Using 'party1target' instead of 'focustarget'

[Ozbert]

A few days ago it occurred to me that when in a party, for each member the 'party1' unitid always points to the party leader. With that in mind I wondered if 'party1' would be an effective alternative to 'focus' in macros. You can simply set the party leader to whoever your main is, and the other party members would attack his target. If the main dies, just change the party leader to one of the remaining members and carry on killing. This would free up 'focus' for other useful stuff such as crowd control.

So, I set about modifying all my macros to use 'party1target' instead of 'focustarget' and tried it out. It worked... mostly.

The four clones attacked the main's target fine, but the main itself wouldn't cast anything. It just threw up "You have no target" errors. This is when I discovered that 'party1' is the leader for all members except for the leader himself. For the leader, 'party1' actually pointed at one of the clones, which having nothing targeted resulted in the errors.

A quick change to the macro seems to have resolved this. I've changed from:

/cast [target=party1target] Lightning Bolt

to:

/cast [target=party1target,exists] [] Lightning Bolt

Now, when the leader finds that 'party1target' doesn't exist, it just casts on it's own target instead.

This all seemed fairly straightforward, but I'm surprised I've not seen more multiboxers using 'party1' instead of 'focus' - it seems to make more sense, to me at least. Are there other problems with this method that I've not discovered yet?

[iPooper]

You can also put there name instead of party1, but whats the [] before lightning bolt for?

[Maz]

The line means: If party1target exists, cast Lightning Bolt at it, otherwise, cast Lightning Bolt (at my current target). It's equivalent to:

/cast [target=party1target,exists] Lightning Bolt; Lightning Bolt

Which you used to see a lot.

Oz, you'd probably be better off with:

/cast [target=party1target,harm,nodead] [] Lightning Bolt

[Ozbert]

You can also put there name instead of party1, but whats the [] before lightning bolt for?

Well yes, but hardcoding character names into macros isn't very flexible.

[Chrysanthe]

Well, the only flaw in using party1 is that you really have to switch leadership to one of your other toons once the party leader dies.
I'd still use focus, since passing leadership isn't a good idea, especially when you're PvPing.
Focus so far was very helpful, but sometimes I keep forgetting to hit the very first macro, to set the focus, when I invite my five Shammies :P
That caused a few wipes already, and I was wondering why the heck my clones wouldn't cast... <No target, dammit!> :cursing:

My Macros look like these:

Main Macro for saving focus on all characters:
(everyone has as many macros of this as you have toons, with different names..)

/focus <name>
/follow focus

DMG Spell for all toons:

#showtooltip
 /cast [target=focustarget] <Harm Spell>

Healing Spell for everyone:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focustargettarget, exists, nodead] [target=target, exists, nodead] [target=player] <Healing Spell>; [target=target, exists, dead] <Rez Spell>

Well yes, but hardcoding character names into macros isn't very flexible.

Well, since you already know your toons and are most likely not going to change your group, you should use names in Macros, unless you tend change the names of your characters every now and then...
And this should even work in raids, where your toons aren't in the same group.

[Djarid]

Party1target was the common PVE method of assigning targets. The problem is that as soon as you try to PVP and have your clones follow someone else you realise the flaws. This is why focus has become the defacto standard.

Some of us like to overload the functions and use Vyndree's method in macros

/cast [target=focustarget, harm][target=party1target, harm][] spell

This lets you use party1 when no focus is set (or focus is being used for CC), focus when needed (eg battlegrounds) and will use assigned targets if neither of the previous have an [harm] target.

[Maz]

Deleted: This is covered better in another thread.

[Tdog]

I don't ever pvp so I don't have a need for focustarget macros and perfer to just leave them in for party1. HOWEVER if I ever did start to pvp I would simply use 2 bars. One with party1target macros for pve and one with focustarget macros for pvp.

[Djarid]

As always in multiboxing, there are more than one way to skin a cat, but why bother with 2 bars when the tried and tested (thanks to Vyndree)

/cast [target=focustarget][target=party1target][] spell

means you don't need to?