Loading ...Back to Basics: Selecting Targets
Selecting a target to tank is probably the skill most taken for granted when it comes to tanking yet, it’s one of the most notable differences between an average and a skilled player. There’s 4 ways to accomplish the task of targeting:
- Clicking on Targets
- Tabbing to Targets
- Using a Macro to Target
- Focus Targeting
1. Clicking on Targets
If there’s one thing that I never fully appreciated as a clicker (someone who uses their mouse to click their abilities) in the past was the ability to select targets using my mouse. It’s simply something that’s not practical to do most of the time as a clicker since if you’re clicking a target then you’re not clicking an ability. That said, the vast majority of the time, the mouse is by far the most accurate and fastest means to select a target. This is especially the case if there’s a cluster of mobs around and you have to pick up a specific one from the mess.
The strength of selecting targets with one’s mouse isn’t just in the accuracy and speed of it, (although shouldn’t that be reason enough!?) but also the ability to easily select friendly targets to Intervene. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that as a clicker, I rarely selected friendly targets to Intervene, but instead relied on Intervene’s target of target capabilities in order to use it. In doing so, I was missing out on an uncountable number of opportunities to move around the battlefield much quicker.
An important tip to effectively using your mouse to select targets is to always play with enemy nameplates on. You can do this by pressing the V key.
2. Tabbing to Targets
As a keybinder, (someone who uses the keyboard to use abilities) I rarely tab to target. It’s simply slower than clicking on a target surrounded by other targets and also makes using abilities on the keyboard difficult at times. This isn’t to say that tabbing doesn’t have it’s place though. Some mobs are very tricky to select with one’s mouse, the Kologarn fight being a perfect example of this when you have to move quickly between hitting Kologarn’s right arm and his body.
I didn’t always avoid the use of the tab key though. As a clicker, tabbing to target mobs is your bread and butter. The good clickers are extremely effective at it. However, there’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to tab to a target due to oddly designed instances. (If you’ve ran into this error, you know what I’m talking about)
Ultimately, bad instance design aside, when having to select a single mob tabbing is very quick and probably faster at times than selection with a mouse. It’s especially strong as well for multi-target tanking a cluster of mobs as it’ll automatically move through each mob one at a time allowing you to easily balance your single target threat on a group.
3. Using a Macro to Target
When used at appropriate times, there’s no better way to select a target than a macro. The obvious drawback is that you have to have the macro prepared ahead of time. Targeting macros come in many shapes and sizes, but the most basic kind is the following:
/tar <target name>
The beauty of macros is that it allows you to select targets far out of your viewing distance that selection with a mouse or by tabbing simply wouldn’t be able to do. It’s also really effective at targeting mobs that have just spawned and may not have loaded on your screen yet. The downside to them is that if there’s multiple mobs with the same name then they’ll only target the closest mob with that particular name. (which isn’t necessarily that mob you want) Thankfully, the above macro by default won’t target dead mobs, so it’ll still be effective if only 1 living mob is present.
That said, these types of macros still tend to be a bit weak later in wave style fights as the raid gets overwhelmed by more and more similar named mobs. One of the biggest trends I’ve noticed with utilizing keybindings is that I don’t feel the need to make nearly as many targeting macros as when I was a clicker.
4. Focus Targeting
Focus Targeting is kind of like making a macro on the fly. A player uses the command /focus on a target and then is able to select that target at any time by using /tar focus. (You’ll notice a really handy focus frame show up that’s wonderful for tracking mobs you aren’t targeting, but may need to interrupt) You can also go into your interface options and set specific keybindings for set focus and target focus. Focus Targeting is something that you’ll hear of Mages utilizing to make Crowd Control easier to track, but it can also be very effective for a tank.
How you use Focus Targeting as a tank is usually either to keep track of an important mob in a pack that you’ll need to switch off of frequently (This is where that handy focus frame comes in) or for selecting a particular player that you’ll be wanting to Intervene numerous times in a fight. That said, the uses for Focus Targeting are endless and really just limited by your own comfort and creativity with the process.
