Movement Issues


I'm not talking about just running around and doing quest stuff. Long-term movement should always be manged through the follow command. While you can, and in some cases should, "pass" movement keys to all windows, even the slightest variance in latency, position or facing will cause your toons to get progressively more scattered. But, since most things won't just stand still and let us kill them, we have to adapt. So here's some common issues you are likely to run across and the usual solutions multiboxers employ.


Facing

Issue - You got fearbombed or the mob moved and suddenly your slaves are stuck facing the wrong way.
Solution - There's actually several options.

1. Have your slaves follow and then break follow. Just a standard roundup where you quickly tap your follow hotkey and then quickly break follow. Drawback - Follow doesn't have a terribly long range. You may end up running all over the place on your main to round everyone up.

2. Focusing Lens macros. Very simply, a macro that makes your slaves use a Focusing Lens. The Focusing Lens will automatically turn you towards your target when it casts. Drawback - Focusing Lenses are crafted items, and while they have a lot of charges, you will still need the materials and someone to make them for you. They also have a very long range, so you may be facing the right way, but be too far away to actually get back to attacking.

3. Interact With Target. You'd use this just like you would with option 1. tap your IWT key and then quickly tap another movement key to make your slaves stop running toward the target. Drawback - Can't really think of any. IWT has a much further range than Follow and triggers movement. It's the best of both previous options with none of the drawbacks.



Hurty Stuff

Issue - Pools of shadowy death. Walls of fire. Spikes of stone. Everyone knows by now that you have to get out of the hurty stuff. Easier said than done when you're dealing with more than one toon.
Solution - There's few things you can keep in mind to make stuff like this easier.

1. Moving backwards is SLOW. Don't try to backpeddal out of things that hurt. Move forward or strafe out.

2. Follow means delays. Just because your main is running to safety doesn't mean that your slaves are. They're going to stand around in the owie stuff until they tether and start following....usually through the hurty stuff that your main is running away from. Sometimes it's better to just push forward with the arrow keys or strafe.

3. Follow Strobing can be your friend. If you use Jamba, you can enable follow strobing through a macro command. In high-movement fights like the jousting event in TotC, I'll turn on follow strobing and use it to launch my slaves via charge and Jamba's follow strobing will kick in and rubberband my slaves back to me. For the first two bosses in Heroic Tol'vir, I put my whole team on follow strobe and kite the boss around backwards so that my tank is hitting him from the front and my slaves are hitting him from behind while moving, keeping them out of the way of bombs and fire trails.

4. Click to Move can also be your friend. With Click to Move on, you can quickly move over to the appropriate screen and just click on a clear area, or even turn on your mouse repeating to click for everyone.


Phasing

The most common gripe about travel is hitting a phase line and losing all your slaves. Not much you can do about that, unfortunately. However, you can make it a little less painful.

This is another task for Jamba's Follow Strobing. My mount macro automatically turns on strobing so when I'm traveling, I don't have to worry about follow breaking.

Anytime I cross a phase line, I press my forward arrow to push everyone through it. Jamba's follow strobing will then kick in again and everyone is back on follow.

Phases themselves are usually accompanied by a subzone change. Whenever I'm in an area that I know uses phasing, I'll keep an eye out for the new subzone to flash on my screen. That's my signal to use my forward arrow and hold up for a second to make sure everyone is through the phase and back on follow.

Jamba also has the ability to send alerts when you lose follow on your slaves, which can be configured in Jamba > Team > Follow. Or you can use the team display to show follow status. I have my team window set up right next to my mini-map, so when I'm running around looking for nodes to gather, the follow status is directly in my line of vision.


Movement Speed

Several classes have passive speed boosts to either normal movement or mounted movement. This is something you will want to take into consideration as most don't effect your whole party. Spending points in movement-boosting talents might seem like a good idea, but it's not really saving any time if you have to constantly "wait up" or go back and pick up a toon who lost follow because your main moves faster than they can. Or worse, watching them get stuck on things or falling off cliffs because they try to cut corners to keep up with the main.

In cases like this, people will sometimes opt to lead with a slave while traveling. You can also opt not to take speed boost on your main or you can use speed-boost enhancements like boot enchants, riding crops or mithril spurs. Druids and shamans can also drop into travel form to keep up with a main on foot. Finally, you can use multi-person mounts and have the slower toons pair up with the faster toons so they don't get left behind, which is especially useful if you are using a high-level toon to boost a low-level toon since mount speed is inherent now and you can no longer "downgrade" your mount to get a slower speed.