Leaderless/Targetless - Focus Based Hydra

[Jafula]

One problem I am having is it seems to randomly change leader for no reason, and therefore whom I am following..any ideas?

What version of Jamba are you using? There have been some fixes to stop this apparent behaviour in 0.3b.

[zanthor]

Macaroon Setup
Macaroon is a very VERY powerful bar mod that can completely replace all your hotkey bar needs. Of course with great power, comes great confusion. It took me a few hours to figure this out and get it working how I wanted it, and I'll document those steps here for posterity (and practice technical writing).

Install Macaroon and the Macaroon Xtras as found in the macaroon listing on WoWInterface. Remove other bar mods if you want to be 100% sure that your system behaves like mine.

Disable Blizzards Default Bar if desired by going to your system menu (Escape) Options, click on the AddOns tab, click Macaroon on the left column, and uncheck the box that says "Enable Blizzard Main Bar" Click OK to save those settings.

[align=center]Now to create your main casting bar... type /mac create bar and you will see a naked empty bar in the middle of your screen... and it's tooltip...
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Note: If at any time you close all your windows, or what not and need to get back here, type /mac config to enter configure mode.

Next, right click the new bar and you'll see a spiffy menu, take a moment to glance over the options. The first option we care about is "Button Count", click that and the menu goes away... if you check your tooltip it has now changed... left click to add buttons, right click to remove buttons, or you can scroll your mousewheel.

For this exercise, add 12 buttons then click ANYWHERE besides the bar to clear that state. If your bar turns back blue, it means you clicked outside it's boundries or moused out too long, just right click and select "Button Count" again to pick up where you left off.

Right Click, then click the Showgrid box if desired.

Next right click the bar, and check the box next to "Custom" to bring up the state editor window, I'm sure this dialog has a more official title, but that's what I'm calling it .

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Name the bar something compelling and rememberable, Macaroon is CaSeSeNsItIvE so make sure you note that FTBar is different than ftBar. I named mine FTBar because this one is our "focus target" bar. For the "Bar Target" field type in focustarget. Macaroon has a nice selection of choices, but this isn't one, you have to actually type. Down under custom states enter [target=focustarget,exists] and then click done.

Your bar should now look something similar to:
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It's still nice and blue... if you type /mac config it will disappear. Type /mac config a second time to make it show back up.

Note for BT3 Users: A fundamental difference at this point is we need TWO bars to achieve what ONE would do in BT3.

Now create another bar using the nearly the same instructions as above
/mac create bar - Adds your bar.
Right Click, then Click Button Count and add 12 buttons.
Right Click, then click the Showgrid box if desired.
Right Click and then check the box next to Custom.
In the state editor window name your bar, I chose NFBar for "no focus" bar.
Click done.

You now have two bars, and if you click on them, you see their names...

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Next, we need to make them useful! Type /mac edit and you will see they all change to macro buttons. Left click on each button on each bar until they read "action..." If you click too many times, keep clicking, you'll pass through several states (macro, action, pet id:#). (note: one of my toons went linkdead here, and my focus bar disappeared, I logged him back in and once he had a target it reappeared) Once you have all of these bars set to action, set the action ID's.

FTBar - Set to ID 1-12
NFBar - Set to ID 1-12... You'll see why shortly.

The easiest way is to set the FIRST number to 1, then click "Apply" to "propagate Action ID's on Bar". This automatically propagates ID's 1-12 in our example.

Note: This part of the UI is flakey, I find that the numbers dont always show, but if you click in the box and arrow left you find the numbers... I press ctrl-a to select all then backspace to delete it and ensure I have clean data entry.

Ok, now you have two bars full of buttons that look very ODD.... Type /mac edit once again to return to normal, if you have your UI setup to show the grid, you should see something similar to:

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You see that the action ID's associated are residual from your last barmod! Anyhow, if these are the spells your looking for, great, move on, if not, open your spellbook and start dragging! Just drop a spell onto either bar and viola it appears on both...

Macaroon Key Bindings
I made this header bigger, bolder and redder to get your attention, this parts important.

