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HOWTO: Click Bar Healing

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bob

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Post Wed Jan 21, 2015 2:12 pm

HOWTO: Click Bar Healing

Creating a Healing Click Bar

To create a Healing Click Bar for your team which allows you to heal with little effort, there are two choices in ISBoxer. Menus or Click Bars.

There is little difference between the two features in usage, but in configuration there is a lot, and menus are far more versatile in the long run, but are missing a couple of features that are Click Bars have.

So why would you use Click Bars? Two main reasons stand out.
  1. You can execute a mapped key on mouseover (i.e. rolling the cursor onto the button can do something).
  2. You can use the right mouse button distinct from the left button.
How does this relate? Well the behaviour we want is Target Slot, perform Heal. With a menu to ensure that this fires every time as expected you will probably end up needing to double click on the menu button. So in this case, the Click Bar will be useful because we will use the mouseover for the Target action and the Click action on the button for the heal!.

Anyway enough of that and onto the good stuff.

As the guide progresses the instructions become less detailed about each individual step because they are a repeat of previous steps and you should be getting familiar with the actions.

TOC... (yes this looks a lot, but there are pictures!)

    Create a Key Map
    Create an Action Target Group
    Assigning to the team
      Assigning the Key Map
      Assigning the Action Target Group
    Mapped Keys
    Creating the Click Bar
      Creating Buttons
      Displaying the Healing Bar
    Mapped Key Step Synchronisation
      A fix for something not working
    Enable/Disable Key Maps
    Positioning
    Finally


Create a Key Map

A Key Map is used to hold the collection of Mapped Keys that will be used to instruct the healer to target each toon and to perform the heal actions. To keep this separate and easy to maintain, a specific Key Map will be created.

To create this, right click on the Key Maps node in the top left pane, select New Key Map
Image

Name this new Key Map “Healing”.
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Select the new Healing Key Map in the top left pane, and in the lower left pane, select the Healing node at the top. In the lower right pane, set the “Execute a Step when the Hotkey is” option to “pressed”.
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This option is a default, it can be overridden in the specific Mapped Key settings if needed.

It is desirable to have the “Execute” option set to Pressed for use in the Click Bar. This is because the mouseover option on a Click Bar can be used in a variety of ways. For the purposes of the Healing Bar when the mouse moves over the Click Bar the Targeting of a slot will occur, this is like the press of a hot key. If a Mapped Key was set to execute on release, then the Mapped Key will not execute a step until you mouseoff the Click Bar.


Create an Action Target Group

To save reconfiguring things if/when teams and slots are changed around, an Action Target Group (ATG) will be used to direct the game commands. The healer will be put into this ATG so they will end up as the recipient.

The use of an ATG removes character and slot dependant targeting of actions in the Mapped Keys. This means that the healer does not have to be in the same slot for every character set, and it becomes possible that you can have multiple healers all use this same setup without additional configuration by adding them to the ATG (it will be necessary to add the Healing Key Map to any additional Character Sets). An ATG makes this configuration easily portable to different Character Sets/Characters, and even Games.

This guided setup does have limitations. Because I am keeping it simple, it does not cater for when there are multiple healers in the same character set that perform the same healing capabilities and are members of this ATG. Just to be clear, you can do this, and without a lot of work; this guide just doesn’t step you through it.

To create the ATG, right click on Action Target Groups, and select New Action Target Group. Call this ATG “GroupHeals”.
Image
Image

You should avoid spaces in ATG names as it can cause issues with advanced targeting options in ISBoxer.


Assigning to the team

Now that a Key Map and ATG have been created, they should be assigned to your Character Set and healer Character,

Assigning the Key Map
Select your Character Set in the top left pane, then in the lower left pane, select Key Maps. On the lower right pane, highlight the Healing Key Map.
Image

The Always On, Combat, Non-combat Key Maps should already be highlighted if you used the Quick Start Wizard to create your character set.


