Dual boxing a healer and dps, targetting question!

Okay, so, I'm dualboxing a healer and a dps at the moment and can't get my macro's right.

The other group members (and/or raid) is somehting I can't be arsed to make seperate bind for. I play one screen, only my shaman screen active and my healer operates fully on keybinds. I always focus the tank and have macro's for that, and ofcourse have a macro for healing herself and my dps'er. But to heal other group members in the party/raid I have to target them with my dps'er, wait a full second for the lag to kick in on my druid and use an assist healing macro.

That's what I do now, but it's not very managable! I was wondering how I can avoid the lag to heal anyone in the party/raid without having to alt tab or set up target specific keybinds for every member in the party/raid...

I've no problem loosing my dps target for an instant to heal others, but the having to wait for the latency to catch up is highly annoying. x(

Raids are secundary, if it can just target the two remaining people in the party it'd be enough really. But I can't seem to find a target solution for this.

Thats a real situation you got on your hands, the only other suggestion is to have:
DPS as the secondary windows and have your healer on top, surely having your 1/2/3 keys setup you will not need to worry about much going wrong with DPS, whilst controlling your healer the normal way?
Please tell me your shamans not enhancement otherwise this theory may aswell go down the bucket.

Can I ask what the healers class is? My own 'cheap and dirty' solution atm is to use Chain Heal on my Resto Shaman for doing group healing. Of course this requires injured party members to get close to the shaman for it to work (which is not always possible obviously). The other solution is to assign 3 keys to macros on your healer using the '/target partyN' function - this would require you to know the party oder list on your healers screen obviously but would allow you to have, for example, the following macro:

/target party2
/cast Holy Light Rank ()

This would target the 3rd person in the party list (See UnitId on Wowwiki for more targeting options) - it works from yourself at the top being excluded, then the first member below you and the second person below you would be targeted. Then it casts (in this case) the top rank Holy Light - if your healer is a paladin of course :)

Another method you might try is to simply take a minute or two at the beginning of the instance/raid to manually put the party members names in your macro. I realize this is a pain but it would work.

I'm doing a holy and shadow priest together right now. I use the holy priest as my main, and have the Grid and Clique add-ons for healing the party. That lets you heal without switching targets, (right click the grid frame for lesser heal, shift-right click for greater heals, etc). I keep the DPS target as my healers target and the DPSer macros assist off the healer. It probably wouldn't work so well with Melee DPS, since that requires a lot more movement and control of the DPSer. they're only in the 30's now, so I don't have all the spells obviously but currently I just pass the following to the Shadow priest.

DPS keys [ Castsequence (Vamp Embrace, SW: Pain)
] Mind Blast
\ Mind Flay

I would make the healer the primary screen and set your dps macros to /assist either its focus or a specific target. Your dps shouldn't have to change targets as often as your healer, and if you assist the tank constantly, then it makes your dps macros much easier to write than the healing ones.

Agreed, healer should be the main window in a raid situation if you're healing anyone other than the MT. DPS shouldn't have to switch targets all that often and can chain off the healer if they need to switch targets.

Tested using the /target partyN UnitId last night on my lil three man setup and it works quite nicely so now I have a series of macros which target the various party members based on their position in the party list - seems quite nice though the downside I found is that by using the following (for example):

/target party4
/cast Healing Wave ()

That if there's no fifth member of the group that it defaults to healing the last target, though I'd prefer personal that in that case it would clear it's current target first and then not cast unless the named target (in this case party4) was actually present/in range. I'm sure there's probably a smart way to go about this but it's beyond me. In terms of raid healing you could use the raidIndex N UnitID for targeting though obviously, as many people have already pointed out, if you're raiding and responsible for a healing role then unless it's a farm instance your primary attention should be on your healing character and ensuring that the raid is healed and whole with DPSing on your second char coming a very distant second.

Thanks a bunch for the ideas.

It's enhancement shaman / resto druid anyhow. I'll have to resort to setting up macro's prior to parties and raids I fear. xP

I also started a 5-box now anyhow so won't be dualboxing these two that much. I suppose the combination is just a bit annoying. ;(

When I was running a PVE group (now I'm running 5 shamans for PVP), I used a very good example that someone told me on these forums. I set up all my tanking and DPS buttons along with /cast [target=focustarget] Fireball and had my tank be the focus. Then, for healing, I used the keypad for the following...

0 - Follow on all toons
1- target main tank for healer
2 - target toon #2 for healer
3 - target toon #3 for healer
5- target toon #4 for healer
6 - target healer for healer

4 - Cast Greater Heal (I did this because its above the "target main tank" button, and that combo is used the most)
7- Cast Renew
8 - Cast Flash Heal
9 - cast Prayer of Healing
* - Cast Shield
+ - Spread macro for all toons.

The idea with this, is that you can quickly target anyone in the PVE group, and cast a heal on them. what happens, is you start crushing buttons with your left hand to DPS while healing with your right hand. Makes it a "little" tough to control mobs when they run away because you cant use the mouse as fast.... but I liked the setup.

Just my 2c.