Spread-out keys

Hey, all! :)

I'm new to 5-boxing -- I've been playing around with 4 and 2-boxing for the past week or so and really enjoy it. I was getting really bored with the 70 game so I was a becoming an alt-aholic -- but I stumbled across this board via Xzin's wowwiki multiboxing page.

Anyway, on to my point. I've been making a bunch of macros for my 5box team - pally tank, 2x lock, 1x mage, and healing priest. However, one thing I haven't been able to get the way I'd like is spread out keys.

At this point, my pally is a sucky tank. But that's ok, since I don't need it to actually tank until I hit 17ish and start heading into instances.

From what I understand, a spread out key is binding the same key on each toon to different movement keys (back, strafe left, strafe right, forward).

My problem, is that my mage rips the aggro from my pally, and ruins the facing for my other characters -- so I have my characters on follow 100% of the time so the pally can redirect them when the mob shifts positions. But with a spread out macro, I'm concerned about the mob walking right past and smashing the mage's face in while the 2 locks stand there pointed in the wrong direction.

Any insight? Do you just hit "follow" for things like this? Do you use a "follow partymember" button for each party member, and then use it when a partymember draws aggro? Or do you have a "follow what my main is targeting" macro, so that you can just target the aggro monkey party member with your main and everyone else follows?

Alot of ideas, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel if it's already been tried and there's an easy solution.

Finally, is there a way to break follow without also breaking your casts? If I have to reposition my characters I hate to see a timely heal get cancelled because the priest has to take a couple steps to follow someone.

Thanks much!
-Jennifer

Turning the toon will break autofollow. I occasionally hit my global turn-left key to do this. If you press it just just a split second, the toons won't misalign too much, and they will continue to cast.

Spreading out will all depend on your setup and preferences. Just remember that toons can cast a whole 180 degrees, meaning they can cast to the side.

A possible solution may be to have a /focus (mage name) macro for your dps. Whenever he pulls aggro you can switch their focus to him, hit your follow macro, which would make them start following him. If they're close enough that they don't have to move toward him, they'll simply turn and face him and therefore the mob.

I haven't used it for that purpose, but I have some formation macros, and something I noticed is that I can hit follow and they face my focus, which can make for some different formations.