Assigning the Action Target Group
Select your healer character from the Characters node in the top left pane, then in the lower left pane, select Action Target Groups. On the lower right pane, highlight the GroupHeals ATG.
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It is possible that you already have other Action Target Groups already highlighted. Leave these highlighted so you don’t break other actions.


Mapped Keys

To get the healer to target each slot, Mapped Keys are required that will get the healer to target each character (including themselves).

To create the Mapped Keys, select the Healing Key Map, then in the lower left pane, right click the Mapped Keys node and select New Mapped Key.
Image

Call this “GroupHeal Target Slot 1”.
In the lower left pane, select the 1 node under steps.
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In the lower right pane, right click Actions, and select Keystroke Actions -> Variable Keystroke Action.
ISBoxer usually configures WOW to use macros for Follow/Assist rather than other games that need to do Target character + Follow/Assist command, so this action won’t work unless you have configured Variable Keystrokes for your character set. If you did not configure the Variable Keystrokes for your WOW character set, then you will need to add a Named World of Warcraft Macro Action instead.
Image

This will add an action with the text “<NO KEY> -> <NO TARGET>”. The properties of the new action now need to be set. To do this, select the new action.

On the right you will see the properties for the action. In the Target drop down, you can select “Group (all of):GroupHeals”, or you can just type in “GroupHeals” (this is what the drop down does for you anyway).

In the Variable Keystroke drop down, select “Target Slot 1”.

If configuring a Named WOW Macro Action, select the “/targetexact {FTL}” macro in the WoW Macro set and set the appropriate modifiers for the desired Target - you can find these on the slot settings for your character set.

This Variable Keystroke is used in conjunction with the virtualisation capabilities of ISBoxer to dynamically target your character in Slot 1 regardless of who the active character is. The initial run through the Quick Setup Wizard should have configured this for you, or if needed, you have corrected it to enable the “Follow/Assist from any slot” function. If this is not in place, you will need to configure it, or you will need to use whatever direct targeting mechanism you have configured.

The action should end up like the below.
Image

Next, it will be needed to repeat this again, a separate Mapped Key to target each of your slots.

You should end up with a list of Mapped Keys that looks like the below.
Image

The next step will be a bit more specific to your in game configuration. We will set up 2 different heals for my healer to cast. In game, these heal skills are selected using the hot keys 1 and 2 on my healer.

Create a New Mapped Key, and call it “SimpleHeal1”, this time select Keystroke Action -> Keystroke Action.
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In the keystroke action properties set the Target as “GroupHeals”, and the Key Combination to 1.
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Repeat this process again and create another Mapped Key “SimpleHeal2”.

If you have multiple healer Characters in the GroupHeals ATG, and that are also in the same Character Set, then you might think that you could tick the Round-robin option here as a simple method to switch between the healers. You could; but then to prevent all healers from targeting the character to be healed, you might then want to tick the Round-robin option on the targeting Mapped Keys, and that would be wrong, as you will likely end up with synchronisation issues between which healer is targeting and which is casting the heal.

There should now be 6 Mapped Keys at this point.
Image


Creating the Click Bar

In the top left pane, right click Click Bars, select New Click Bar
Image

Call this new Click Bar “Healing Bar”.

Making sure that it is selected in the top left pane, in the lower left pane, select the “Healing Bar” node. In the lower right pane, set the Starting Position property for the bar.
Image

This is just guess work at this point, unless you have something to provide you screen co-ordinates, but it is usually preferable to not have a Click Bar on the 0,0 position because it is just an annoying spot to move it from. For the moment set to 500,500 (or your choice where it will fit within your region).

You can move Click Bars around in game using the ISBoxer in game GUI, and save their position.


Creating Buttons
In the lower left pane, select the Buttons node. You will have a view that looks similar to the below.
Image

This is where all the fun is at. First, set the “Grid Rows x Cells”. In this case, I have 4 characters, and 2 heal spells, so I will create a 4x1 grid. You might think that I would need a 4x2 grid, but I don’t because I can set different click actions on each buttons on my click bar!

