I must be missing a vital part of my brain....

[The Rupt Brothers]

... but for some reason I do not understand the actual concept of the whole /focus command.

I understand what it means but I do not understand how this is setup to work, when for example your main dies. I have read the posts about it and wiki but the info is on the actual commands.
It must be something with the fact that english is not my mothertoungue and that my IQ is lower then Forrest Gumps.

Really would appriciate if someone has a link to a page / thread that explains it in detail and that has clear examples of different variations / situations where they would be used. I tried to search but I could not find a thread that I would atleast understand.

Sorry for asking it here and lacking the capasity understand what seems to be a easy issue for even the most common MB'er.

Maybe I am just too stupid for advanced multiboxing :P

[Kalashnikov]

because when 1 died or your main, you change focus and the rest that are alive will assist the new focus with healing or damaging its target.

[Djarid]

somewhere, somewhere in a field in hampshire

ok, focus is almost exactly the same as target, the only differences are target has
1. default key binding
2. is default target for spells
3. target is published to the server

Those combined make target very easy to change and misuse

Focus takes more effort to assign and can only be used as the target for a spell using macros it is also a local only unitid, which means no one will know who a player has focus.

wow is quite clever with unitids (player, target, focus, party1 etc) it allows you to append them together and it will keep parsing them until null is returned.
so if you have a mob as your target, you can also see their target using the unitid targettarget (that is your target's target) you can keep going too e.g.

targettargettargettargettarget... however the usefulness dimishes.

Now as focus is a local unitid which can store (allow you to focus on) a 2nd mob it can be used in place of the first (and only the first) target e.g.

focustarget and focustargettarget which is your focus's target and your focus's target's target

still with me?

Ok so why use focus and not target?
Well, except for some PVP situations where attacking your focus is useful for surprise, focus is generally better for a placeholder for your main character as it is a lot harder to accidentally change focus.
Target can be used in all situations where focus would normally be used (such as CC), providing all your spells are setup as macros using [target=focustarget], which tells the spell to use your focus's target as the target of the spell.

does this help at all?

[The Rupt Brothers]

Thanks for the help in trying to get me to understand this better. I do understand the basic concept but I really had a hard time seeing the whole picture in it eventhough I've now been using in PvP for some time (still can't get it to work properly when my main dies).

I always seem to be here reading before going to bed, which definitly is not a good idea, so my brain is asleep by the time I try to figure out what I've been reading.

That did clear up a few of my "empty spots" with the focus issue, so a big thanks again.

[HPB]

Easiest way to think of a focus is that it is a 'saved target'. My first experience with using focus was for shackle spells (some use it for sheeping). I created a macro that when I right clicked on it, it set my current target, a mob as my focus. Later on, left clicking on it shackled the mob. I could then target my tank, heal him over and over again, pausing to click on the shackle button now and then to reshackle. I no longer had the mob targeted, but could still shackle him. I don't know if that helps or if I'm rambling, sorry.