Acquiring the focus of another player with macro

[Mendicant]

I'm trying to find a way to have my part acquire the focus of my main, so that I do not have to worry about lag in focus-choosing.

I.E. main: /focus target
Others: /target Main /target targetfocus /focus target

I haven't been successful thus far it's probably not possible.

[Crayonbox]

Um, doesn't seem like that hard of a problem.

main

pick a target
/focus

alts
/assist main
/focus

[Mendicant]

I will use that one if I have to, but it's not what I'm looking for. That one can fall prey to lag and may result in the followers focusing an incorrect target. This would not be so much of a problem in PvE where time is not necessarily of the essence, but in PvP waiting 1/2 a second for lag is a big disadvantage.

The idea is that with my main I can click, focus, click next target in a very short period of time, then have the my slaves assume the same focus as the main.

[Stabface]

Focus is client-only. So you can't obtain someone else's focus unfortunately.

[Crayonbox]

I've been always acceptant of the fact that client server lag will always be there and that there is no way around it...
However, if there are any programmers out there with mod experience, would it be possible to write a mod that automatically updates the targets of each person and send continuous updates to each client that is running the mod?

It would not effect server client delay for other people's targets, but for us boxers, it would completely remove the delay associated with the lead selecting target delay.

Also, is this even practical? and if possible, would it break any tos or eula? feedback?

[Mendicant]

I've been always acceptant of the fact that client server lag will always be there and that there is no way around it...
However, if there are any programmers out there with mod experience, would it be possible to write a mod that automatically updates the targets of each person and send continuous updates to each client that is running the mod?

It would not effect server client delay for other people's targets, but for us boxers, it would completely remove the delay associated with the lead selecting target delay.

Also, is this even practical? and if possible, would it break any tos or eula? feedback?

That would be awesome. I suspect it may violate the tos... It may be okay to have a program display the information on your screen, but inputting back into WoW would probably violate something. The only way I see it not breaking tos/eula would be for it to send that information through the game, however that would defeat the whole purposed of it. Maybe a certain person could give feedback on that?

[Depherios]

Can't have addons change targets in combat...

You could have it SHOW who it is via an addon, but no way to make a box you can click on or anything that works in combat (think Proximo)

[caffiend86]

Hrm, I don't think your going to get around the half second lag on picking up targets, its just one of the realities of multiboxing. That half second delay is simply there as your wow clients grabs a character's current target from the server...

[dirjax]

what you are trying to do will result in the same thinking as:
"I want my healer to heal a target that i'm mouseovering"

basically, I think (i'm not versed in LUA code, but seeing one can relay whispers with it, one can also get other commands) it could be lua scripted if you make a macro on your main:
/focus
/whisper toons "%n"

and on the toons a lua script doing
get "name" from whisper
do /target "name"


but that'll be on the very edge of automation, and it will indeed only skip you that quarter to half a second. I don't know if it's worth the hastle if you suddenly get 4 to 5 accs banned because of automation.

[Crayonbox]

Of course no one here wants to do something against the tos and get banned. Was just wondering if this idea would fly with blizzard,

[bbj]

Of course no one here wants to do something against the tos and get banned. Was just wondering if this idea would fly with blizzard,Dont worry about it. the Clients cannot communicate directly with each other. They talk via the server so youre never gonna get rid of the server lag.

[zanthor]

I will use that one if I have to, but it's not what I'm looking for. That one can fall prey to lag and may result in the followers focusing an incorrect target. This would not be so much of a problem in PvE where time is not necessarily of the essence, but in PvP waiting 1/2 a second for lag is a big disadvantage.

The idea is that with my main I can click, focus, click next target in a very short period of time, then have the my slaves assume the same focus as the main. No matter what you do, there will be targeting lag between the clients. The fact is that your client has to tell the server what it's target is, and that information needs to travel back to the other clients before you can target them.

but that'll be on the very edge of automation, and it will indeed only skip you that quarter to half a second. I don't know if it's worth the hastle if you suddenly get 4 to 5 accs banned because of automation. Whispering the server to whisper back to the other clients would create the illusion of bypassing that latency, but the fact is, it's still there. If you press a single button to send the whisper and broadcast that to your clones to assist, they won't have received the whisper. Since Blizzard removed the ability to programatically target in 2.0 you simply have to deal with the delay.

Even before 2.0 there was a delay, I used some pretty big logic traps on my priest in macros and if I wasn't careful she would start fights much like a pet on aggressive. This was always due to target lag and the fact her targets were being updated automatically through my UI mod.

[BobGnarly]

what you are trying to do will result in the same thinking as:
"I want my healer to heal a target that i'm mouseovering"

basically, I think (i'm not versed in LUA code, but seeing one can relay whispers with it, one can also get other commands) it could be lua scripted if you make a macro on your main:
/focus
/whisper toons "%n"

and on the toons a lua script doing
get "name" from whisper
do /target "name"


but that'll be on the very edge of automation, and it will indeed only skip you that quarter to half a second. I don't know if it's worth the hastle if you suddenly get 4 to 5 accs banned because of automation.You can't do this. They don't allow you to set targets in the lua code anymore, precisely because they don't want you doing this type of stuff. Most of the targeting API is now protected.

Not only that, but you wouldn't gain anything if you could. This is still going client1->server->client2, and in fact it's probably slower because you are using the interpreted script interface.

[dirjax]

aha, i didn't calculate the chat-lag indeed.
and i wasn't aware that you couldn't target by lua (start macro by lua? )
but this still looks like automation to me and my guess is that blizz will ban for that :)

[Crayonbox]

Of course no one here wants to do something against the tos and get banned. Was just wondering if this idea would fly with blizzard,Dont worry about it. the Clients cannot communicate directly with each other. They talk via the server so youre never gonna get rid of the server lag.well that kinda throws that in the gutter. Wasn't sure how the mod communication channels worked. But it would make sense that the channels also have to go through the wow servers then back to clients. Bleh. Well poopy~

[aNiMaL]

To bad it's not possible.

I've added a Pitbull's focustarget frame to all my clones and adjusted it so it only shows the name in some large font so it's easy to read on all screens.
(Focus is my current main, I'm not sure if it's possible to have a frame just for the party1target, but you could check it on the partytarget's frame aswell,
Party1 is in the same place for all clones anyway)

Works great so far.
I'm thinking about adding a macro with raidmarking,
so it becomes even easier to spot if they already know which target I'm having.
(originally I wanted just a frame to change color if they had the same target, but that would result in the same lag)

The biggest problem with the lag for me would be in PvE raids,
I don't want to mess up a raid by accidentally nuking a sheep or another group.

Offcourse it's annoying in any fight,
but in PvE you have the time to check for it,
I doubt it's usefull in pvp, but who knows