Jamba - new feature - Focus / Target Management - DESIGN feedback requested.

[lacitpo]

I see problems with mobs with the same name.

I generally use the same targeting structure as you use it seems with all my spells targets as [target=targettarget][] so they target my main's target.

I could see some real use for the ability for the target passing and focus passing being able to default to your brain's target.

[Jafula]

I see problems with mobs with the same name.

I generally use the same targeting structure as you use it seems with all my spells targets as [target=targettarget][] so they target my main's target.

I could see some real use for the ability for the target passing and focus passing being able to default to your brain's target.

Mobs with same names: yes agreed, I have noticed with slaves targettarget that occassionally half my slaves pick on one and half on another. Hence the raid icon integration (optional). A visual indicator of what your slave is targetting. Going to look into the mob unique identifers to see if I can use that somehow...

I think the out-of-box experience is leaning towards your suggestion (working on master):

Keypress to get all slaves to target master. ["/jamba settargetmaster slave" bound to key]
Target mob1 with master.
Click jambatarget1 button (has star raid icon). [Jamba marks mob with star icon; and all slaves update target1 macros to mob1.]
Keypress of jambatarget1key. [All slaves should now target mob1 that has star icon; if not spam key until they do]
Repeat for additional mobs.
Nuke.

[Xzin]

I had the idea of a similar system about two years ago with regards to sheeping / CC.

It was somewhat killed off by the fact that 1) I never bothered to code it up and 2) because they introduced 2.0 code.

But what about some kind of system that can track targets? Say you have 4 CC sources (sheep, hex, etc). You could select 4 targets, push them to the 4 clients and then press one button and presto - 4 sheeps on 4 different targets. You only need to push /target NAME to the clients.

This would be great for arenas, to say the least.

[Ken]

It looks nice, but how will this work in PvP where you constantly get other people attacking you and your priorities of attacking shift? Would I constantly have to smash a button to make the slaves target the right target before they can cast?
[edit] Also I wonder how much you can make use of the RPC library before Blizzard says "this is automation".

[Otlecs]

This is one of those times when I'm sure I'm missing something, but I've thought it through as far as I can bring myself to, and... I don't see the benefit.

Like you, I use a "no focus leader" system and use focus for cc / specific-target healing. To set focus, I just use keybinds.

In my case, I have a G15 so I use esoteric keybinds but it's basically G1-G5 to focus each of my characters, and I can change focus mid-battle too - really important when I'm holding two sheep and want to actually kill one of them whilst re-sheeping the other.

Likewise for killing different targets (in PvE, one guy nukes the pet while the others nuke the NPC Warlock for example) - just different "/assist" keybinds.

This is how a simple pull usually pans out when I play my mage/mage/hunter/priest/pally team, where I hands-on play the pally:

- Select sheep1 target, hit G1 (first sheep target set), orange circle appears over his head, mage1 has it as his focus target.

- Select sheep2 target, hit G2 (second sheep target set), blue square appears over his head, mage2 has it as his focus target.

- Select kill target. Hit assist. All drones have my kill target as their target. Skull appears over his head for target confirmation.

- Pull with avenger's shield, hit generic "sheep focus" button shortly after I start casting. Hit it again if one got resisted.

- Tank, DPS, heal, re-sheep as needed.

- Target sheep1, hit G1 and G2 - both mages now have the same sheep target.

- Target sheep2, hit assist. All characters now have sheep2 as the kill target.

- Hit generic "sheep focus" button again. Sheep1 goes bah, sheep2 breaks, is mad and either runs to me (avenger's shield aggro) or goes for the mages. Either way I grab him on the way past.

- Repeat untill all mobs are dead.

There are variations for LoS pulls, pet off-tanking, shackling, etc, but they all rely on the same basic mechanism - dynamically shifting focus for CC and /assist for killing.

The only benefit I see of this proposed enhancement to Jamba is that I'll be able to manage targeting through slash commands instead of with keybinds. So long as I'm not in battle.