Keybindings vs Clicks
As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions how I favour certain ways of targeting or don’t use others because I use keybindings. While, it is very possible to be a clicker and target mobs, (after all I did this for years) targeting speed and accuracy is something that’s greatly improved by using keybindings and is perhaps one of the least talked about reasons to actually make the switch.
June 11th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I always wondered if the fact that I selected targets with my mouse was a weakness. It’s good to see that someone has confirmed my opinion that selecting with the mouse is more accurate and actually faster than tanning. This is especially true when you need to grab targets quickly like in the Freya encounter.
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Tyriall reply on June 11, 2009 5:18 pm:
Haha… Tabbing, actually. Iphone auto-correct ftl.
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Vivilros reply on June 13, 2009 1:55 am:
Tanning is pretty slow, ya know
Seriously though, I’ve always had problems being accurate with click targetting, shining examples of this would be in Utgarde Keep where you pull that entire hallway with the Overseers, I can never select the overseers accurately enough
Another problem is when they’re behind an invisible wall, so the game says “Well, it’s behind a wall, so the player cannot click on it to use it or target it” this has been a problem since that one patch where they made it so players couldn’t interact with switches etc if they couldn’t move the camera in a way that the mouse could have direct LoS of the object or mob, made worse in Wrath when they seem to have FORGOTTEN about this change and made pretty effects that are considered a wall in terms of selectability but not in terms of character movement
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June 11th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I think that focus targeting is probably the most underrated and overlooked targeting system you can do as a tank. I especially liked it for the cast bars. You can easily chain interrupt two different mobs seemingly forever. A little bit of creativity using the focus targeting system can net you a plethora of uses.
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June 11th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
For me, my mouse is the most innacurate and slowest/unreliable ways I target. If there is a group of 5 things, 90% of the time if I am trying to target a specific one I will get teh wrong one.
-An important tip to effectively using your mouse to select targets is to always play with enemy nameplates on. You can do this by pressing the V key.
Health bars only make it worse because if a mob moves even one step all 5 health bars shift drastically.
It is the weakest part of my game and I have know this for years. I do not know how to improve it. Ive tried everything I can think of
For example without thorim helping on yogg, the heal has a huge arrow graphic over the adds head. Even with only 3-4 guardians up I could not for the life of me target the one that was getting healed.
WHY AM I SO BAD AT CLICKING ON MOVING OBJECTS!?
-This is especially the case if there’s a cluster of mobs around and you have to pick up a specific one from the mess.
I wish wtb help
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Speidel reply on June 11, 2009 11:47 pm:
You may wanna try using a combination of clicking and tabbing. Like first try to click the target once or twice, but just be ready to immediately switch to tabbing. Some groups are just too big or too tightly packed to ever be able to click specific targets. The more you tab, the more you should get a feel for what order things will be targeted.
The only other advice I would have for you would possibly be to zoom the camera in a little bit for nameplates. If you get the camera in nice and tight, those nameplates won’t be such a jumbled mess flying everywhere.
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Lomu reply on June 12, 2009 2:44 am:
“Health bars only make it worse because if a mob moves even one step all 5 health bars shift drastically.”
Hi all. First time responder
I would strongly recommend an addon called Aloft.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info10864-AloftBeta.html
It does a fantastic job of making the nameplates easier to click, provides a lot of useful threat/agro information in a very configurable way, and tries to keep the nameplates in the same place even when one of the mobs dies, etc. I love it and have used it for a long time.
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Cornfedhick reply on June 12, 2009 9:20 am:
Aloft is good but it is a memory hog.
