Basic Focus Help

[Ualaa]

I use Jamba for follow.
All toons have the "/jamba-followmaster all" hotkey.
It doesn't matter which toon presses the hotkey, because only one is the master, ie whichever is active.

If you're setting up a permanent set of hotkeys, which you can play with forever, I'd consider either a party leader system or the FTL system instead of a focus based system.
The reason for using either of these systems over a focus system, is that /focus is then free for other things.
In pvp, you can /focus your burn target and then "/cast [target=focus] Burn spells" without giving away who your target is to the other team (ie, you target each once, but only select one as focus), then they don't know who you will be burning down.
In pve, you can use /focus for crowd control by giving a mage a target as focus, a warlock a target as focus etc. Then have each toon cast their CC spell on their focus. If it breaks, hit their re-CC focus key and its fixed.

Honestly, if you're willing to put in the time to set up the FTL system, it is far and away the best assist system for a team.
The drawback is the amount of time to set it up.
If you persevere and get it working, its by far the best.
I don't use the FTL system, but its the best system to use if you can manage to set it up.




A leader system is based on having the current active toon also be the party leader.
Instead of your spell reading... /cast [target=focustarget]... it will read /cast [target=party1target]...
Or.. instead of "/assist Focus... /cast spell.... " it will read, "/assist [target=party1]... /cast spell...."

The switch keys require you to "/script PromoteToLeader("New Leader Name")" on each toon, with an error message on the non-leader toons.
That way, no matter who the leader was, any of your toons could have been the previous leader and is capable of promoting any of the other toons to being leader.

The only trick with a leader based system is that you need to page your action bars.
With 5 toons, there will be 5 switch keys.
Four of these keys will be switching to a toon other then the current leader. IE, if your current toon is A, then they will have macro's for A, B, C, D, and E.
The B-E macro's will be similar... with a script promotetoleader on each, differing only in the leaders name.
The A macro, which is their own, will differ.
It will read, "/jamba setmeasmaster all" instead of the script to promote the other toons to party leader.
On toon B, it is macro B which will differ, while A and C-E will be the promote macro's.

This leaves the paging function to be accomplished.
The reason for paging is because on all of the non-leaders, the leader is party1 (same as pressing F2, from within warcraft).
So for the slave toons, assisting the leader is fine. Their hotkeys can be on bar 1.
All of the slaves (actually all of the toons) will have slave macro's on bar 1.
The macro's will be assist [target=party1] or /cast [target=party1target]...

Each toon will also have non-assist macro's on bar 2.
This is because pressing F2 (in warcraft) as the party leader gets you the second party member.
If you tried to assist them for target, it won't always result in your current target.. if for example you had just switched to a new target.
So bar 2, will have almost the same macro's in it as bar 1, but none of the bar 2 macro's will have any form of assist.
If you have round-robin macro's, such as Thunderstorm, they can be the same macro on each bar, which means you have the same place in the round-robin irregardless of who the old/current leader is.

So the leader adds to their switch macro, on a second line, "/changeactionbar 2".
On everyone else's switch macro they add the second line, "/changeactionbar 1".

So when you become leader, you have Jamba make you the master... and you switch to action bar 2.
Which has no assist, just the normal targeting as if you were a one-box toon.

When you make someone else the leader, you promote them to party leader and change your action bar to bar 1.
So they are promoted to party leader and you're on the action bar to assist the party leader.

End result... your bar 1 and bar 2 have very similar macro's in them on every toon.
So you lose one of your six default bars. If you're short on hotkey slots, bongo's/bartender/macaroon can create more bars for you.
You also create some almost duplicate macro's, which means each toon will have 5-6 (my case) less macro's to play with.
But then any of your team can function fine as a solo character and each can use focus for pvp or pve purposes.

[Seldum]

Very nice info, ill definetly look into this.

I have looked at the FTL system, and since im 5 boxing druids, I think this would be beneficial to me as any druid can heal etc. Ofcause im goind 1 feral, 1 resto and the rest... well maybe balance. Atm. im running a focus system and I like it. But as things get more complex with more spells etc. I think I will need to setup something more flexible.

I tried fiddeling around with the PIP system for keyclone last night. Does anyone know if this works for 2 monitors aswell? I coulden't quite make it work last night grr! Followed the instructions in wiki.

Thanks for the help, it much appriciated.

I had thought about how I would setup my healing, as all toons can heal. This is what I came up with so far.

I use F1-F5 to heal my toons.

Group Setup:
Toon A: Tank/main
Toon B: DPS/backup healer
Toon C: Healer
Toon D: DPS
Toon E: DPS/backup tank

For the Tank(Toon A):
No healing macros. The tank shoulden't heal.

For the DPS/backup healer (Toon B):

F1: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal Toon A, if not then do nothing.
F2: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal SELF, if not then do nothing.
F3: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal Toon C, if not then do nothing.
F4: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal Toon D, if not then do nothing.
F1: validates if C is dead, if dead then heal Toon E, if not then do nothing.

For the healer (Toon C):

F1: Heal toon A, 1st click small heal, 3rd click rejuvenation.
F2: Heal Toon B the same as F1
F3: Heal self
F4: Heal Toon D the same as F1
F5: Heal Toon E the same as F1

Toons D+E, no healing macros other than self.

So basicially if my Main healer dies I have a backup healer. If my main tank dies I can swich to char E for tanking, and continue.

Theres probally better ways to do this, but for now it OK.

Also, I have setup "7" to heal self, meaning if I recieve a AOE damage and everyone should heal themselfs I hit 7. If my Main Tank, healer and backup tank dies im probaly gonna wipe anyway so I havent build in any stuff to take in this scenario.

The above will probaly be redone at some point to make it even more complicated (including stances etc.) but for now this works okey.
Any input?

[Ualaa]

I'm a big fan of reverse target heals.

On my druid I have Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Swiftmend and Regrowth as targeted heals, plus Tranquility on my emergency key.
My druid is dreamstate spec, because I like her to contribute to the dps when the heals are not needed, but to still be a strong healer when needed.
If dreamstate healing ever becomes insufficient, she could spec deep resto instead, but dreamstate has been more then sufficient for my teams.

The heal format is:

/cast [help] Regrowth; [help, target=targettarget] Regrowth; [target=player] Regrowth

Same for each other heal.
When my druid is leading the party (I use a paging/party leader assist method) that is her macro.
When any other toon is leading the party, her macro changes to:

/assist [target=party1]
/cast [help] Regrowth; [help, target=targettarget] Regrowth; [target=player] Regrowth

This allows the healer to assist the current active toon, and heal their target if its friendly.
If the target is hostile, and the tank's target is almost always hostile, then it heals the target of the tank's target, which is almost always the tank.
If both conditions prove false, then the heal defaults to the healer; you could modify the last part to read [target=tankname] so the heal defaults to the tank if you'd like.

I can see the value of a key to heal Toon A, another for Toon B, another for Toon C etc.
But 95% of the time, letting the macro choose who gets the heal works great.
For those times when it isn't optimal, I use Tranquility which because of talents is completely threat free and is available every 4 minutes.

[Seldum]

I can see theres many ways to handle this. I guess I have to fiddle around a bit to see what fits me personally the best.

Dreamstate spec. what is this? (im new to playing with druids)