Macro Help

[gavennn]

I got a quick question for the macro gods here =)

I heard about a macro that will let you set focus. A friend of mine that use to tank would set this focus on X. I don't get to talk to him as often as i like as he travels a lot because of work.

I was wondering first of all what does the focus target allow me to do as a tank with that target. If creating the focus target would help in my tanking in anyway, and if it would, how would I create and effectively use this macro.


Thanks in advance for any or no help

[gavennn]

nobody ?

[loquatious]

Ok try this

/Focus Target


that will set your focus on the current target

/target focus
/startattack
/cast CreamPie(Rank 4)
/yell Wooo Hoooo I attacked %t

This will target your selected focus target , throw a cream pie at them, and yell your mocking battle cry

Now I bet there are ways of telling if you actually have a focus target but thats too much work to look up

[gavennn]

Hi, Thanks for the response. What does the focus allow me to do with that mob though. does it allow me to do things to it without actually being my primary target?

[Psysica]

Afaik, its just to see what ever focus your current target has. You cant do anything about it, its just a view function.

Im not sure if it has any use in tanking ? (If it has I would like to know also.)

But I know that it has some good use in the arena especially. You will have a much better understanding of what your enemy are about to do, and in most cases be able to counterattack that.

[Taiglin]

You can focus mobs or toons and will get a visual if you click on them. Default UI will show them with a whiteish border. The beauty of using focus, like you were thinking, is allowing you to cast on or reference them at a later time w/o changing your current target. I would say the most prevalent use of focus is for CCers. For example your mage targets a mob, sets the focus, sheeps, blasts a mob in the kill order, resheeps w/o changing current target. Any number of ways this can be applied. On my hunter I focus the MT and then use a macro like the following to misdirect

/cast [target=focus] misdirection

It saves a huge amount of time especially during what could be a time sensitive situation. For something more complex I use the following macro on my priest to shackle

#showtooltip shackle undead
/clearfocus [button:1, noexists]
/focus [button:1, harm]
/stopcasting
/cast [button:2, target=focus] shackle undead; shackle undead
/qt 40 Shackle

In a nut shell I target my shackle target. Regular clicking will both set my focus and cast shackle. When I need to reshackle I simply right click the same button. Incidentally the last line is for the quartz addon and will start a small timer bar of 40 seconds which is my visual on how much time I have left (with a little wiggle room) before I need to reshackle. That is created whether I left or right click the button.

Many unit frame mods anymore have a focus target window that pops up or you could get something like focusframe (iirc) which is a standalone focus unit frame mod vs the more comprehensive ones like ag_unitframes.

All that said (and sorry for the wall of text) I am sort of surprised your tank buddy would focus what often is the second mob in kill order. You could set up a focus macro similar to the oft mentioned mouseover macros people might use for sunders or whatever though. Another use I have read on these boards is to focus your healer for an intervene. I guess in the bigger scope of things the question is what would you want to do with a focused target?