Reworking all my macros and assist completely

[magwo]

Edit: I posted this in the pvp forum because I want to discuss pvp friendly assist/macro models.

Since I've been using focus for assist, and am now seeing the immense benefits in arena (and WOTLK hex) being able to use focus for other purposes, I am forced to rewrite all my macros.

I can't seem to find an assist/macro model that does it all. What do you recommend?
Everything I look at is either very complex or messy, or does not meet all requirements.


Assist by always having master as target: Has weird flaws on master when you switch targets quickly and press buttons quickly, aswell as weird effects when having other friendlies targeted.
Assist by focus: Well obviously you lose the great focus utility.
Assist by having a long assist list in every single macro: Does not meet the switch-master-quickly requirement.
Assist by using pages: Seems to require different macros for master and slaves, so limited to the 12 action buttons?
Assist by using party assignment: Not reliable.

Anything else? What is Ellay and others using?

[magwo]

Actually, I'm playing with the pages model.. and I'm getting some weird behaviour.
When I switch to page 3, it displays the buttons on one of my multi action bars that are already displaying on another bar.

I was not expecting this at all. Is this normal, or is some addon messing with me?

I expected the pages to be completely different, empty bars.


Edit: Bartender3 fixed this situation - I am now working on the best assist model ever!

[Toned]

Actually, I'm playing with the pages model.. and I'm getting some weird behaviour.
When I switch to page 3, it displays the buttons on one of my multi action bars that are already displaying on another bar.

I was not expecting this at all. Is this normal, or is some addon messing with me?

I expected the pages to be completely different, empty bars.


Edit: Bartender3 fixed this situation - I am now working on the best assist model ever!

To answer your reason that they had buttons. Is because bottom left action bar, bottom right, and the right 2 action bars come from pages 2,3,4,5 leaving page 1 as your primary bar and page 6 as an empty page. Is there a page 6 lol ?? I think there's only 5 I'm at work but this is the reasoning.

[magwo]

Yeah, it just seems weird to me that they share actionbars.. I would assume most user will want the pages in -addition- to the extra bars.
Anyway.. it's working reasonably now.. the big problem right now is fitting my healing macros within 255 characters:

/cast 
[bar:1, target=Boohm-target, nodead, help][bar:1, target=Boohm-targettarget, nodead, help]
[bar:2, target=Bhoom-target, nodead, help][bar:2, target=Bhoom-targettarget, nodead, help]
[bar:3, target=Bhoohm-target, nodead, help][bar:3, target=Bhoohm-targettarget, nodead, help]
[bar:4, target=Boomh-target, nodead, help][bar:4, target=Boomh-targettarget, nodead, help]
[] Lesser Healing Wave

[BobGnarly]

I like the "party1" targeting system as long as you don't have to worry about splitting groups (bgs). Basically all your macros look like:

/cast [harm] [target=party1target] somespell

The first "harm" allows me to manually target if I want (I use this for things like poly in pve before the pull, etc), and for the leader. My follow macro clears all toons target so they automatically cast on the party1 target.

As you can see, it's very simple, and it leaves both "target" and "focus" to be used elsewhere.

On major drawbacks are:

• only works if you're in the group together.
• things like "/follow party1", if you are the group leader, don't behave like you might expect (it will follow what you might this should be "party2"), but it's not a huge deal.

Really, that's pretty much it.

[magwo]

I would consider the party1 etc model if it worked in the most critical part of the game - arena, which it doesn't.

[magwo]

I am now rolling with a full page based model.. I was forced to put my "smart" healing macros on the pageable bar, because the "smart" healing macros need to be different for master and slaves when you are not using focus for assisting.

A full action bar is dedicated to focus-based damage spells, and I have the ability to set focus individually for each shammie.. so it's a great starting point for hex in WOTLK.

[bugilt]

It would be nice to see a addon that could change the variables in a macro on the fly. It would be nice to have a list of all the possibilities for a targeting scheme.

[wetstreet]

It would be nice to see a addon that could change the variables in a macro on the fly. It would be nice to have a list of all the possibilities for a targeting scheme.

The problem with this is the API won't allow you to change the macro's during combat. You could, however, start with something like TrinityBars and generate the macros out of combat then change pages based on which character is your 'leader'.

[BobGnarly]

I would consider the party1 etc model if it worked in the most critical part of the game - arena, which it doesn't.

Why doesn't it work in arenas?