Extend the size of the buttons, so the character names can be visible in the click bars so it will be possible to tell who each button heals. Set this to 150x32 at this stage.
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To set the properties of each button, you need to select that button. Go ahead and click on button 1,1.

Set the Text Property to “{SLOT1}”.

{SLOT1} is a special value that ISBoxer will use to get the character name of the character in Slot 1. This means you can use this Click Bar on multiple character sets, and not have to change anything, and the right name will be there!

Set the Text Style to something you can see (the default of black is usually difficult on to see on most backgrounds).

If you change the font size to be larger, it may not fit into the button height and width, and you will end up with apparently empty buttons. If you do increase the font size, you will need to increase the button size too. For the moment, 12px will do.

In the right lower part of the properties pane, in the Mapped Key action pane, select Left Click, then click on the little < arrow to the right.
Image

If you don’t see the Mapped Key action pane, right click on the button in the black area.

Click the < arrow to open the Mapped Key picker.

Set the Target to Window:Current (or “self” if you prefer to type it), the Key Map to “Healing”, and the Mapped Key to “SimpleHeal1”
Image

The Target is set to “self” because the SimpleHeal1 Mapped Key already has a specific target of the GroupHeals ATG. Setting to “self” means that the SimpleHeal1 Mapped Key will be run on the character that the button is clicked on, and the execution of the Mapped Key will in turn redirect the to the ATG. You could do this around the other way if you wanted to and have the action in the SimpleHeal1 Mapped Key target “self”, and the Click Bar target the GroupHeals ATG. This would produce the same result in this simple setup. Advanced setups require careful thought about how tiered Mapped Keys map to the correct target, and at which point, as you can get some unexpected behaviour when it is wrong.

Add the SimpleHeal2 Mapped Key as a second action to the button.

Right click on the button and it will add a new Mapped Key action. Set this to Right Click, and then set the Mapped Key to SimpleHeal2.
You should end up with something like this.
Image

At the bottom of the button properties pane, you should notice a Mouseover option.
Image

Click the < arrow to the right.
Set the following properties:
  • Target: "self" or [Window:Current]
  • Key Map: Healing
  • Mapped Key: GroupHeal Target Slot 1
Image

Repeat the button configuration for all the buttons.
You will need to set the Text of the respective buttons to be {SLOT2}, {SLOT3} etc as appropriate, and the Mouseover mapped key needs to be respective “GroupHeal Target Slot x” Mapped Key.


Displaying the Healing Bar

The (almost) final part. You could assign this Click Bar directly to your Character Set, and it would be there when you load it up. But what about if you want to be able to remove it from your screen at times. What about if it happens to be positioned in an annoying place on the character select screen? Well, you can use a Mapped Key for the Show/Hide instead.

Select the Healing Key Map, and create a New Mapped Key.
Call this one “Show Hide Healing Bar”
This one will have a Hotkey so you can press it to display the Healing Bar. I’ve used F10 for this guide.
Image

Select step 1 of the Mapped Key, right click Actions, select Click Bar Actions -> Click Bar State Action.
Set the following properties.
    Target: Window: All w/Current (or “all” if you prefer typing).
    Click Bar: Healing Bar, On

Image

Create a new step in the Mapped Key.
Right click the Steps node, select New Step
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Select step 2, create a new action Click Bar Actions -> Click Bar State Action.
Set the following properties:
    Target: Window: All w/Current (or “all” if you prefer typing).
    Click Bar: Healing Bar, Off.

You should have something that looks like this.
Image



All done!!. Well, almost….