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Lomu reply on June 15, 2009 4:46 am:
A fair point. For an addon-o-holic like myself though, it’s pretty high up on my must-have list.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Left hand using abilities WASDF 12345 and Right hand using mouse clicking and generating threat on mobs. I have a bar mod under my target to utilize instant aggro features or break CC or Intervene. I’m constantly repositioning my camera or myself to get a view on mobs or surroundings and party/raid. I use tar of tar alot to see wth is going on with boss or adds…. used to use focus, but don’t like extra clicks. LOL! Anyways, its what I do because DPS/healers have there jobs to do. Just thought I’d add.
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June 11th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
It’s definitely situational. I prefer to tab target when I can. Understanding how the tab target works, allows me to quickly target the mobs I want, even if I have to tab 2 or 3 times. It becomes automatic after enough practice….. my pinky is so smart
But if one of a group of 7 mobs starts going for the healer, I know I have to click.
I need to start using the focus target though. I haven’t because of a bug in one of my addons. Guess it’s time to figure that one out
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Vivilros reply on June 13, 2009 1:59 am:
You can also use the mouse to do a 360 and tab, that’s my method of retrieving mobs, course then my fingers fly across the keyboard and I end up hitting shield block and taunt, every freaking time…
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Batzertzul reply on July 7, 2009 9:26 am:
The “bug” is not in the addon. Blizzard did something in the latest patch that made addons, like XPerl, nUI, …, unable to set focus and it’s not something that addons dev can fix. I use a macro to set focus on the currently selected mob/player before the fight begins.
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June 12th, 2009 at 1:33 am
I am heavy keybinder using mouse for moving, speaking on vent, control camera and heroic strike (wheel). For AoE tanking tab switching is name of the game, for single target you don’t need it anyway, and then we come to fast picking incoming mobs where focus wont work, “tab-tar” is not reliable…
Then we come to /tar macro targeting but where to put macro is still big question?
1) @ taunt button?
/tar
/cast taunt
2) @ different button (out of normal keybindings?)
3) on “click” on non binded button?
None of this worked for me since I was using click to select inc mobs. Since few weeks ago I discovered addon named ExtraBars which gives me 4 sets of bars on top of blizz default (if you use any bar addon it’s even easier) so I set “targeting bar” - one or two buttons width with 1 /tar macro let’s say it’s in middle of top right quarter of the screen.
This increased my performance last reset on Thorim arena (picking champions) and @ lower extent on Mimiron (Assault bots)
Bottom line:
If you use click to select target - make sure that you complement that with /tar macro close to your mouse in order to select important mobs if you click targeting fails.
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June 12th, 2009 at 3:03 am
I’m mostly inclined to do mouse targeting. I tab frequently still, but it usually fails for me and I go back to relying on the mouse.
Nice post breaking up the cons and pros however
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June 12th, 2009 at 3:25 am
From what i experienced the most reliable target way is the Focus, for example on the kitty fight, As an offtank you need to quickly pick up 2 cats who run in a fast speed towards the raid, So to get the both of them to you without doing aoe (aoe risks getting unnecessary aggro on the other 2 kittens and on the boss)
So i use Focus on the second cat i’m tanking and i target the first cat, i use my throw on the first one and taunt on the second just by using a macro:
/tar focus
/cast taunt
so as said, a bit creativity and focus is the best way of switching between 2 targets
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Orcstar reply on June 14, 2009 3:31 pm:
you don’t have to use /tar on your focus
a macro like:
/cast [target=focus]taunt
does the same without losing your current target.
you can use most of your abilities in this way:
/cast [target=focus]shield slam
/cast [target=focus]heroic throw
or
/cast [target=focus]intervene
(set a friendly player as focus)
The last one I find very useful to run out of any aoe with a cast time like the midget on iron council. I select the character who is my dedicated healer there and focus him, intervene out and charge back in, midget doesn’t move, I get no damage and the healer is less stressed and can help keeping others up. Although I also heard some tanks using healbot to target their intervene on any raidmember with a click X-D.
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Funtodin reply on June 17, 2009 7:51 am:
The way I use focus is binding the /focus to the 4th mouse button and the switch target to focus function to the 5th mouse button. It makes it real easy to do it on the fly and get quick target switches followed by interrupts, taunts or multi-target threat building.
