Question about Focus Changing and Fast Game Switch

[daddar]

I currently have my 5 box team set to change focus whenever I press f6-f10. f6 is my paladin, f7-f9 are my shamans and f10 is my druid. I also want to use these keys to fast game switch to the character everyone in my party is now focusing on.

However, I cannot get the f keys to broadcast to all clients when I keep fast game switch enabled. If I disable it, the macro I have set up works perfectly. For example, the macro I have set up to the f6 key looks like this:

/focus Freddee
/p !!!Focus Changed to Freddee (F6)!!!

I SHOULD see all my characters then focus all on Freddee, everyone should say in chat '!!!Focus Changed to Freddee (F6)!!!' and finally my main screen should switch to that character.

I really want to get this going because it would work good I think, but I cannot figure out how to fix it.

Does anyone know a way around this, or a better suggestion for setting focus maybe?

[Tim]

Hello there,

I'd say you are VERY close to doing things optimal, but for 1 small little thing:

You will want your Fast Game Switch key to be different from your focus key. The reason is due to WoW server lag. Let me explain and it'll make perfect sense.

While it may not seem often, having 5 toons makes not often happen five times more, and you will often find yourself in a situation where one of your guys lags to the WoW server in a command, if even for 1/10th of a second, and it usually will never matter since most people button mash for things like spells, casting, etc.

The problem is, if you make the Fast Game Switch and bind the same keys to your focus, if one of your guys doesn't issue his focus correctly, then you will have 4 guys focusing right, 1 guy focusing wrong, and the only way to fix it is to Fast Game Switch again and then back.

So your best bet is to do this:

Set your fast game switch to an easy key, such as F12, F11, F10, etc.

Then set your focus macro to a key very similar, such as SHIFT+F12, SHIFT+F11, etc.

Then when you swap guys, just hit mash SHIFT+F12 for a split second and at the same time practically do the F12 and you'll be perfect.

Not only does this completely fix any issue of focus command lag, but you will also be able to main control one of your guys without doing a Fast Game Switch. Trust me, you will find situations where this will be very valuable, such as being in an area that is going apenuts with graphics/effects where you think a game switch might delay you just enough time to mess things up (eg, standing in the middle of a 5x multiboxed Blizzard, trust me, that will cause almost any PC to lag hardcore).

Thats it