Mapped Key Step Synchronisation

We now have a problem.
Which is; when you hit the hotkey and load the Healing Bar it turns on across all the slots/characters at once, and turns off again across them all at once, but because each slot/character has a copy of each mapped key (or at least the current state of the mapped keys) we get a synchronisation problem.

e.g. If I am on the Tank in Slot 1, and press F10, it loads the Click Bar across all the toons. Now if I switch to one of the DPS guys as the leader (maybe the Tank died), this slot doesn’t know I pressed F10 to load the Click Bar already, even though it is displayed, so if I press F10 to hide the Click Bar, it doesn’t do anything. Well actually it does, it runs Step 1 of the Mapped Key, and displays the Click Bar (which because it was already displayed, does nothing), because that is where DPS guy’s state of this mapped key says it is at. If I press F10 again, then it removes the Click Bar as expected. So we need to add a couple of actions to sync this up so regardless of which toon was active when the the Hotkey was pressed, all the toons know about it.

If you still don’t understand, how about an analogy. You and your wife go shopping. To save time at the store you have photocopied the shopping list and you will each get items from the list. Trouble is you don’t tell each other what items you are going to get, so when you met up at the checkout, you have both have the full list of items in your basket, and now you have twice as much shopping! What you need to do is tell each other what you are going to pick, or have interactive lists, so when you cross off an item you have selected, the other list in your wife’s hand is automatically updated. ISBoxer takes the second approach of updating the other lists.


Enough with the explanations already!!

Select Step 1 again and add a new Key Map Action -> Mapped Key Step action.
Image

Set the Target of this one to Window: All w/o Current (or “all other” if you like typing). This action is going to be sent to all slots except the current active slot when the hotkey (F10) is pressed. This is because the current active slot is the one performing execution of the mapped key so the state for the active slot is being affected by you!. This is about making sure the other slots get the same information.

Set the following properties.
    Target: Window: All w/o Current
    Key Map: Healing
    Mapped Key: Show Hide Healing Bar
    Step Adjustment: Set to “2: Healing Bar Click Bar ‘Off’ -> all”
The text part of the Step Adjustment “Set to” drop down is dynamic and actually depends on what the text of the step says in the left hand pane – it is the Number of the step which is important

It should end up looking like this.
Image

This needs to be repeated for Step 2, but this time making sure that the Step Adjustment is set to Step 1.
Image


A fix for something not working
It turns out the variable parameters which does the naming of the clickbar buttons is broken so the variable {SLOTn} doesn’t work at this time (actually it might be designed this way). That’s ok, there is a workaround.

Select Step 1 again of the mapped key, add a new action, Click Bar Actions -> Click Bar Button Action
Image

Set the following properties.
    Target: Window: All w/Current (or “all”)
    Clickbar: Healing Bar
    Button: Button 1,1
    Text: {SLOT1}
Image

Now create 3 more of the same, but for Button 2,1 set the text to {SLOT2} and Button 3,1 text is {SLOT3} etc. This all ends up like:
Image


Enable/Disable Key Maps
A bit of cleanup work.

So the Healing Key Map mapped keys can be disabled with the Enable/Disable key maps function, we should add it to the default configured Activate Maps mapped key in the Always On key map.

To do this, select the Always On key map in the top left pane, in the lower left pane, expand the Activate Maps mapped key, select step 1.

Right click Actions, select Key Map Actions -> Key Map State Action.
Set the following properties
    Target: Window: All w/current (or “all”)
    Key Map: Healing, and Off
Then select step 2,
Right click Actions, select Key Map Actions -> Key Map State Action.
Set the following properties
    Target: Window: All w/current (or “all”)
    Key Map: Healing, and On.

What this does is allow you to disable the Key Maps which have mapped keys with assigned hot keys allocated within them. This allows you to disable all capturing of hotkeys by ISBoxer, and just have them all go to the active window, as per normal. This is especially useful for in game chat, so you don’t get characters doing weird stuff when you try to type, or better, you don’t have keys being captured by ISBoxer so go “missing” when trying to type.




Now we are all done. Export your config to Innerspace.


