Question About Fundamental Approach Trade-offs

Here's the context for my questions:
- 5-man PvE
- Heroics for farming reputation/Badges.
- MOST of the time, it will be just me 5-boxing, but I'd like to be able to swap in real players for various roles/slots.
- 5-boxing group composition: paladin tank, 2x warlock, 1x mage, 1x priest.
- Using X-keys stick and Pro PS/2, so I have plenty of keybinds.
- Typically, the paladin tank is the "master/controlling" character, and the DPS/healer are "slaves".

What I'm struggling with is the use of focus for setting CC targets (poly, seduce, banish) and the ability to change the "master" char on the fly. Right now, I use focus on all "slave" chars to change the "master" instantly (slaves set their focus to the "master" char, and macros are `/assist focus` based). This works great for master switching, but I cannot use focus for handling CC targets. I can do dynamic CC by targeting with the master, but I've found that to be more frantic than setting focus before pulling (it also means simultaneous re-CCing is impossible).

I can change to party1target style macros, but these break if I'm not the party leader and make switching master chars impossible on the fly.

I can change to /assist <master> fixed name macros, which eliminates the leader requirement, but then it's literally impossible to switch master/slaves, and requires that the master char is required in the party (I can never let another person take the master's role).

Right now, I'm leaning towards 'party1' style macros (to free up focus for CC or other things) and requiring that I retain leader AND not being able to switch the "master" char in combat just so I can bring other people along to instances in any role. It's a compromise I'd prefer not to make, of course.

So are there any clever solutions to this problem that I'm missing? Any way to have it all? Possibly addon/macro synergy?

Thanks for any constructive input!

There is a mod that allows any member of the party to promote someone. I do not remember the name, there is a link to it on this forum I believe.

At any rate, right now I use a macro on the leader that will promote the next char in a specified order that is living. Same on all the followers, too. They have the main up top, but if he is dead, it wont promote hehe.

Good luck.

I use focus for my DPS, and targets for CC...

For example, before pulling I target mob1 and click the "dps1, /target focustarget" button, then target mob2 and mob3 the same way...

Now warlocka, b, and c each are targeting a diffrent mob...

Then on my paladin I target the DPS target...

Click the fear macro for each of my warlocks (fearing what they have targeted), then click my shadowbolt macro.. that macro uses "/cast [target=focustarget] Shadowbolt" to target...

End result:
The clones Target is for CC and uses [target=target] style macros, and my focus target is the DPS target using [target=focustarget] style macros.

Main dies I just click the macro to get the next focus and continue.

Only problem is that wands dont work.

I have thought about reversing the setup so that wands to work, but have not yet changed them.

This setup is from a thread on this site :)
Using someone elses good ideas :)

Thanks for the addon suggestion, I think you are talking about Multiboxer by jdraugh(?) That works fine, but it still requires that I control leader (as opposed to letting someone else be leader). It would handle the 'master' char switching issue, though.

Hmm.. I understand the concept of using target instead of focus for CC, but that poses some problems with tanking and aggro and finishing off existing targets. I guess I failed to elaborate on that in my original post, but I know other folks on the forums have discussed it. Basically, the normal "master" is the tank and switches his current target to build up aggro while an almost dead mob is finished off by the DPSers (as the tank has enough threat against that mob). Switching the tank early lets the tank pre-generate a bunch of threat against the new mob before DPS moves over. I'll have to think about the relative trade-off here, but I suspect the the restriction on the tank targeting and finishing mobs might mean this isn't worth it. Then again, I could experiment with starting a "finisher" cast on the DPS chars just before switch targets with the tank. Thank you also for the suggestion.

You can promote to party leader by doing:

/promote %name%

I would make a macro to try have everyone in your party promote to one person. ie when you push numpad1, everyone tries to promote characterA - of course only 1 will succeed.

This frees up focus for other stuff.

I am thinking of using something like this, however my only concern is does WoW remember your party makeup even if your in a battleground raid ie can i promote ppl in a bg in my party and /assist party1 if my characters are split accross the raid?

I'm interested to know. :P

-Slats

I think that Cernunnos is talking about hte same issue that made me switch from using party1 to using focus...

I only triple box so when I join a BG I am sometimes not the leader (despite my stripped down clones zone load times) so my clones choose to follow the BG leader and target his targets etc... I had to do a quick edit of my macros to make it playable the first time it happened!

I did look at using a script to use a variable to hold the unitid of the main and another to hold the list of clones then whisper these to the clones on a leadership change but this breaks the focustargettarget mechanism and so scrapped the idea :(