Seeking advice: *fast* target swapping - Page 2

Vazu · 04/23/07, 1:53 PM

Arena Master is the best target selection mod I've found.

It puts a (customizable) box on your screen which displays the health % of all your opponents. All you have to do is click the name of a person in that box and it targets them. Really nice for 5v5s especially, taking pets and totems into consideration.

http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downl...8/arenamaster/

You can see the mod in the middle of this person's screen. They have customized it quite a bit.

• Shadowed · 04/23/07, 2:09 PM

Originally Posted by probiscus

As the OP, I'd like to interject here with the hope that the thread doesn't get derailed with commentary about how cool focus targeting is. It's definitely one of the best (and unique!) UI features I've seen for PvP in the 2 years I've been playing the game. Especially as a pet-user (2 separate GCD's).

If any of you guys have 2400+ rated teams, and you play a DPS (either MA or caster DPS) class where you are swapping targets *very* frequently, I would absolutely love to hear from you about your technique.

Is it the "target last target" feature of the default UI, do you change your focus target on the fly in conjunction w/ target last target? Or are you just a steady-handed hawk-eyed clicker who should probably by flying fighter planes instead of playing WoW.

As much as people say they spam their tab key, I honestly feel this targeting 'lag' is one of my potential biggest areas for improvement, as I'm very unhappy w/ my target aquisition speed aside from MA macros.

You don't swap targets that frequently you'd never kill anybody, depending on the enemies team setup you may do some really quick switching at the start, but most of the time you're staying on them until they die. I don't really notice tab targetting at this point, if I think I can get the target with tab I use that which is the fastest way, if I can't think i'll either use my mods arena frames or click the actual character, just depends on the suitation and how clustered everyone is.

probiscus · 04/23/07, 2:17 PM

Originally Posted by Shadowed

You don't swap targets that frequently you'd never kill anybody

Well, as a warlock I've got to DPS one target, CoT at least one target, fear another, then have a focus target for pet abilities. Then there's death coil which could apply to any one of the previous targets at various points in the battle.

It unfortunately sounds like the conclusion is that arena master mod, which entails clicking, which isn't really a solution for me. 8(

• Shadowed · 04/23/07, 2:31 PM

Originally Posted by probiscus

Well, as a warlock I've got to DPS one target, CoT at least one target, fear another, then have a focus target for pet abilities. Then there's death coil which could apply to any one of the previous targets at various points in the battle.

It unfortunately sounds like the conclusion is that arena master mod, which entails clicking, which isn't really a solution for me. 8(

Well, the MA wont be changing targets frequently so he's the wrong person to ask, but SSPVP 3.1 adds key binding targetting to the arena frames, but thats a general pvp mod so if you just want arena frames it's not your best bet.

edit: Forgot, damn unit ids nevermind on Clique.

Grailyn · 04/23/07, 4:16 PM

Tried Arena Master but to target you have to click that tiny box next to the name. I tried another mod called Arena Live Frames and it seems much better. Larger easy to click frames.

Since everyone seems to like Arena Master, why is it better than Arena Live Frames?

• Shadowed · 04/23/07, 4:50 PM

The author of ALF isn't actively supporting it, and AM was out before it...so thats probably why.

yarikh · 07/15/07, 1:22 AM

I prefer Proximo from grayhoof at wowace over both arena master and arena live frames. Along with this handy frame i always set a focus and have bindings for target focus and target last target.

• Andeh · 07/15/07, 1:54 AM

In addition to Arena Master, get Aloft. It's a mod for changing nameplates. This is unbelievably nice in PvP, since it lets you recolor their health bars to their class, adds a cast bar (to your current target), and lets you alter the size (so you can click them easier). Probably less important for healers, but for any DPS or CC class, it's a must-have.

Faerun · 07/16/07, 9:13 AM

I'm a hunter on a top-10 team from Reckoning last year. Unlike a lot of other people, I really dislike Arena Master and even though I have it on my screen, I rarely if ever use it. I do not use my mouse AT ALL except for movement in PvP, it takes too much time and takes too much attention to make sure my mouse is going exactly where it needs. For target changing, I simply use Focus Target, Assist Macros, and Target Last Target. Assist = shift + 5, last target = shift + tab, focus = the button on the left side of the mouse. For scattershots and such, I rely on tab targetting, but I find that this is still a faster/more efficient way than clicking arena master. Practice makes perfect... after about a week, you should know exactly how many times you're going to tab to get your target.

• Shadowed · 07/16/07, 2:12 PM

Originally Posted by Faerun

I'm a hunter on a top-10 team from Reckoning last year. Unlike a lot of other people, I really dislike Arena Master and even though I have it on my screen, I rarely if ever use it. I do not use my mouse AT ALL except for movement in PvP, it takes too much time and takes too much attention to make sure my mouse is going exactly where it needs. For target changing, I simply use Focus Target, Assist Macros, and Target Last Target. Assist = shift + 5, last target = shift + tab, focus = the button on the left side of the mouse. For scattershots and such, I rely on tab targetting, but I find that this is still a faster/more efficient way than clicking arena master. Practice makes perfect... after about a week, you should know exactly how many times you're going to tab to get your target.