See? I just know I'm missing something here. What is it ? :S

[lacitpo]

Ok, your target/focus project has been on my mind a lot so I'm going to do a sort of brain dump here on my thoughts and hope that some of it helps.

I think any system you design needs to be able to handle both character, mob, and NPC names, along with having a token based system. Token based system being that each character in your squad can be assigned one or more tags. Here are all the possibilities for tokens that i can see.

brain (character with a person in control)
healer (primary healer)
backup healer (backup healer)
cc (crowd control)
dps (primary dps)
dps lead (character that other toons use to aquire their dps targets)
slave (any slave character)
tank (tank)

First thoughts on token based focus and target passing. The token based system would be beneficial for pre-combat setups. I can see it as a great tool to simplify alt-tabbing between instances of wow and being able to focus more on a single window. I think that the tags should be able to be numbered so that you have dps1, dps2, cc1, cc2 so that you can distinguish between toons. Also some of this stuff could begin to be worked into a status window allowing you to reference which toons are marked with which tags.

It seems to me that this system would be the first step towards a system spoken of earlier (referenced as the perfect addon but i don't feel like digging up the link). Since Jamba can't pass targets or focus during combat, those options have to be hard coded into a macro before combat begins. I'm not sure what approach you have thought of for the system but here is my vision of it. I am not sure if all of this is doable from a coding standpoint but again, this is just a brain dump.

Jamba provides a completely seperate macro interface. All of your macros can be written and are stored inside of jamba. Macros can be written with token tags in place of targeting information. For example.

Your current party has a paladin named Tankadin who has been given the tag "Tank1"

/cast [target=tank1-target]

would be rewritten automatically to

/cast [target=Tankadin-target

I may have wandered a bit off subject but I needed to dump these ideas somewhere.

[Motgib]

In my case, I have a G15 so I use esoteric keybinds but it's basically G1-G5 to focus each of my characters, and I can change focus mid-battle too - really important when I'm holding two sheep and want to actually kill one of them whilst re-sheeping the other.

What is Esoteric keybinds, exactly?

I have a G11 keyboard and I was using the G Keys set as CTRL+Alt+Shift+# but recently I have been having problems with the G Keys just pressing the "1" Key instead of the "Ctrl+Shift+Alt+1" Key. So I've stopped using them for now until I can figure out WTF is wrong with them. Also they are keeping the old keybinds regardless of the new profile and settings that I have saved. I even removed and re-downloaded the software and it kept all of the same keybinds.

[Duane]

In my case, I have a G15 so I use esoteric keybinds but it's basically G1-G5 to focus each of my characters, and I can change focus mid-battle too - really important when I'm holding two sheep and want to actually kill one of them whilst re-sheeping the other.

What is Esoteric keybinds, exactly?

I have a G11 keyboard and I was using the G Keys set as CTRL+Alt+Shift+# but recently I have been having problems with the G Keys just pressing the "1" Key instead of the "Ctrl+Shift+Alt+1" Key. So I've stopped using them for now until I can figure out WTF is wrong with them. Also they are keeping the old keybinds regardless of the new profile and settings that I have saved. I even removed and re-downloaded the software and it kept all of the same keybinds.

I had that same problem and had to either use the WoW default and configure it or do something different. I'll try and remember to check it out when I get back home this evening.

[Jafula]

I had the idea of a similar system about two years ago with regards to sheeping / CC.

It was somewhat killed off by the fact that 1) I never bothered to code it up and 2) because they introduced 2.0 code.

But what about some kind of system that can track targets? Say you have 4 CC sources (sheep, hex, etc). You could select 4 targets, push them to the 4 clients and then press one button and presto - 4 sheeps on 4 different targets. You only need to push /target NAME to the clients.

This would be great for arenas, to say the least.

If I understand you correctly ...