Type /mac config and then mouse over your bars, identify WHICH is the focustarget bar, as this is the bar you must keybind.
Type /mac bind to enter keybind mode, mouse over the previously identified bars buttons and press the key you desire to be bound with the mouse over each button. Once you are done binding, type /mac bind again to exit binding mode.

Final Words on Macaroon
Ok, at this point you should have two mirrored bars, one will show up and disappear with your focus target, and the other stays all the time. I stack mine on top of each other, since they have the same ID's bound the appearance/disappearnce doesn't do anything for me.

[zanthor]

Attached is my profile for macaroon, the bars will layout as you see above. To install this profile unzip the contents into your wow\wtf\account\savedvariables folder then go into wow and open your addon options, click the + next to Macaroon and click on profiles.

The keybindings are going to be wierd for you, unless you happen to have an x-keys pro setup exactly how I do . Button 5 on the first bar is an anomoly, it's not a button ID but a big gnarly macro for shaman healing love.

Can't seem to get the attachment to work, so you can grab the profile here.

[delafoo]

Wow. JAMBA is the bomb!

This is soo much easier than spending a few hours per toon to set up the FTL system, provided you don't make a typo have have search for it in that system ;p

Thanks for this post!

[zanthor]

Wow. JAMBA is the bomb!

This is soo much easier than spending a few hours per toon to set up the FTL system, provided you don't make a typo have have search for it in that system ;p

Thanks for this post!

Each has it's own benefit, I've actually significantly revamped my setup now that I have a better idea of how Macaroon works, I'll be writing it up in the near future, but it uses the Macaroon profile system instead of complicated bars.

[Poetry]

When you guys PiP out, how do you stop your UI from getting screwed up? i.e. I use pitbull and the party/target frames always get messed up.

Could be UI Scale. For me I had to check off Use UI Scale in Video settings and set it to .9 (/console uiscale .9). I'm sure this is a different number for different hardware. This setting is game wide.

[zoneblitz61]

sometimes when I click on a target with my main, i notice that my alt doesn't pickup the target. Not really sure whats causing it.

[zanthor]

When you guys PiP out, how do you stop your UI from getting screwed up? i.e. I use pitbull and the party/target frames always get messed up.

Could be UI Scale. For me I had to check off Use UI Scale in Video settings and set it to .9 (/console uiscale .9). I'm sure this is a different number for different hardware. This setting is game wide.

As long as your aspect ratios are the same the UI should be fine. I ran into this when I didn't have KeyClone setup right on the maximizer. On the maximizer tab of keyclone check your resolution, down towards the bottom just above teh "always on top" checkbox you have a combo box, the resolution in here can NOT BE LOWER than 800x600 or WoW will reset to 800x600.

I run my main PIP @ 1680x1050 and the smaller ones @ 410x256, the bottom box I set at the resolution of the main window which locks my aspect ratio in position for launching wow.

sometimes when I click on a target with my main, i notice that my alt doesn't pickup the target. Not really sure whats causing it.

This is something I've experienced since the expansion, I find pressing the hotkey which focus's all alts on the main again tends to fix it, or switching targets after that... very annoying considering how fluid this was pre-patch.

[zoneblitz61]

I run my main PIP @ 1680x1050 and the smaller ones @ 410x256, the bottom box I set at the resolution of the main window which locks my aspect ratio in position for launching wow.

sometimes when I click on a target with my main, i notice that my alt doesn't pickup the target. Not really sure whats causing it.

This is something I've experienced since the expansion, I find pressing the hotkey which focus's all alts on the main again tends to fix it, or switching targets after that... very annoying considering how fluid this was pre-patch.

yea i change my follow macro to reestablish focus on my main, so I can make sure my alt will always follow and assist me.

[wougoose]

When you guys PiP out, how do you stop your UI from getting screwed up? i.e. I use pitbull and the party/target frames always get messed up.

Could be UI Scale. For me I had to check off Use UI Scale in Video settings and set it to .9 (/console uiscale .9). I'm sure this is a different number for different hardware. This setting is game wide.

1. Make sure your maximizer screens in keyclone are all set to the same aspect ratio.
2. Manually edit config.wtf for each individual instance and set the resolution to the same values used for the screens in keyclone.
3. Mark the config.wtf as read-only to prevent WoW from resetting the values to 800x600.

Problem solved