cepheus
05-13-2008, 08:27 AM
I have wrapped my head around this problems since I leveled my 5 shamans. In arena I want to be able to both switch mains manually, and to free up focus for other purposes. I also want to rotate my 5 shamans out for another healer without having to rewrite my healing macros each time I do a switch.
I have seen on this forums good solutions with using /assist [target=charname1,nodead]; [target=charname2,nodead] etc , solutions with focus and solutions with pagebar switching. All systems have their strengths and some tradeoffs.
I think I now have a fairly good idea how to combine most of this mechanics and using the best of them all, but I'm in a very early stage of my new UI and this is by far tested yet. Anyway I want to dump it out here to maybe get some ideas, and give others ideas.
Ok on to the whole thing:
First of you should use Trinitybars or something that makes you able to give you more macros than the default, since this will most likely take a large amount of macros.
-- STEP 1
The my idea is to have this macro for selecting targets for your slaves:
/assist [target=focus,help];[target=char1,nodead];[target=char2,nodead] etc
This will allow you to assist your focus IF its friendly, thus allow you to switch mains on the fly without your current main beeing dead. But since your focus have to be friendly you will still leave it open for use on hostile targets if you need it for CC or something else.(my plan is to use focus for ultra-fast targetchange for burstdamage in arenas). [target=focus,help] could maybe be switched out with [target=focus,party] for even more possibilitys with other focus purposes.
You could also have several versions of your targetmacro (with and without focus, different order etc) so it will be faster to change assisting methods without rewriting all your macros.
-- STEP 2
Ok, now we have a targeting macro. What about spellmacros?
In trinity we can use /click TrinityActionButtonX to activate other buttons in our macros. So every spellmacro will start with this instead and clic the targetmacro.
Example:
/click TrinityActionButton10 (assign your target macro to buttion 10)
/cast [mod:ctrl] Nature's Swiftness
/cast [mod:ctrl] Elemental Mastery
/cast [target=focus,harm,mod:rctrl][]Chain Lightning
Ok, this macro will assist your focus if you have set it to a friendly target. If not it will assist the charnames you set in macro 1. If you have a hostile focus you could use right ctrl to cast chainlighting on that target instead. (still untested,but I believe this will work)
-- Redundant healing system when switching out chars for other players.
Here we use bar paging. This section will require a lot of configuring, and I'm still not sure how I'm going to do it all to make it right when I'm rotating out each shaman. But I belive it will be possible with a lot of tweeking.
-- Page1 (defaultpage)
When this page is enabled you have your healing set for 5 of your characers in your party.
-- Page 2-6
When theese pages are enabled, you can configure each page to corespond to the right characters for healing. I will use a new macro set for each page, so you need ALOT of macros here, thus you should have some macro extender like trinity. I also use pitbull (unit frame mod) to sort my characters alphabetically so they allways are in the same order.
You can configure page2 for healingmacros when you remove char1, page3 for healingmacros when you remove char2, etc
-- Totem macro
If you dont want a bar for changing each of your totem macros when you switch out characters, you could make one macro with the following:
/castsequence [actionbar:1] tremor totem,wrath of air totem,mana spring totem
/castsequence [actionbar:2] earthbind totem,grounding totem,healingstream totem
This will make you able to cast different sequences based upon wich action bar you have enabeled.
Bottom line is that with this you will just change your action bar when you remove a character from your party to make everyone compensate for that removed char.
I will point out that very little of this is still tested, but I'm in the works of making my new UI and could come with more feedback later when most of this is tested.
I have seen on this forums good solutions with using /assist [target=charname1,nodead]; [target=charname2,nodead] etc , solutions with focus and solutions with pagebar switching. All systems have their strengths and some tradeoffs.
I think I now have a fairly good idea how to combine most of this mechanics and using the best of them all, but I'm in a very early stage of my new UI and this is by far tested yet. Anyway I want to dump it out here to maybe get some ideas, and give others ideas.
Ok on to the whole thing:
First of you should use Trinitybars or something that makes you able to give you more macros than the default, since this will most likely take a large amount of macros.
-- STEP 1
The my idea is to have this macro for selecting targets for your slaves:
/assist [target=focus,help];[target=char1,nodead];[target=char2,nodead] etc
This will allow you to assist your focus IF its friendly, thus allow you to switch mains on the fly without your current main beeing dead. But since your focus have to be friendly you will still leave it open for use on hostile targets if you need it for CC or something else.(my plan is to use focus for ultra-fast targetchange for burstdamage in arenas). [target=focus,help] could maybe be switched out with [target=focus,party] for even more possibilitys with other focus purposes.
You could also have several versions of your targetmacro (with and without focus, different order etc) so it will be faster to change assisting methods without rewriting all your macros.
-- STEP 2
Ok, now we have a targeting macro. What about spellmacros?
In trinity we can use /click TrinityActionButtonX to activate other buttons in our macros. So every spellmacro will start with this instead and clic the targetmacro.
Example:
/click TrinityActionButton10 (assign your target macro to buttion 10)
/cast [mod:ctrl] Nature's Swiftness
/cast [mod:ctrl] Elemental Mastery
/cast [target=focus,harm,mod:rctrl][]Chain Lightning
Ok, this macro will assist your focus if you have set it to a friendly target. If not it will assist the charnames you set in macro 1. If you have a hostile focus you could use right ctrl to cast chainlighting on that target instead. (still untested,but I believe this will work)
-- Redundant healing system when switching out chars for other players.
Here we use bar paging. This section will require a lot of configuring, and I'm still not sure how I'm going to do it all to make it right when I'm rotating out each shaman. But I belive it will be possible with a lot of tweeking.
-- Page1 (defaultpage)
When this page is enabled you have your healing set for 5 of your characers in your party.
-- Page 2-6
When theese pages are enabled, you can configure each page to corespond to the right characters for healing. I will use a new macro set for each page, so you need ALOT of macros here, thus you should have some macro extender like trinity. I also use pitbull (unit frame mod) to sort my characters alphabetically so they allways are in the same order.
You can configure page2 for healingmacros when you remove char1, page3 for healingmacros when you remove char2, etc
-- Totem macro
If you dont want a bar for changing each of your totem macros when you switch out characters, you could make one macro with the following:
/castsequence [actionbar:1] tremor totem,wrath of air totem,mana spring totem
/castsequence [actionbar:2] earthbind totem,grounding totem,healingstream totem
This will make you able to cast different sequences based upon wich action bar you have enabeled.
Bottom line is that with this you will just change your action bar when you remove a character from your party to make everyone compensate for that removed char.
I will point out that very little of this is still tested, but I'm in the works of making my new UI and could come with more feedback later when most of this is tested.