvp ect. But, sometimes when I target a mob or other player and hit lets say chain lighting sometimes it will switch back to my previous target??? Seems to only happen when I switch targets fast and im spamming my keys.

[Kaynin]

You mean your alts go on the previous target?

That is because when you target a target on your main, it takes a second of lag before your alts see your main switching targets. So if you press the attack macro's too fast, they'll still have the old target and not the new one.

Switching targets for a multiboxer therefor just happens to take a second.

[scottig]

no i mean my mains target goes back and forth between the mob i just selected and the old mob i had targeted.

[scottig]

I think it might have something to do with the way my macros are written. Here is a example

#showtooltip
/assist focus
/cast chain lighting

[Gallo]

You should look into using /focus in all your macros. Use the search to find posts about it. This wont prevent lag-related targetting issues, but it will make sure that they dont change mid-battle.

[Kaynin]

Surely that macro is for your alts and your alts have your main focused?

Your main doesn't need to focus himself for targeting, on your main you can just do /cast chain lighting without having to assist anyone. Only your alts need to assist.

[Eteocles]

On your main, remove all /assist commands OR remove his Focus target; I did so because your main can and will assist the MOB and take his target, or if the above lag scenario is the issue, you assist an alt and the alt still has an old mob targeted

Otherwise I have no clue...that's a really confusing-sounding problem, I don't understand how it could switch targets like that other than /assist issues lol

[scottig]

I have to leave the assist macros in place so if I need to switch to one of the alts the main take the roll of an alt.

[Ian]

Nub idea here, but when sorting out macros for my succie a long time ago you had to unfocus to be able to refocus. there for you have operated a focus on a target then try to refocus on a new target with out first being dead or hiting unfocus then your focus will be on the original target not your 2nd one, (lol stay focused)

Ian

[scottig]

You should look into using /focus in all your macros. Use the search to find posts about it. This wont prevent lag-related targetting issues, but it will make sure that they dont change mid-battle.All my macros /assist the focus. I have a separate key thats sets the focus to one of the characters.

[Kaynin]

Hmm,

You could try to use the following.

/cast [target=focus] Chain Lightning ; Chain Lightning

And for your focus macro have the main use a /clear focus

Example: If F2 switches to your second toon, have all other toons focus the second toon and have the second toon clear his focus. F3 third toons, etc, etc.

I think that might work. If the main doesn't have a focus it should cast a normal Chain Lightning then.

[scottig]

I guess I could set up a separate cast bar and reword the focus macro to switch cast bars when I change focus to one of my alts.

[Kaynin]

Oh, and I would make it like this..

/cast [target=focus, nodead, exists, harm] Chain Lightning ; Chain Lightning

(You won't need the modifiers on your main toon, so the second on the list doesn't need them, the macro should only use the second part of the cast if it's the main toon.)

And if your characters are named toon1-toon5 and you have the change keys like F1-F5
Have F1 do a "/focus toon1" on toon 2-5 and have F1 do a "/clear focus" on toon1

Or switch castbars, but to be honest, this should work as well. :p

[scottig]

The change action bar works great I just set up the main to have one cast bar with
#showtooltip
/assist focus
/cast Fireball

and a 2nd cast bar where I just drag spells from the spellbook.

And I just renamed my set focus button to
/focus gumbie
/target focus
/follow
/assist
/changeactionbar 4

works perfect no more target jumping :thumbsup:

thanks for everyones help

[Kaynin]

Cool, been of little help myself then but nice to see things worked out. x)

[Dinkydau]

I'm not sure if my way is the best way to do it or not, but I have a macro that I assign to my "X" key for all my toons. That macro is to /assist maintoon. With my main, I select my target with my mouse, press the X button, all other toons automatically targt the mains target. It can get a little tedious doing it for every mob, but it works. If anyone has a better way, I'd love to hear it.

