Bad oversight of slaves = fail

[davidmage]

So I was running BRH +1 yesterday. I was doing good, until the end of the bat-stairs. I had pulled 3 demons as usual, but they were not going down. After a few seconds of wondering why, I look at my slaves windows and notice 3/5 seems to have gotten lost and has fallen down the stairs. So that must have happened after the first fight of 3 demons + bats in the stairs. Had I noticed the slaves falling down earlier, I could easily just have run down and got them up again. But I did not, and continued to pull 3 demons all up to the 3rd boss.

I know my style of IWT cause many of these accidents, but sometimes mobs just throw slaves away, and I often end up not noticing things like that. I have often engaged and completed boss fights or even large portions of a dungeon, only to later notice doing it 4/5. This has been no big problem, but when having to deal with mythic+ timers, it's much worse. I missed the 2-chest time by 2 minutes, which was about the cost of my pull, wipe and run back fail in the stairs.

I thought I would learn to not forget and check my slave clients often enough to stop having these incidents, but that does not seem to be the case. I'm having 5 windows on my large screen, with my main on top, and the slaves on 4 horisontal windows below. They are so small that I don't automatically notice things like a difference in scenery. At best I can notice the red "low health" effect on a window, everything else requires me to remember actively checking them.

Maybe getting 2 monitors and having a whole monitor for my 4 slaves will be easier to get a better overview? What kind of setups/techniques are you other boxers using (those who are a little absent minded and forget slaves etc and need some good visual help)

[Andreauk]

The way I get around that issue is to mark my main with the star icon, and now and again I make sure I can see it in all windows - plus Jamba does a chat blip sound if I lose any.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Most of the better unit frame add-ons also will do things like gray out people that are out of range.

[JohnGabriel]

I just use the regular WoW unit frames but I set it to use raid frames even in party. It turns to a shaded green if any go out of range. Its not super obvious though, I still have to check on them constantly. But its easy to just glance at the unit frames to see if they're all there.

I have two monitors but that doesn't really help that, I need something closer to where my eyes are already looking.

[Syferr]

Im sure you can set Jamba up to have a chat bubble in say come up on a toon if they go out of range. Just push that setting to your main toon and turn on chat bubbles in-game ? I have 2 monitors and that still happens to me but until it happens to me when it matters like a +timer i probly wort do anything about it haha.

[davidmage]

Thanks for the input.
I can conclude then that having a new separate monitor would not help very much. I will need something to show me what happens in my current window where my eyes are.
I will look into the GUI settings or some addon to see if I can grey out any characters which becomes out of range, in a way that I will notice.

Maybe see if I can get Jamba to tell me something if they are out of range. I've always used jamba to tell me when any character loses follow, and that was an effective way to keep them controlled. However that doesn't work as well with a melee team which spend most of their time not on follow.

Also I think jamba has the option to display a green/red bar which shows a characters follow status? I could have that enabled and just look at that before I decide to run as a group and pull the next pack.

Also having a star on my main char seems like a decent idea anyhow. I don't always have my camera centered behind my main char, so at times I can start any kind of movement by using the current position of the char, so then it's nice if I know which char to look at :)

[valkry]

Thanks for the input.
I can conclude then that having a new separate monitor would not help very much. I will need something to show me what happens in my current window where my eyes are.
I will look into the GUI settings or some addon to see if I can grey out any characters which becomes out of range, in a way that I will notice.

Maybe see if I can get Jamba to tell me something if they are out of range. I've always used jamba to tell me when any character loses follow, and that was an effective way to keep them controlled. However that doesn't work as well with a melee team which spend most of their time not on follow.

Also I think jamba has the option to display a green/red bar which shows a characters follow status? I could have that enabled and just look at that before I decide to run as a group and pull the next pack.

