No leader/master/whatever.

[Mono]

Good day

I'm relatively new to the boxing scene. I'm running two clients on one PC with Octopus as my means of controlling both clients. My setup is built around the idea of being able to control from either character, with a single key press being all that is required to swap the roles of master and puppet character. Is this somewhat unusual? Whenever I read people describing their set, they've got a designated leader, and even though most can switch on the fly to another character, this is always a temporary measure. Essentially while I always have a leader and a puppet, neither character has a lasting designation as one or the other.

Is this method just uncommon, or is it not practised at all?

If others play this way, I'd love to discuss it further with them, otherwise, I'd like to go into much greater detail on my setup in the hopes that others may find it to their liking.

[Frosty]

I'm just theory-crafting.. but you could set 2 keys up with a macro that sets the second partymember to leader and just just macros on both toons like:

(not at home so you'd need to search for correct macro use)
F1 key = :
/promote_to_leader <toon_name>

F2 key = :
/promote_to_leader <toon2_name>

Follow & assist for both:
/cleartarget
/target party1
/follow (change this to /assist for your assist key).

[KvdM]

I'm using a similar setup myself and I think a lot of single class multi-boxers (can) do the same. To me it doesn't really matter which character is the current focus char, but I usually do end up with the same char having focus (acting as a main) because it simply is the char that at startup gets assigned to the main window region. For pvp I would even recommend switching chars a lot, because enemy players usually find out very quickly which character you are controlling.

[Ken]

@ Mono:

Most multiboxers that set up their system properly, have their macros in such a way that any of their characters can be played with. It usually only requires 1 button press to inform all the characters which is the main character (e.g. setting the focus). This same button sometimes activates a screen/window swap also.
After that, macros can be set up like:
/cast [target=focustarget,exists,harm] [exists,harm] Something
This way you cast something to the focus target if it exists and is harmful. When this character is just acting 'normally'(without a focus/focustarget), then it will just cast the spell as usual.

@ Frosty:

It's better to use /focus unless you only do PvE. In PvP(battlegrounds), you can't guarantee that one of your characters is the leader.

[Frosty]

@ Frosty:

It's better to use /focus unless you only do PvE. In PvP(battlegrounds), you can't guarantee that one of your characters is the leader.

I only do PvE.

[Ken]

I only do PvE. ;)

Then think of me when you suddenly decide that you want to try out PvP and realize that you have to change all your macros :P

[Negative1]

@ Mono:

Most multiboxers that set up their system properly, have their macros in such a way that any of their characters can be played with. It usually only requires 1 button press to inform all the characters which is the main character (e.g. setting the focus). This same button sometimes activates a screen/window swap also.
After that, macros can be set up like:
/cast [target=focustarget,exists,harm] [exists,harm] Something
This way you cast something to the focus target if it exists and is harmful. When this character is just acting 'normally'(without a focus/focustarget), then it will just cast the spell as usual.

^^ I absolutely agree with this information as it is exactly how i run my setup.

Basically numpad 1-4 has a macro for each character that is simply:
/focus toon1
/follow focus
And for toon1 the macro is like such
/clearfocus (this is important otherwise toon1 will try to cast on his old focus' target)


The same button is setup for my PIP to switch toon1 into the main window.

This makes gathering quests a bit more tolerable.

Cheers

[Ken]

@Negative1:

I have a variation on that:

1 button with shift/ctrl modifiers to set focus. This button is executed on all 4 clients:

/clearfocus
/focus [modifier:ctrl,modifier:shift,target=Avarell] [modifier:ctrl, target=Willyam] [modifier:shift, target=Jeck] [target=Joeh]

After that I press this button on the main toon's window only (this key doesnt get replicated):

/clearfocus

That way the focus can identify itself as focus in situations like this:

/stopmacro [target=focus, noexists]
/follow focus

This macro aborts when there is not a focus set.

Another benefit is that you save macro space (having 4 macros versus 2)

[Mono]

The major conditional that I use in all my macros is which action bar is up.

The character I am controlling uses actionbar 1, and the puppet is using actionbar 2. I have a macro that sits on the very end of both bars that swaps between them, which is how I switch between characters, and each macro looks like this:

/assist [bar:2] focus
/cast spellname

Originally I just had the actual spell on bar 1, and the assist macro on bar 2, but I rewrote all the macros into that format so that they could function on my secondary actionbar.

Both characters have each other set as the focus, so theoretically I COULD just use character names in place of focus, to free that up for other uses.

[Frosty]

I only do PvE.

Then think of me when you suddenly decide that you want to try out PvP and realize that you have to change all your macros :P

I can't begin to explain to you how terrible I am at PvP with only 1 toon, let alone 5. I gave up PvP a LLOooooonnngggg time ago. 8)