Johnny

[Kaynin]

I'm not sure if my way is the best way to do it or not, but I have a macro that I assign to my "X" key for all my toons. That macro is to /assist maintoon. With my main, I select my target with my mouse, press the X button, all other toons automatically targt the mains target. It can get a little tedious doing it for every mob, but it works. If anyone has a better way, I'd love to hear it.

Johnny

That is -the- way of lets say your main is a tank and your alts the dps. That way you can retarget at will on your main while your alts remain on theirs.

For PvP however, I'd go with the above described way. you generally always focus the same target on your mains as well as alts and focusing your main while using [target=focustarget] macro's would then save the problem of pressing an extra key.
Or put the /assist maintoon inside the dps macro's. Though personally I prefer using focus myself, not sure why though.

If you have CC, you should use assist tho since your cc's will need focus for their CC. But that's the only reason not to use focus on your main. And a seperate button for targeting will only matter in PvE when your main is tanking multiple mobs/ switching targets. In all other situations I can think off, you should just combine it with the dps keys.

[keyclone]

what do you people think about this...

in the step-by-step guide, i mention using a macro like '/assist joe' and '/follow joe' to make things easier and not expose the new user to the complexities of wow macros. my thinking being that they would pick up macros as they go along and would be able to adjust their own macros when they are ready and better able to understand the impact.

do you think i should introduce the concept early, or keep it as simple as possible for the beginner?

[Sentack]

It'll be difficult to define where the 'bar' is, but honestly i think you should give those who honestly go for Multi-boxing some amount of credit and consider them to at least be not completely idiots. It doesn't mean you shouldn't explain in details WHY you make your choices or when alternative choices are available to at least point them out. But in general, be specific, use real examples and try to make things seem functional and reasonable.

I can understand making things as simple as possible but honestly, we're not talking average joe user here for multi-boxers. These people want to be at least somewhat serious about their play. And are ready to take risks and be forced to do real research. Multi-Boxing doesn't happen over night.

[Schwarz]

what do you people think about this...

in the step-by-step guide, i mention using a macro like '/assist joe' and '/follow joe' to make things easier and not expose the new user to the complexities of wow macros. my thinking being that they would pick up macros as they go along and would be able to adjust their own macros when they are ready and better able to understand the impact.

do you think i should introduce the concept early, or keep it as simple as possible for the beginner?

From my little experiment I started out just using the '/assist joe' type of macro and soon found that I wanted a way for my clones to keep nuking a target while my main does something else. Enter /focus.

Some of these more complex methods actually make things simplier. It always pissed me off in a math class when you learned the hard way of computing something first. Then a week or 2 later they come back and say "well there is a trick to doing this that is really simple".

[keyclone]

maybe an advanced area showing the '/cast [target=focustarget] fireball' style of macros would be useful

[Dinkydau]

I agree with many of the others comments. I would guess that most multi-boxers are not new to WoW and would appreciate the more advanced stuff in getting them started. I've done macros for a couple of years. Macros for so many classes though can get complicated so anything that you could assist with would probably be very helpful for keyclone users.

[Vyndree]

do you think i should introduce the concept early, or keep it as simple as possible for the beginner?

I think the reason why we use 2-line macros is because even the common player may have used this style of macro'ing during raiding, etc. (Even in karazhan, people make a simple /target Demon Chains macro for Illhoof)

Because commands like /assist, /target, and /cast are well-known, it's easier to get the general idea across in a way that the person can understand. Coming straight out with the conditional brackets can be too confusing. Not EVERY multiboxer is a techy (even though many of us are) from what I've seen on the professions post ;)

[Warsage]

As someone who just started experimenting with dual-boxing/tri-boxing a few days ago. I do think it would be more beneficial to throw everything possible out there in the tutorials and FAQ's. I've spent alot of time digging to find the answers to alot of my questions that could of been answered for me in one of the FAQ's, or tutorials. Though, the complex macros do need tweaking here and there, etc. Which being a total n00b to both boxing and macros makes it for some frustrating experiments, but that is half of the fun right? Getting something to work?