Out of focus

Here is my focus problem. Any help on this appreciated.

I like to use focus with my alts for assisting my main character. I often run a different main character with my alts and all I have to do is change one macro on all the alts to name that main as the focus and I'm good to go.

/target <main character>
/focus
/follow

All my other ALT macros then use this focus for assisting the main, like:

/assist focus
/cast [harm,nodead] fireball

I can't use UNITID's like party1 instead of focus because I sometimes don't have the main character actually in the party ... i.e. I'm helping to level up a lowbie and just following him around with my ALTs.

All well and dandy until I decide I need to also use focus for crowd control. For instance I want to set focus for my ALT mage to sheep something and easily re-sheep it later without having to stop and re-target the mob.

Problem is if I set focus for the ALT mage to the sheeped mob I no longer have focus set on the main character and macros like:

/assist focus
/cast [harm,nodead] fireball

are screwed.

I think the solution is to do this:

/assist focus
/cast [harm,nodead] fireball
/stopmacro [harm,nodead]
/assist party1
/cast [harm,nodead] fireball

Which will work as long as I am partied and assumes my main character is party1, which it should be.

However, if I'm not partied, then I'm out of luck. Of course if I'm not partied its usually because I'm helping a lowbie outside of instances and crowd control maybe isn't too important anyway.

The only reason I bring this up is I've seen others mention about using focus for either assisting the main character or for crowd control but apparently not for both.

Probably what I'm doing is fine, but does anyone have any clever solutions so I can have my cake and eat it too?

use /assist CharName instead of party1 for those situations.

I think you missed my point. If I use /assist charname then I have to change every macro I have on all my alts (a LOT of macros) instead of just adjusting one macro on each alt.

when u boost an lowbie, you dont really risk to get your lets say main char dead so you dont need to worry about macros to transfer controls and stuff. Also you dont need to use whole your arsenal there so you just have to make a few macros :)
dont know any other solution for the situation

Quite easy to solve: Use /target to choose what you're sheeping.

Rather than /assist focus, just change the /cast line to:
[code:1]/cast [target=focustarget, harm, nodead] fireball; [target=party1target, harm, nodead] fireball; fireball[/code:1]
This will first attempt to cast a fireball on the target of your focus - WITHOUT targeting it - then attempt to cast a fireball on the target of your party1 - again without actually CHANGING your target - and finally just attempt to cast a fireball.

And your new sheeping macro:
[code:1]/cast [harm, nodead] Polymorph; [target=focustarget, harm, nodead] Polymorph; [target=party1target] Polymorph
/stopmacro [harm, nodead]
/assist focus
/stopmacro [harm, nodead]
/assist party1[/code:1]
If you're targeting something that you can sheep, you'll do it, if not you'll check the target of your focus and party1 - again this is without choosing or changing a target, I usually use these sorta commands to fire slow spells without telling what I'm shooting at, less chance they try to interrupt if my official target is out of my range - before targeting 1 of the 2 (whichever one you can attack).

Really the only difference between Focus and Target is that anything that attacks you while you don't have a Target is made your Target, so this will also let you sheep the attacker of your mage more easily.
And the whole [target=focustarget] making it seem like your alts are blocking the ToT just makes your enemies appear foolish when they report you for cheating. Added benefit. I started doing it with [target=mouseover] when I was still single-boxing and haven't stopped laughing yet :P

Thanks for a great tip Rumian :D

I was twisting my head to get around this problem with using focus for assisting and also to have it as a crowd control tool. It never hit me that using target will be just as good.