Positioning

Well; almost; again…
You will probably want to move the Click bar around when you load it up. There are two options.
  1. Find out the right position and set it in the clickbar settings (this may require some trial/error of positions, export to Innerspace, show clickbar, repeat), or
  2. Open up the ingame ISBoxer GUI (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+G is the default hotkey), select the Clickbar tab. If the Healing Bar is not already displayed, hit Show All. Use the titlebar of the clickbar to move it around, hit the Sync button. This will position the clickbar in the same location on all clients. Finally, hit Save As (leaving the name as Auto).
Using the ISBoxer GUI will create a configuration file for each character (loaded ones anyway) with the saved position of the clickbar.


Finally

The end result is something that looks like this.
Image

And it is set up in such a way that when you mouse over the respective button, the character in the GroupHeals ATG will target the named character, and then if you left click then the healer will run the mapped key SimpleHeal1, and if you right click the healer will run the mapped key SimpleHeal2. And this shows up on every characters screen, and works from every character.


You can take this basic concept much further, and use multiple buttons, or images to indicate heals, and timers provide countdowns. You can add Click Bar Button actions to change the look, image, text of a button when it has been clicked upon. You can disable buttons, and use timers to renable them, or set delay updates to buttons for visual feedback. More advanced configs can do some even fancier chaining of heal skills, or use multiple healer setups with different heals. The majority of this is configured in the Mapped Keys, and not the actual Click Bar (except the visuals). I’ve even used VideoFX viewers overlaid on a Healing Bar to provide a view of the current health of toons so I don’t have to look in two places to see who needs healing and where to do the healing.

This setup is similar to that like the "blue boxed healing bars" that MiRai uses in this video (and I wish I'd watched that first!). Although if you look very carefully you will note in his video that his blue boxes are only on the healer, and not on any other character. This is because in order to get them on the other characters, the order would be wrong as it would not match the party, much like this configuration. The green box configuration fixes that, but it requires 25 bars; 5 for each of the 5 characters. I did say this was a simple setup :).
A follow up post will show the "not for the faint of heart" configuration needed to get "smart click bars" that will match party order for each character.
Last edited by bob on Wed Jun 10, 2015 8:32 am, edited 7 times in total.
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negge

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Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2014 4:47 pm

Post Wed Jan 21, 2015 2:46 pm

Re: How To: Clickbar Healing

Thanks again for the guide.
This helped me to setup my first click bar for healing in WOW.
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Tcole

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Joined: Fri Jan 04, 2013 4:55 pm

Post Sat Jan 31, 2015 6:23 pm

Re: How To: Clickbar Healing

With this "how to" I was able to set up click healing. Thank you for taking the time.
I play SWTOR and only 2 box so my other 2 members are my companions but they do not take up group slots is it be possible to set up the click heal bars for them also?
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bob

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Post Sat Jan 31, 2015 7:37 pm

Re: How To: Clickbar Healing

If your healer person can target them directly, then sure you can.

Instead of using the Variable Keystrokes for the targeting of the companions, you would create additional Mapped Keys for the healer to send whatever needs to be sent to target those companions directly (actually you could use the Variable Keystrokes table if you set the specific keys the healer needs to target the companions).
You use those mapped keys for the targeting.

For the button names of the companions, you will probably just want to hard set the names, rather than use the {SLOTx} special values.
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Tcole

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Joined: Fri Jan 04, 2013 4:55 pm

Post Sat Jan 31, 2015 8:54 pm

Re: How To: Clickbar Healing

Thank you, got me healer targeting and healing my companions with the click bars, I was just over thinking the set-up.
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Barnesed05

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Joined: Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:22 am

Post Mon Mar 02, 2015 7:00 pm

Re: HOWTO: Click Bar Healing

I appreciate this being put up, has made my life so much easier.

