Keybind macros for on the fly "leader" swapping. Questions.

[Prophes0r]

The Nætureforce crew is now 39, and I am in the process of completely rewriting my macros so i use the shamans more fully. While I'm at it I think its time to actually start setting up my pvp contingencies. As of right now I'm done for if my "leader" gets waxed. the best i can do is re-target and spin my guys with left/right to try to keep them lined up. While surprise that that shaman following the druid is actually 4 shamans (and you now have 1/3 hp) is fine for world pvp and slightly higher than me gank defense, it's not nearly enough for BGs.

Right now i'm running 1 machine for my leader, and 1 for my 4 slaves. I have WASD unmapped on the slaves (W is mapped to the follow macro actualy) so that they dotn break follow. I currently do not use /assist or /focus as I find them unnessisary. I have /follow set to party1 but i'm rewriting it to follow the [target=party1,nodead][target=party2....... logic. I'm switching my characters attack spells to this logic as well.

/cast [exists][target=party1target,exists][target=party2target,exists][target=party3target,exists][target=party4target,exists] spell

this should cast at the current target, or go through the rest of the party members and cast at the first target it finds. and since you lose target when you die this should work fine.

My thoughts were a macro that i could use to reassign "control" to a character and create a new leader. I'm trying to set up 1 macro that first set all bindings to a slave binding, then used a /stopmacro to stop unless the party members ahead of you in line are dead, then mapped your WASD keys back to movement keys.

I started playing with

/run SetBinding("key", "action");

and it works well. BUT i noticed that it does not work in combat. now i KNOW theres GOT to be a way to change your bindings in combat, because you can just go to the keybindings screen and it works immediatly. does anyone have any idea how i can do this in a macro or with an addon?

EDIT. just tryed LoadBindings thinking that i could just set up two full keybindings and just swap between them with some logic. This also does not work in combat. Any suggestions on who to get WASD to work with just 1 character at a time, and have the others (eigther all or just the live ones) use follow?

[Djarid]

there is NO way to change keybindings in combat

changing keybindings is a protected function and so is only available to Blizzard interface components while in combat.

[BobGnarly]

I run a similar "party1" targeting system.

First thing you should know, since you mention pvp in your post, is that this system can be problematic in BGs. If you don't get raid leader, and if whomever does get it isn't cooperative, you won't be able to get your chars all in a group which invalidates this approach.

Having said that, I really like the system overall since it leaves assist for other tasks.

What I do is just have something like "/cast [harm][target=party1target] lightning bolt" for my slaves. While the first conditional could be used to manually assign targets for the slaves, that's not really how I use it. I use it because if you are the leader, then party1 is NOT the leader. This makes a sort of incestuous targeting problem (which is probably the main downside to this paradigm), and my solution is just to use the current target (which obviously my main will have) if it exists and can be harmed.

Since I don't pass <TAB> and use <TAB> almost exclusively for target selection, and have my follow macro also target my main (which can't be "harm"ed), this actually works really well.

The last part of the puzzle is that I wrote a mod that does many things, one of which is a sort of "give me leader" functionality. When I press the button, it broadcasts a message in a channel to the entire group. When the current group leader sees that message, it promotes the requesting toon to leader. In fact, I bind this to the same key as I use in keyclone to PiP between toons, so it's a one button switch for the PiP and to make that toon the leader. So if my main dies, I hit F2 which switches my first slave toon to main and promotes him to leader. From there all my macros do the right things. One button press!

[Prophes0r]

I understand that this is a protected function, thats why i asked if anyone had any ideas of another way to do this. From what i have heard about keyclone's PiP functionality, that may be the way to do it. But I'm really against paying $20 a machine for a program with such a small development "team" and such big problems with some of its new versions that don't seem to be getting fixed.

While I realize however that there may be no other way but to buy some new hardware; I'm just not that committed to this at the moment. Theres got to be a creative solution. That lets me do this with 2-3 computers (5 gaming machines is stretching it even for one of my geekly stature).

[drak]

You could try HotKeyNet......it works really well....would do exactly what you want and has a very responsive development team. It is also free!

It is now MUCH easier to setup than in the old days - http://www.hotkeynet.com/p/download.html

[Deshu]

I'm curious as to why you find /focus is unnecessary? Granted it's not needed to get the job done... but for what you're looking for, it seems ideal.

Here's what I mean. I play 4 characters and I use X-Keys Desktop (not needed for this but love programmable buttons). I have 4 buttons setup for focus commands. Focus #1 - Focus #4. I then create macros on each of my characters to tie to those buttons. I'll use my Jayy's as examples. Focus #1 is set as Ajayy, and so on.

When I group up, I hit Foucs #1 and everyone is focusing on Ajayy. All my spell macros are set to /assist [target=focus].

Therefore, no matter who is leading, all spells only cast at the target of the focused one. So, in battle if Ajayy dies. I simply hit my macro Focus #2 and all my remaining slaves will target whatever #2 (Bjayy) is targeting. I then simply hit the attack spells and they all go right back to battling as if Ajayy never existed.



This has worked perfectly for me in PvP encounters. It also seems to be a flawless system for the exact issue you're looking for. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong or give your insight to it, but it's a tried and proven method for me. Just trying to help out. 8)

[BobGnarly]

I don't believe that there is any way to do this while in combat. The reason I say that is that Blizzard specifically doesn't want you doing that, they said so when they made the API private.

Now it's possible that you might find a loophole somewhere, but I would caution you that "there lies dragons" since you are trying to circumvent the protection mechanism that they put in place, and they've been very clear in the past what they think of that.

[Deshu]

I don't believe that there is any way to do this while in combat. The reason I say that is that Blizzard specifically doesn't want you doing that, they said so when they made the API private.

Now it's possible that you might find a loophole somewhere, but I would caution you that "there lies dragons" since you are trying to circumvent the protection mechanism that they put in place, and they've been very clear in the past what they think of that.

Just so I'm clear... are you talking to me or OP?

I'm pretty sure that the method I listed above does work while in combat. I will test it tonight to confirm 100% however.

[Deshu]

I'm pretty sure that the method I listed above does work while in combat. I will test it tonight to confirm 100% however.

I just confirmed it. I can switch Focus targets in mid fight. To me... this is a perfectly functional, and non-threatening to the rules, aternative choice to what the OP is seeking. It means re-doing all intended macros, but it works flawlessly for me so far.

[BobGnarly]

I don't believe that there is any way to do this while in combat. The reason I say that is that Blizzard specifically doesn't want you doing that, they said so when they made the API private.

Now it's possible that you might find a loophole somewhere, but I would caution you that "there lies dragons" since you are trying to circumvent the protection mechanism that they put in place, and they've been very clear in the past what they think of that.

Just so I'm clear... are you talking to me or OP?

I'm pretty sure that the method I listed above does work while in combat. I will test it tonight to confirm 100% however.

Sorry, yeah, I was referring to the OP and the notion of changing macros during combat.