Auto assist and follow made simple.

Heya guys im new here but have been toying around setting up my rift toons. and have come up with a fairly good way of assisting and following with a single button. And by simple i mean simple to use not simple to set up. albeit im sure many of u will find it easy to set up.
i made a quick vid of me using this set up and talking about my lay out a bit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fGfhA2Uzzw its nothing special... and i have a cold... and also apologise for saying iso boxer dont know why i said that but ohh well

I'm not much of a fan of having to use multiple combinations to do things. eg [alt] [shift] f12.

I'm sure your not interested but ill explain the process i went through that helped me arrive at to my current setup anyway .

1 button, auto swapping, Assist targeting

so i toyed around with making an assist macro for all my toons to just assist the tank. only problem is if i needed to change windows and select a new target it wouldn't work due to them auto assisting my tank using a macro like this.

Code:

assist tank
cast spell
cast diff spell

so i then after a lot of fussing about i ended up making a mark macro inside each of my toons that marked and then targeted mark 1 like this.

Code:

target @mark 1             <-- to target the mark 1.
mark 1                          <-- to make new mark one if i swapped to a diff toon so the rest would focus that mob.
cast spell
cast spell

Needless to say this macro was a flop and waisted a lot of my time messing with it, i went through a few more processes useing time delays as the main reason this method didn't work was due to server lag the other non current window toons would not have a mark1 to target and end up making there own and AGGHH it got frustrating to say the least. Till i came to a working result.

my current dps spam macros look like this .

Code:

lvl 50 warrior Tank/Dps i have a hybrid build that effectively allows me to two handed tank i get around 1500 dps on aoe and use this in my t2 runs to tank with i have good gear so do not try it in blues and greens :P.
suppressmacrofailures
cast @mark 1 Ragestorm
cast @mark 1 Promise of Steel
cast @mark 1 Mighty Blow
cast @mark 1 Frenzied Strike
cast @mark 1 Inescapable Fury
cast @mark 7 intercept <-- casts it on the healer so all her agro comes to me its at the bottom because it is a non global cd ability.

lvl 44 mage, cloro/archon heals

cast @mark 1 Radiant Spores
cast @mark 8 Consuming Flames <-- ill tell you why its mark 8 later.
cast @mark 8 Bloom
cast @mark 1 Nature's Touch
cast @mark 1 Ruin
cast @mark 1 Nature's Fury
cast @mark 1 Vile Spores

lvl 44 mage, SC dps

cast @mark 1 Arctic Blast
cast Static Discharge <-- is a buff and can only be self cast.
cast @mark 1 Flash Freeze
cast @mark 1 Forked Lightning


to make this work i had to come up with a way to mark the targets that would only mark them from my current window and only use the same button i use as my dps spam button/s

after a lot of time spent on delays and all sorts of things it was rather easy to set up.

1. Inside rift i set up a new hot key for marking a target with 1 i used "`" key
2. Inside isboxer made a new mapped key with the hot key "1"
with 1 step and 2 actions
:keystroke action 1 = Target window (Window: current) key combination "`" ( ` is the button i hotkeyed for mark 1)
:keystroke action 2 = Target window (Window: All W/Current) Key combination "1" ( 1 is my main Dps/Tanking/Healing macro hot key)

with this set up i was able to switch windows and start focus fire with that new window and with out ever having to press any other buttons, Because i like not having to remember 1000 different hot keys.

Auto switching follows

Again i went through a few things to get to this point but nothing to major. And the solution to my problem is a simple one

what happens is simply when i click on a new window it will auto assign a mark to that toon using the character sets features "8" is the mark i chose for this, then using the hot-key F1 All other windows will follow mark 8.

1. in game i made 2 macros each with there own separate hot-keys

The follow macro assigned to F1

Code:

Tar @mark 8
follow

The mark self with 8 button assigned to [Ctrl+F1]

Code:

Tar "name of your toon" (with out the "")
mark 8

2. Make a new key map with as many mapped keys as toons as u are running i done 5.
:each new Mapped key contains 1 step and 1 action. and will not need a hot key assigned to it
:each step contains the 1 keystroke action. Target (Character:tank) (Replace "tank" with the name of one of your toons) Key combination Ctrl+F1
:rinse and repeat for each toon

3. in the character sets menu for your multibox setup your using. On all of the toons contained in that character set do the following.
:click on the number above there names
:check the box next to "when i switch to this character" (and not "only when i use the hot-key above" unless thats what u want)
:choose "Do this keymap" inside that select the keymap u made in the step above for each different toon.