GUI at start:

----------------------------------
 Player Name   | CC Target
----------------------------------
Mage 1 |   --     [CLICK TO SET PLAYER1 TARGET]
Mage 2 |   --     [CLICK TO SET PLAYER2 TARGET]
Mage 3 |   --     [CLICK TO SET PLAYER3 TARGET]
Mage 4 |   --     [CLICK TO SET PLAYER4 TARGET]
----------------------------------
[CLICK TO UPDATE SLAVE CC TARGET]

Then master does:

1. Master, target "Arena Enemy 4", click [CLICK TO SET PLAYER1 TARGET].
2. Master, target "Arena Enemy 2", click [CLICK TO SET PLAYER2 TARGET].
3. Master, target "Arena Enemy 5", click [CLICK TO SET PLAYER4 TARGET].

and the GUI would look like:

----------------------------------
 Player Name   | CC Target
----------------------------------
Mage 1 |  Arena Enemy 4   [CLICK TO SET PLAYER1 TARGET]
Mage 2 |  Arena Enemy 2   [CLICK TO SET PLAYER2 TARGET]
Mage 3 |   --     [CLICK TO SET PLAYER3 TARGET]
Mage 4 |  Arena Enemy 5   [CLICK TO SET PLAYER4 TARGET]
----------------------------------
[CLICK TO UPDATE SLAVE CC TARGET]

4. then press [CLICK TO UPDATE SLAVE CC TARGET] - jamba will update internal button macro to 

/target Arena Enemy 4
/cast Polymorph
/targetlasttarget

on Mage 1, etc for Mage 2 and Mage 4

5. Press button to sheep and you have 3 sheeps.

You are stuck with this macro until combat ends.  
Mage 1 couldn't sheep an additional target in combat.  
And mage 3 is just plain lazy.
Of course, you can use traditional keybinding for setting focus, sheeping once you are in combat.

I don't PVP much; but for Arenas aren't the CC spells nerfed compared to the PVE equivalent?

see: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....sid=1&pageNo=1

1. So, its definitely doable - but is it worth doing?
2. As a multi-boxer arena player will this be enough?
3. Would you actually benefit from this system?
4. Is it that timing is king in arenas and having a pre-targetted macro beats focus keybinding?
5. Or focus needs to be free for something else?
6. I assume you are in combat for the duration of the match?
7. Could you give me an example of play where this would be useful?

Aside: This doesn't mean I don't want to code it up, I just want to make sure if I do code something, that it'll get used.

[Jafula]

[quote='lacitpo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=11787 6#post117876]I think any system you design needs to be able to handle both character, mob, and NPC names, along with having a token based system. Token based system being that each character in your squad can be assigned one or more tags. Here are all the possibilities for tokens that i can see.

<snip>

Also some of this stuff could begin to be worked into a status window allowing you to reference which toons are marked with which tags.
[/quote]Great ideas! Its what I was trying to explain in my first post about nicknames. Its done (but not released) except for the status window. I call tokens 'nicknames' and they are per character.


Example mage nicknames.[quote='lacitpo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=11787 6#post117876]Jamba provides a completely seperate macro interface. All of your macros can be written and are stored inside of jamba. Macros can be written with token tags in place of targeting information. For example.

Your current party has a paladin named Tankadin who has been given the tag "Tank1"

/cast [target=tank1-target]

would be rewritten automatically to

/cast [target=Tankadin-target]

I may have wandered a bit off subject but I needed to dump these ideas somewhere.[/quote]Sweet, I hadn't got as far as your thinking of embedding the token tags into macros. I'm really glad you brain-dumped in this thread! The post you referred to is probably [url='http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=115607#post115607']this one[/url] .

The /jamba setfocus system currently in place uses macros stored inside of Jamba. I don't see why I couldn't extend this to take your existing macro with token-tags, replace the tokens and store it as a new macro. To use the new macro you would use the command /click JambaMacroOriginalMacroNameButton or something similar; which you could embed into a button (Trinity, Bongos, etc) or Jamba could provide a key bind interface directly to the macro for you. A little configuring and tweaking but it would work...

[s]EDIT: Done, but not released.

[/s]EDIT 2: Was smoking something when I wrote that! Key bind out of combat setup focus is done...