Are you MA though, or are you relying on one of your teammates to already be targetting the person you want?

Tab targetting isn't reliable enough when you have people hiding or because you have most of the team within 5 yards of you, it's not really faster then clicking an arena unit frame quickly or binding keys to it.

Melnor · 07/16/07, 3:45 PM

I wish there was a mod that basically only tabbed through player targets only. Even though I use ALF, I still find myself tab targetting 90% of the time and tabbing through 4 totems to get to the shaman is a pain. So I'd like to see a mod that basically only lets you tab through player targets >_>. I was browsing through the LUA commands and saw a protected method that let you test to see where the target is a player or not but I guess they've restricted that to the base UI only /sadface.

Legedi · 07/16/07, 3:59 PM

I also use tab-targetting. Works well enough for me. The one issue I've run into is I'll tab to a new target and stop attacking. It's really annoying when I don't have any rage so I can't use a special, I'm not attacking the target, and there is a mess of targets than I now have to try to right-click inbetween to get my attacks started. There is an option in the interface menu that says something like "don't stop attacking when switching targets." I have this checked, thinking it would keep my auto attack going. But for some reason it doesn't work.

Am I retarded and read that option backwards and need to unclick it? Is there something else I can do to fix it?

probiscus · 07/16/07, 5:16 PM

Originally Posted by Legedi

The one issue I've run into is I'll tab to a new target and stop attacking.

Turning on autoattack

Maliva · 07/16/07, 5:29 PM

the scrollwheel on my mouse has a left, center and right click option which are programmable. I set the right scrollwheel click to tab so i just use my index finger to right click my scrollwheel till I hit the target I'm looking for. When I was shadowspec I had SW:P set to the left scrollwheel click so I could just spam "right scrollwheel click" "left scrollwheel click" over and over to dot everything up in a matter of a couple of seconds.

Faerun · 07/17/07, 9:23 AM

Originally Posted by Shadowed

Are you MA though, or are you relying on one of your teammates to already be targetting the person you want?

Tab targetting isn't reliable enough when you have people hiding or because you have most of the team within 5 yards of you, it's not really faster then clicking an arena unit frame quickly or binding keys to it.

I'm not MA, which is why I use an assist macro. And tab targetting works for me because the only tabbing I do is on a warrior/rogue to scattershot, in which case I have to be pretty close to them anyways & 90% of the time they're my first tab target. But yes, if I were MA, I'd probably have to devise another plan.

Melnor · 07/17/07, 9:38 AM

Originally Posted by Maliva

the scrollwheel on my mouse has a left, center and right click option which are programmable. I set the right scrollwheel click to tab so i just use my index finger to right click my scrollwheel till I hit the target I'm looking for. When I was shadowspec I had SW:P set to the left scrollwheel click so I could just spam "right scrollwheel click" "left scrollwheel click" over and over to dot everything up in a matter of a couple of seconds.

Yea, that's a good idea. You can also bind the actual scroll up and scroll down to iterate through targets too if your scrollwheel is unable to be rocked side to side.

Obituary · 07/17/07, 10:31 AM

Originally Posted by yarikh

I prefer Proximo from grayhoof at wowace over both arena master and arena live frames. Along with this handy frame i always set a focus and have bindings for target focus and target last target.

Beat to the punch. Proximo, in my opinion, easily trumps Arena Live Frames and Arena Master. Looks nice, is ace and updates through wowace updater. I think it updates off of nameplate information so is essentially "real-time" in terms of updating health as long as you're in range (and it should sync between other team members. Not sure about about cross compatibility with other arena frames).

I've always played using enemy name plates activated also and recently started using aloft. Very good mod.

But EVERYONE should use Proximo. It allows for easy target switching for quick CCing, which in a way, is probably even more important than speedy assist training. I know our paladin in my 5v5 team loves it for throwing a hammer on the correct target quickly

Solstice · 07/19/07, 9:53 PM

Perhaps I just had an old version but...
Arena master was using an absolutely disgraceful amount of system resources when I had it installed - even while completely inactive. Only reason I noticed was my fps dropped alot for some raids and when I enabled cpu profiling on fu-usage it turned out AM was using more cycles and memory than the rest of my addons put together (and thats alot)

• Shadowed · 07/19/07, 11:16 PM

Turn off everything, then try again.

Kcolraw · 07/29/07, 2:10 AM

arena unit frames is still better than anything listed here so far, nothing here shows debuffs and cast bars?

gia · 07/29/07, 10:00 AM

Originally Posted by Solstice

Perhaps I just had an old version but...
Arena master was using an absolutely disgraceful amount of system resources when I had it installed - even while completely inactive. Only reason I noticed was my fps dropped alot for some raids and when I enabled cpu profiling on fu-usage it turned out AM was using more cycles and memory than the rest of my addons put together (and thats alot)

The reason probably was you were running embedded libraries, arenamaster being first in alphabetical order means it was first to load the base ace libs that most of your mods are using. So it was getting blamed for other mod's memory usage.

On topic: I've been using Proximo lately and it's an improvement over arenamaster, especially for my team mates that can now see my target right away because it gets a highlighted border. (I'm the MA). You can also configure it to do different things on right click (focus target or cast a predefined spell on target).