You can all so set up a new key-map that only broadcasts the f1 key to all other windows but current thats up to u. (Will prevent from toon following its self)

A few things to know, All toons will have to be in a raid and have assist to mark
I use the following macro to- invite All, Make a raid, Promote All, reset instance,clear all marks and mark self with 8 and healer with 7 (7 being for my intercept skill on my warrior)

Code:

invite dps 1
invite dps 2
invite healer
invite dps 3
raid_create
resetinstances <--- be carefull if your dead it will reset instances if u swap windows on the run back.
promote dps 1
promote dps 2
promote dps 3
promote healer
clearallmarks <--- not really needed but i like to clean up marks when i switch back to main window.
tar tank <--- your own name.
mark 8
tar healer
mark 7
tar tank <--- your own name

The healer will be casting her single target heals on who ever is the main window or has mark 8 on them.

Im not sure any one else will like my set up but i find it good not having to manage as many hot keys. so hope this is help full to some one and i know this isnt much of a guide but if there are ppl interested i will make a proper step by step setup if these instructions are not clear enough, i only intended it to be a show case. i know there is FLT but this is a little different and suits me a bit better for now. it may change it may not.

[Biggcarl]

There is an FTL guide for Rift. So you dont have to have assist or cast @marks for dps to assist your tank. you make macro per character that says /assist "characters name" and then in isboxer you make a non combat mappedkey that is assist which then hits the hotkey that you placed that assist macro in rift. then when you make all your combat keymaps 1-= eachone of those have a do mappedkey action first which makes them do the assist hotkey before they press their dps hotkey.

Thanks big.

How ever i am aware of the FTL and will probably switch to it one i get all my alts to 50 and figure a few extra things out.

what i like about my method is i like to play with my friends and have my toons on folow them.(as i usually am tank) what this set up allows me to do is have them on follow for my freinds and if need be they can change the focus target of my toons.
they do this by letting me know on vent and they go ahead and swap the mark to 1 of the mob they want killed, and i swap from spamming one and switch to my key set #2 and spam 2.

It works for me and allows me to have some one steering my Toons out of things if i need them to by them marking them selfs "8" and allow them to swap to a mob of interest thats not my current target.

Some other interesting things to note (i have not perfected this yet) is if u add something like this "Macro EG" to a macro u can set marks up on a mob using a mouse over macro and have the other boxes swap momentarily to that target fire off a cc spell and then continue back to my main focus target.

Code:

Macro EG
Cast @mark 3 cc spell 1
cast @mark 4 cc spell 2
cast @mark 1 dps spell
Cast @mark 1 dps spell

This has been a bit buggy tho as what i think is happening is, once i mark a target with a number lets say with 3, my mage then casts its cc at the target blowing its cd it cant cast that spell for a bit,
I then use mark 3 on the mob im fighting to clear it from the other mob so they do not cast the cc on it again, but as soon as there cc ability is back off cd they try casting it again at the "Old" mark 3 even tho it no longer has the mark so im guessing it remembers some how it had the mark and tries to recast it. so its not working fluidly like id hope. but im still testing things at this stage

[Alge]

The benefit of RIFT's mark system is that it essentially allows you to have multiple focus targets. Some people use (or have used) this as a basis for a macro-based healing system, e.g. http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=35142. The thing I didn't like about it when I tried it was the numbers over my character's heads. However, with a shape-based system like WoW's and the ability to "cast @square spell" I might look at it again.

This comment...

I'm not much of a fan of having to use multiple combinations to do things. eg [alt] [shift] f12.

suggests to me that you may have misunderstood the simplicity of an FTL setup. If I'm wrong, I apologise and just ignore what I write below.

In an FTL system with ISBoxer you never have to press Shift+Alt+F12 or any other combination. The only place those combinations appear is in a macro - the process is described here with a slight simplification (particularly in the number of macro slots used) here. If the character in Slot 1 has the focus then you can press whatever hotkey you have setup for "FTL Follow ME" (I use Mouse4) and ISBoxer will send Shift+F11 to each other character/slot causing them to follow Slot 1, if Slot 2 has the focus then you just press the same hotkey (Mouse4 for me) and ISBoxer sends Alt+F11 to each other character slot causing them to follow Slot 2, etc. Assisting is even easier because the assist generally gets built into your DPS Mapped Keys - again it is ISBoxer that handles sending the appropriate modifiers + F12 depending on which character is active.

However, there is one situation where I could see your numbered marking system having an advantage and that is when you wanted to assist a character other than the one in your active slot. Of course, it also works well for situations in which you don't control the whole group, as you described. I'm looking forward to seeing where you can take this system.

Alge