Assist Macro does not work when target is friendly

[Rivers]

Hello,

it's my first post here! Hi! Im taking my first steps in multiboxing and currently I run only 2 instances of WOW, using Jamba and AutoHotKey.

I want to achieve the following: On my master, when I right-click on a friendly NPC like a quest giver, my slave should target the same NPC and "Interact with Target".

I did that by assigning the Right-Mouse-Click via AutoHotKey - note: 8 = Hotkey for the /assist macro, G = InteractWithTarget :


~RButton::
WinGet, Active_Window, ID, A
IfWinActive, World of Warcraft
{
Loop, %wowid%
{
target_window := wowid%A_index%
If (Active_Window <> target_window)
{
ControlSend,, 8, ahk_id %target_window%
ControlSend,, G, ahk_id %target_window%
}

}
Return
}

But it does not work. I have a problem with the /assist macro. It works perfectly when attacking enemies, but in this case, when my master has a friendly NPC as target, my slave will not take this NPC as his target and furthermore will not InteractWithTarget.

Even when I directly click on the Macro ("/assist party1") on the slave, he will not target my masters' friendly target.

And even more weird: Sometimes it works and sometimes not, and I can absolutely not figure out why.

Would be nice to get some advice :)

Rivers

[Khatovar]

Well, you're using Jamba, so have you made sure you don't have master switches on window change enabled? If Jamba is switching your master, then party1 may be the slave on some occasions.

Can't speak to AHK, but your master is physically targeting the NPC first? If you are trying to select a target on the main at the same time as telling the slave to assist and target, the slave might not yet "see" the target in order to assist.

[Rivers]

Thanks Khatovar. In my first post I mentioned that even when I click on my assist macro on the slave, it will not target my masters' target, I (hope I was) wrong, it could have to do that I really activated this option in Jamba as you mentioned in your first point. But now I disabled it.

Your second idea helped my to identify the problem better.

When I right-click on the friendly NPC the first time (without having this NPC as my target before), my slave does not realize my master's target changed and wants to interact with my masters' PREVIOUS target. WTF? It seems latency is the problem here. When I right-click on the same NPC again, my slave finally gets it as his target.

So...how can I improve this behavior? Any Ideas?

[Lax]

When I right-click on the friendly NPC the first time (without having this NPC as my target before), my slave does not realize my master's target changed and wants to interact with my masters' PREVIOUS target. WTF? It seems latency is the problem here. When I right-click on the same NPC again, my slave finally gets it as his target.

So...how can I improve this behavior? Any Ideas?

/assist has an inherent delay, because when you target something, your client has to tell the server that you targeted something. The server then has to tell the other players that you changed targets. Until your other clients have received the message that you changed targets, they will still pick up your old target.

Diagram:
http://isboxer.com/w/images/a/a3/Assist_delay.gif

There's really only one way to improve the behavior, and that is to have a lower ping. Otherwise, you want to either a) pull auto-assist out of your keys, or b) purposefully wait about half a second (or at LEAST the amount of time described by your ping) after targeting, before doing something where you MUST NOT have the old target.

[Rivers]

Thank you Lax! Very nice answer, I like the Flowchart -did you make it, or where did you get it?

[Lax]

Yes, I made it some time ago to help explain this issue to people. ;) I think I used OpenOffice Draw, which has some flow chart stuff..

[Rivers]

Nice work :) Well I will check what i could do to handle this issue, thanks to all!