Back into it...

[Snowy42]

Back into multiboxing (for the 3rd? 4th? time), can't stay away from this stuff lol.

I'm doing a 3-priest team, and no I'm not doing it just because Tim did! :P

One thing that I do have a lot of trouble with every time, looting! Every time I kill something, I need to loot it (and I don't always want to have FFA on - looting quests, etc) and I hate having to switch window, loot, switch window, loot, etc...

Is there an addon or a feature of something that I can use to help me with that? Maybe something that can quickly tell me who can loot my main's current target so I can interact with target? Lastly, when I do IWT on a corpse with one of the slaves, it just brings up the loot window. I don't want to make them auto-pickup all, I'd rather have them know if i've got shift down so they can loot all that way. Just so that it doesn't screw up my FTL setup.

ALSO

When my priests cast mind flay, they always stop following, which annoys me because i'm constantly forgetting about it and I don't realize until they're a mile behind. Anything to counter this?

Please note: I haven't got Jamba just yet, that's getting installed tonight, sorry if I mentioned anything that Jamba can simply fix.

Thanks for the help people!

[Ualaa]

Jamba can have loot set to FFA, when it is only your team, but set it back to party loot when others join the group.

Combine this with an IWT (Interact With Target) keybind.
Target the corpse and spam IWT until each has had a shot at it, generally one push per toon and possibly one extra push if they had to move to the corpse as well.
If CTM (Click to Move) is enabled, they'll move to the corpse or NPC they are to interact with, if they're out of range.

[madmattco]

So if i have CTM enabled and use my IWT on somthing it will run over and interact with it. That part i get. But will jamba tell the toon to automatically come back to me?

[Ualaa]

You can strobe with Jamba, which will be like hitting /Follow every (default 1 second).
I don't like Strobe, but it is a Jamba option.

I like Jamba for a lot of things.
Such as everyone mimicing the main for quests npc's, setting bind point, taking the same flights, auto selling grays, auto buying reagents, declining duals, warning if a toon stops following (outside of combat), etc.

It does a lot of things; I use maybe 30% of the addon.
But it is in sections, so enable what you like.

[madmattco]

Well I was just wondering. I use alot of Jamba but I am usually right on top of the mob im about to loot and i really cant stand CTM. Was just wondering if it would help things out any. I might give it a try.

[Ualaa]

I'm using a pair of mapped keys, built into my region/character swap.

They enable CTM for the slaves.
And disable CTM for the main.

Well, that is for my caster teams.



For my melee teams, I leave CTM enabled all the time.
Because they're melee and I want them to IWT to the mobs and stuff.

[Tim]

I just started using Jamba, and I can say, having it auto-follow AFTER combat is amazing. I love it. Definitely recommend it.

For looting, don't bother with CTM, just use interact with target and loot that way. Then I just use the standard follow mode for them to follow my main and the IWT to loot.

[Snowy42]

Installed Jamba last night, and my god does it make a difference!!! Using mind flay would always leave my slaves behind, but it's so EASY now! Grouping everyone up is easy, vendoring is easy, everything is so damn simple with jamba.

But it makes me wonder. How can the strobe following comply to ToS? It will automatically keep sending /follow regardless of the user's presence... I know it's a blizzard addon, so it complies with the API, but has the author found a loophole?

[Ualaa]

IWT is what makes it loot.
CTM is what allows your toon to do the IWT action, if they're not in range to do it.

Generally, most IWT stuff is pretty useless without CTM on.
But if your toons are right on top of whatever, IWT is still easier to broadcast (it is a keybind) than mouse broadcasting to click whatever for each toon (who are probably not exactly sync'd with their camera angles).



If you want to use Strobe...

Set it to not strobe in combat.
Set it to not strobe when any toon is eating/drinking.



However...

You can, within an hour of play, train yourself to manually auto follow, automatically.
Muscle memory comes very quickly.

Not having strobe on, allows you to manually move several toons at once.
Within a small area.
Take the 73-76 Grizzly Hills Dailies, as as example.
Without Strobe, you can bandage 3-4 soldiers at once by moving each toon a short distance and clicking the target and then the bandage.
Impossible with Strobe enabled.

Without Strobe, you could both herb and mine.
Or perhaps while you're skinning a corpse, run a single toon over to mineral/herb and get it.

Just need to be in the habit of hitting follow, after you're done.
I've mapped follow to a side mouse button.



In the end, either approach works.
Depending on how mindless/automatic you want boxing to be, versus how flexible you want your team to be.

Incidentally, auto follow every second without any input from the player... is a function allowed by the Warcraft API.
Sounds exactly like botting, except that it is a feature given to the player base by Blizzard, so is not botting.
Anything Blizzard includes in the API is approved, as long as it resides there.
Same as having distinct actions on both key press and key release, some can consider these to be "gray" areas, but Blizzard does not.

[Tim]

Blizzard has specifically allowed each action that an addon can do, so you don't need to worry about any rule application from there.

I personally set my /follow focus key in a real easy spot. Even tho Jamba will auto-follow after combat, I often move during combat, so that key is really useful to have in itself.