Following someone else's focus.

Ok, I'm fairly new to macros, I've only written full blown addons in the past.

I have 4 warlocks:
W1, W2, W3, W4

They are identical in spec and abilities.

My goals:
1. I want to be able to switch to any of them at any time.
2. Do not depend on party1, because pvp is a goal, or possibly have a 5th person lead the group.
3. Set focus individually
4. Ideally follow focus of any of the 4 warlocks.

The particular keybindings I'd liked to use:
F1 - Target W1's focus
F2 - Target W2's focus
F3 - Target W3's focus
F4 - Target W4's focus

As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as target=party1focus or /assist party1focus. It looks like I'd have to use two keybindings to target with the warlock that has that focus and then have everyone assist him. Any other ideas here?

The first four function keys would also be overloaded to either set focus for an warlock with CTRL-F1 for example. No big deal there.

The goal is really to have 4 focuses for times when I want to pull 4+ mobs and spread my dots out, or once I get around to doing crowd control.

I guess to put it to a concrete example, say W3 has seduced something. And it is now time for everyone to target W3's focus. Nobody at all at this point is targeting the seductee, is it possible to have everyone switch in a single key?

Probably not in the right order, but there is an addon that auto-follows when you are out of combat. I use it to follow focus (you can use anything that works, name, part1, etc).

I use focus on my main. Other people think that if your main dies, you are screwed. I can still target when my main dies, so all my alts still attack whoever my main targets (even if main is dead). Then macros become really simple...
/cast [target=focus-target] DPSSpell
/cast[target=focus-target-target] HealSpell

Some people want to switch mains. Fine. There is probably a prettier version, but try something that checks if a person is dead and then go to next person.
/focus [target=party1, nodead][target=party2, nodead][target=party3, nodead]
(but leave each alt out of it---no party 2 on alt2, or you just focus yourself and that doesn't help)

Not sure if that helps. Good luck.

You're doing two different things, pvp and pve. Here's the pve version:

target a mob with main
target main with alts
Bind a different key for each alt that does this:
/focus [target=targettarget]
switch main target
use focus macro
switch main target
use focus macro
switch main target
use focus macro
switch main target
use focus macro
another macro for attacking, it's the same for all of them:
/petattack focus or target (unclear on this part, i don't play pet classes with any macros that don't attack my current target)
/cast [target=focus,exist] [target=target] dot dot dot dot dot drain drain drain


That kind of setup should let you pick 4 different targets, set them as your focus, send in a pet, dot them, then drain tank them all. The focus,exist condition makes sure if you do have a focus you'll attack that, and if not, whatever you have targeted will be attacked instead.

Edit note: You're basically looking to do something similar to a mage polylmorph focus macro or a priest focus shackle macro, but you'll just have to use your main to set focus off of or individually click their target to set focus via macro.

Edit again: You could bang all 4 buttons at one time to set them all to the same target, which takes care of all your non-pvp requirements.

@Sarduci

Thanks, that's close to what I want.

But the really tricky part that I'm unsure about is getting everyone to assist someone else's focus. The goal of this would be to perhaps see 4 people guarding a flag, set 4 foci and go charging in. Combat then would be in something like the following order:


1. /cast [target=focus][target=target] Fear
2. /cast [target=party1focus] Corruption
3. /cast [target=party1focus] Curse of Agony
4. /cast [target=party2focus] Corruption
5. /cast [target=party2focus] Curse of Agony

The only problem with that is there is no such thing as party1focus as far as I can tell.

So the question is:
How can I switch everyone over to Warlock2's focus? RIght now the best I can do is two macros. Warlock2 does /target focus, then everyone assists Warlock2.

I suppose I could just assign to F2 the following:
/target focus (on warlock2 only)
/assist warlock2 (on the others)

Any hit it a couple times, but then I have to deal with latency before they all get changed over.

Any ideas? Or can I just not get there from here?

Equally useful would be something like /target skull or the other raid icons.

I understand what you're wanting to do. I am not sure how it's possible with just one macro though.

I currently have Focus #1 - Focus #4 keys for my quad teams. When I want to be able to use 1 spell on 4 different targets with one macro button here's what I do.
I'm using my 4 hunters as an example. Each of them can cast Intimidation, a stunning attack from their pets, but I like to spread it out to control the caster mobs in a pack of mobs I attack.

I use Foucs #1 nearly 99% of the time. I have the following line in my macro setup:
/castsequence reset=combat Intmidation,,, (for main)
/castsequence reset=combat ,Intimidation,, (for #2) and etc, etc.

Then I have my #1 just target the random mobs and hit the keys accordingly.



Sorry if that's not helpful :(

Upon further investigation it appears that focus is client side only. So there really is no sharing it.

The best I can come up with for automatically doing it is to have something like the following:

1. Hit F3
2. W3 executes /target focus
3. W3 whispers to W1, W2, W4 "assistme"
4. W1, W2, W4 execute /assist W3

This brings it me to the point, can code switch targets automatically? or is that restricted? Off to test this one out.

This would still have a round trip latency, but it would at least require only one button to get everyone to switch, and nobody's focus would change in the mean time.