Slave Positioning Question

I searched a bit and checked the wiki out -if I missed the answer to my question I am sorry- also sorry if you have answered it before....

Since I hit 60 recently and I am only 2 boxing I didn't do any instancing up until last night. My wife needed help in brd on her paladin so I went on the locks and my brother in law brought in his two shaman. One of the issues I kept having is my slave would always get turned in such a way that he was not able to cast any spells on the targets. (should say always but most of the time) Now my wife was moving around ALOT and I had no problem getting my main into position (yes I would make sure the slave was following) but even though he was following he was either be turned to much to the left or right....or even sometimes facing the other way completly. I found that I had to consistantly click over to the slaves screen and adjust his position...

How are you all dealing with such positioning? Any special technique? Do you just use a formation macro? if u use a formation macro...or if you suggest one...what would you think is best for just a team of 2?

I know most of this will end up working itself out as I instance more and more, just during questing never had an issue since the mob would either run to me or to my pet but with someone else tanking that likes to move things around alot...

Thank you for your time.

My opinion.....Any alt should be like 5 yards behind you and facing the same way as you. Should be a given. You (caster) should be 28 yards from the mob. Your spells are at least 30 yards. If the mobs are getting moved by 30 yards, holy dang. I have a backup key mapped for just my alts (arrows) so I can break follow if need be. But really, why are you <25 yards from the mob? It would give you time to see the mobs move and move yourself and your alt. Just my thoughts.

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Originally Posted by 'ElectronDF',index.php?page=Thread&postID=207634#p ost207634

My opinion.....Any alt should be like 5 yards behind you and facing the same way as you. Should be a given. You (caster) should be 28 yards from the mob. Your spells are at least 30 yards. If the mobs are getting moved by 30 yards, holy dang. I have a backup key mapped for just my alts (arrows) so I can break follow if need be. But really, why are you <25 yards from the mob? It would give you time to see the mobs move and move yourself and your alt. Just my thoughts.

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I know I should be within range ( <25yds) I might not have explained it clearly enough.... since the person that is going to be tanking for me likes to move alot and yes she tends to pull them away from me (its my wife...its easier for me to manuver with her rather than tell her what she is doing wrong....) so when she pulls them away from me I then have to move...so with my slave on follow I move but more times than not they end up in a position of one facing forward and the other facing sideways...

I was looking for some suggestions on how I can readjust the slave without having to click on the screen and manually move him... I could use your method and set some move ments keys just for the slave. Thank you for the info...

If your slave is using follow, to follow your main, it stands to reason that the slave toon will be facing the same direction as the main toon. I cannot see the slave facing a different direction, unless you back track a little, but not far enough for the slave toon to start following you again, thereby facing your direction.

Your choices include:
- Having your (wife) tank position the mob and pretty much fight it where it stands - moving around serves no real purpose and probably reduces dps and/or makes non-instant heals harder to get off.
- Anytime she moves a large degree, over move with your main so the slave ends up following for the correct facing.
- Map turn keys to each toon, for example use WASD on the main which is not passed to the slave, and arrow keys on the slave which are removed from the main's keybinds. This way, you can independently turn each toon.
- Use the Jewelcrafting Jade Focusing Crystals (40 charges, about 2g each on my server) in the slaves attack macro's.

#show Shadowbolt
/assist [target=party1] or /assist [target=focus]
/use Jade Focusing Crystal
/cast Shadowbolt

BIt of a low-tech solution, but you could change the keybindings for turning on your slave to include keys that do nothing on your main?

EG change it to have 4 on your keypad to turn left and 6 to turn right? As long as you picked keys that did nothing on the main, all that should happen is that the slave would turn. This would probably break follow though, so you'd need to re-establish that, but I'm assuming that you already have that macro'd.

I haven't had any problems like this on my mages so far. Also, tell her to stop moving around, that's probably the biggest problem right there. She needs to stand still inside Consecrate for everyone's sake - more damage for her, easier targeting for everyone else.

You could also try adding a focus tag at the beginning of your spells that require you to be looking the right way (ie. everything but the DoTs)