Is there a way to improve the targeting in Warcraft via mods or some settings?

Usually when I try to get multiple specific mobs in a big pack (Faerlina for example if I am trying to get two of them) I have immense difficulty actually targeting the second mob after the first few threat actions on mob one especailly when they are still largely grouped up. Once I can get the second on me there is no problem but I'd like to try and reduce the possibility of a healer getting obliterated.

I usually run with target plates on so I can see the health bars and click those but in a moving group they are not practical to work with. Does turning them off help at all?

Seems like a useful thing to improve especially with the requirements in TBC on tanking multiple mobs in the 5-man dungeons.

oTweaks can increase the range on tab targeting. You can get it off wowace.com.

You can also have it set your camera to be really far away, which is fun.

Tab targeting is pretty bad for finding a specific mob in a largish group of mobs however. It works fine for switching targets and sundering that one or whatever when you are the only tank but I have difficulty picking out the specific mob.

Maybe just tab/tab/tab/tab/trab/CTRL-tab to find the other one with the proper raid icon or something I guess.

It's kinda like when you're trying to tank a few dogs in MC, and you need to find your targets in that mess of a doggypile. Name plates move too much so hard to focus on some. It'd be nice if you could get a list with all hostile targets you're in combat with in a little frame that you can click on, but doubt that'd work now.
Another way that I think could work, but a bit of a hassle, is that you could target a mob with a specific raidicon through a macro. I don't know the specific macro though, but when it was first released, I remember one where you could just target a raidicon, for pseudo, something like /target [Raidicon=1/Star]. Don't know if that'd help you in that fight though.

a good unit frame like AGUF with a big raid icon on your target would help you to know that you have just tabbed onto the right mob

For a while at least, Paintball could target certain raid icons by mousing over the masses. EDIT: This won't work anymore since you can't programmatically target.

If you play around with Tab radius in oTweaks, you can find one that suits you and that helps also. I can usually get a particular mob within 2 tabs by swiveling either my character or my camera (I forget which it effects).

I hate tanking in multi-mob situations (on of the major reasons I am not Prot), though, so I can't say that it would work well there.

Does someone remember the behaviour how using tab works?
I know I have read it somewhere in this forum, but cannot find it again. I think knowing how tab works benefits, as you can guess how often you will have to press tab to select the correct target.


(Also I think this thread would be appropiate for this information.)

Tab selects targets from the far left of your screen to the right.

Not having the a_Dark_Skitterling_0029 information accessible is completely and entirely intended. It's one of many design decisions that I'm still not 100% sold on but it was one based on good reasoning at the time. Blizzard has always walked a fine line between customizing and automating and especially in the days before raid icons this was part of that line. As Apate stated already though, Paintball or similar can pretty much achieve the effect without accessing the server-side mob ID#.

The explanation was a bit more precise if I remember correctly.
What happens if two mobs are on the very left, but one is bit farther away than the other. Does it first select the near target, than after that the next one to his right side? Or the one behind him?

It may be helpful to find/write a UI mod that uses your Focus target to automatically help you keep track of mobs a little bit. You could have a mod that basically turns your focus frame into a "last target frame" so that any time you switch targets, your focus becomes your previous target. This would make it much easier to switch between 2-3 targets without as much "aiming" and having to click on nameplates/creature models. You could also just do this to a lesser extent manually by making good use of focus and just adding some /focus /clearfocus buttons to your UI next to your focus frame.

The biggest help though is to just get really really good at clicking on stuff. Try adjusting your camera angle and zoom distance - it will be weird at first but sometimes going from more horizontal to top down or vice versa can help. You also need to be good at clicking around the v-target bars and just clicking on models because sometimes the v-target bars jump around or arent directly next to the mob you want to get. With practice though you can get a feel for where the v-target bars will be even if its not next to the mob. Theres lots of good exercises to improve your reflexes and accuracy. I found playing my paladin/priest in pvp (AV in particular) with ctrl-V bars, showing both friendly and enemy plates, and just ignoring party/raid frames was not only effective for healing and damage dealing, but great practice for targeting with a dps class or tanking class too. You could also try other things to improve your manual targeting like playing some PC FPS's with mouselook, or whack-a-mole type flash games that have you click on fast moving objects with your mouse.