Also having a star on my main char seems like a decent idea anyhow. I don't always have my camera centered behind my main char, so at times I can start any kind of movement by using the current position of the char, so then it's nice if I know which char to look at :)
You can set jamba to do that warning if they lose follow with the condition that only if they are out of follow range. So you won't get spammed by lost follow lost follow when you interact with target to fight, but if one gets left behind it will sound off.

[CMKCot]

if you are using IWT to attack don't use jamba to warn you if they lose follow. they will spam the warning so often you'll just start to ignore it.


the best way i have is to bind mouse wheel up to IWT, and mouse wheel down to follow.

run up to boss, and iwt, then follow then iwt. 90% of the time you end with a proper clump of alts bashing the boss, and you can then position your main. fights like Hymdall are MUCH easier if you get this right.

an even better solution is to get a mouse with mouse wheel tilt controls, i have tilt left to do a star spread and right to TAP backpedal. this way if things get hectic i can tap backpedal and stop all the alts to recover, and when engaging i can do left tilt to spread, then IWT, then backpedal, then IWT and you get a nice spread that you can increase on some fights that can get brutal, arcway M+3 will make you rage if you don't get this right, the tangle web skill from the spider boss WILL PIERCE BUBBLES... for some reason...


also, don't forget about the minimap, threes plenty of add-ons that will change player icons and such. you can reposition it on a more convenient location and rely on it to keep track of alts.



You can set jamba to do that warning if they lose follow with the condition that only if they are out of follow range. So you won't get spammed by lost follow lost follow when you interact with target to fight, but if one gets left behind it will sound off.

that function relies on GetPlayerMapPosition or some variation, those functions don't work anymore as of today.

[davidmage]

Thanks again for the tips.

Yeah the reasons for breaking out my IWT from my standard rotation are building up. Also I should start looking for a new mouse. I only have 1 extra button I use on my mouse. Would be nice to have some movement functions bound to the wheel tilts, at the moment I just have the clickable icon on the screen to do the star formation.

The spider bosses tangle ignores the bubble? I knew the tangle remained, but I would assume the damage would stop when the bubble was up? And what about blessing of spellwarding? If that's the case then I hate that boss even more.

[MadMilitia]

Your assist macro(s) should be something like this:


1. Assist slot1 if no target.
2. Assist slot2 if no target.
3. Assist slot3 if no target.
4. Assist slot4 if no target.
5. Follow master if still no target.


Then tie that logic to your DPS rotation. So this way you don't get runaways.

The WoW macro logic looks like this:



/stopmacro [@target, nodead, harm]
/assist {SLOT1}


And the follow logic:



/stopmacro [@target, nodead, harm]
/target {FTL}
/follow {FTL}


How you put it together and how many macros you make are really up to you. The goal here is to have slaves with no target do the right thing.

[mugg70]

mouse logitech g600.
alot of buttons and feels nice.
been using this one for three years now.

[Lyonheart]

mouse logitech g600.
alot of buttons and feels nice.
been using this one for three years now.
Thats what i use!

[davidmage]

Your assist macro(s) should be something like this:


1. Assist slot1 if no target.
2. Assist slot2 if no target.
3. Assist slot3 if no target.
4. Assist slot4 if no target.
5. Follow master if still no target.


Then tie that logic to your DPS rotation. So this way you don't get runaways.

The WoW macro logic looks like this:



And the follow logic:



How you put it together and how many macros you make are really up to you. The goal here is to have slaves with no target do the right thing.

Thanks for sharing this, that would be really useful for me. I will have to look into ISBoxer and see if I can figure out exactly all steps required to add that functionality to my current IWT. :)

[davidmage]

mouse logitech g600.
alot of buttons and feels nice.
been using this one for three years now.

Looks nice, and that is a lot of buttons! Using that would definitely start training the skills of my right thumb :p

[Multibocks]

FYI if you didn't already know, the bats on those stairs don't aggro unless you AoE them or the demons do their call spell. You can drag the demons up the stairs and to the last boss entryway and kill them there. Makes it a ton easier.