I do have one issue and that is my shaman is not healing itself. I hover over their name and it does not ever change like slot 1 and 3.
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bob

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Post Mon Mar 02, 2015 8:34 pm

Re: HOWTO: Click Bar Healing

Barnesed05 wrote:I do have one issue and that is my shaman is not healing itself. I hover over their name and it does not ever change like slot 1 and 3.

I'm guessing your talking WOW. This is where my knowledge falls down a lot because I've not played WOW since around '07, and even then I never got to level 5. So while I have a couple of comments in there regarding targeting in WOW, I'm not 100% certain that they actually work in the game (the theory was sound based on a standard ISBoxer config).

The two WOW specific bits were when setting up the targeting mapped keys:
  • ISBoxer usually configures WOW using FTL for Follow/Assist so this action won’t work. For WOW it will be necessary to add a Named World of Warcraft Macro Action.
  • If configuring a Named WOW Macro Action, select the “/targetexact {FTL}” macro in the WoW Macro set and set the appropriate modifiers for the desired Target - you can find these on the slot settings for your character set.

If you've followed the above, which you don't have to for WOW, despite what I said, it is just that the variable keystrokes aren't normally configured in the default WOW config, then, if there is an issue it will be with the modifiers set for the "Group Heal Target Slot x" mapped key for your Shaman, or that the /targetexact function in WOW does not allow a toon to target itself (which seems weird, but could be true).
The other choice is you are using the Variable Keystrokes instead, and they are not configured correctly when your shaman needs to target itself.

To be honest, WOW players have so much more features available to them with unit/party frame type addons that I figured most would use them instead. Especially after seeing the Grid/Clique demo from MiRai as per this video.

edit: got my dates wrong, but in my defence hey I was under the influence of 3 hours sleep.
Last edited by bob on Tue Mar 03, 2015 8:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Barnesed05

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Post Mon Mar 02, 2015 10:59 pm

Re: HOWTO: Click Bar Healing

My apologies for not being specific. Iam on EQ boxing Sk, Shm, and Bard. I followed the guide exactly and it works nicely except the shaman wont heal himself when I click slot 2 from my SK which is slot 1.

Since I have your attention how would you recommend setting up being able to click from my SK to do differently melodies and clickies?
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bob

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Post Tue Mar 03, 2015 3:40 am

Re: HOWTO: Click Bar Healing

Ok, so in that case, for the Group Heal Target Slot 2 mapped key, you should have selected the Target Slot 2 variable keystroke if you have followed the instructions.

In this case, I would check to see if the configuration of the variable keystroke is correct, by going to your Character Set, selecting Slot 2 (the number), and then in the lower right pane, check out the Variable Keystrokes tab. There should be a setting for Target Slot 2 is now F1 or something to that effect. Make sure that the F1 or whatever it is, is what your Shaman would need to press in order for him to select his/her self.

My check through the forums on targeting in EQ indicates that either the Group Heal Target Slot 2 mapped key is either not using the Target Slot 2 variable keystroke or the variable keystroke table is not right, but there is a possibility of the issue outlined below.

Now, one thing to be aware of, is if you use pets/totems etc, that sometimes if a character is targeting themselves, then do a select self, will end up selecting the pet/totem etc of the character. This is how the game engines of various MMO's works.
If you have this problem, and because you know this, then you have several choices (some of these may reduce portability of the clickbars):
  1. set the Variable Keystroke for the healer character to a key that will always select self regardless of the current target,
  2. add an action to the mapped key that will ensure that the variable keystroke will always select self (usually by making sure that you aren't selecting self), you can add an action and then use the ALT+UP to move it in the order
  3. setup targeting macros that are consistent across you character sets and trigger those instead
  4. some other mechanism, because I don't play EQ either :)
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Barnesed05

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Joined: Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:22 am

Post Tue Mar 03, 2015 6:38 pm

Re: HOWTO: Click Bar Healing

Thanks, I had target self on all 3 toons instead of the appropriate slot set. Fixed and working well.

Now, how to get this to work with Mercs in my group....is that possible?
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