Like during the council fight hard mode in 10m, I solo tanked it the other day using focus on Steelbreaker at the start so I could track his fusion punches and self cleanse macro asap, had main target on Runemaster to build threat and kept camera turned towards the little one untanked in the corner to ocasionally throw a ranged ability on him or taunt when healers took healing aggro.
Focus is priceless just priceless.
Also tab targetting is very handy for some situations, coming from my previous warlock experience with tab dotting full packs of mobs =P
Also, SHIFT + TAB is nice as it cycles back to the previous one you tabbed through. For some situations, CTRL + TAB can be useful for targetting friendly targets, especially for smaller groups like 10m or big rooms where it won’t catch too many wrong targets.
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June 12th, 2009 at 4:28 am
One of my biggest issues with targetting is clicking a far away mod with multiple large mobs on me. Example: the adds on emalon. with all the big elementals on me when one dies and a new one spawns clicking always selects one of the mobs your tanking due to there large size. tabbing doesnt seem to help due to distance across the room. im at a loss on the best way to grab that newly spawned add without turning my back to the other adds to give a clear click path
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Veneretio reply on June 12, 2009 6:45 am:
Sounds like your issue is that you either aren’t zoomed out far enough or you aren’t moving your camera angle around while tanking.
The former can be solved just by going into options and moving the Blizzard default max distance even further. The latter is done by holding down the left mouse button and swinging your camera so that you’re viewing your character from the side or more likely, from an angle in order to target the newly spawned add easier.
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Drae reply on June 12, 2009 7:14 am:
qft. rotating your camera and modifying your zoom distance on the fly can keep the nameplates from clustering and moving.
They move around so much because of how close the targets are to each other relative to your total view. Like your looking at this huge area (zoomed all the way out), and the mobs compromise a tiny percentage of that space; then put a static sized nameplate over it, doesn’t work too well. Zoom in and the clustering wont be nearly as bad. Ditto for rotating your camera.. mobs string out when they move and if you swing your camera such that your looking at them from the side; the clustering is not nearly as bad.
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Orcstar reply on June 14, 2009 3:34 pm:
also tanking the mobs more in the middle of the room help, then you can just hover your camera over you head and zoom it out nough to see the one on emalon.
With the adds on you, you only need to be out of emalons aoe, NOT on the other side of the room, your melee loses tons of dps if you tank em too far away, just stay in the middle.
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Ben reply on June 24, 2009 9:26 am:
I agree, I run into trouble if I get too close to the other side of the room. Closer to Emalon but still outside of the AOE range gives you more room to swing your camera around.
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June 12th, 2009 at 6:14 am
The key is to use all four methods in the proper situations.
As tanks we all understand how a certain stat is useful for a certain encounter… like how sometimes expertise is more important to stack then hp. Targeting is no different; it’s about using the right method for the right madness.
Obviously a macro target is best for mobs that become active in the middle of the fight… like a drake landing in Sarth3d. While tab targeting works great for whelps; and mouse selection targeting or focus targeting is insanely good for avoiding those pesky flame walls. The right choice for the right situation makes a world of difference.
There is one other way to target… and it’s OLD SKEWL! Assist targeting. There was a time when raiding guilds regularly assigned a DPS to act as “main assist”. (many ui addons still have this feature; tho it’s most likely underused with the effectiveness of present ui addons) If one of your DPS will be on your target till it’s dead; and your swapping between 2 targets. Focus one, and assist target another. I keep a macro on my bars to assist / start attacking my friendly rogue / dps warrior. (also great for when they unwilling pull aggro)
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Veneretio reply on June 12, 2009 6:33 am:
Excellent point about assisting, can’t believe I forgot that one!
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Funtodin reply on June 17, 2009 7:57 am:
Ya, assist shines especially for taunting and quick intervene/hand of protection on the dps that just stole aggro from you.
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June 12th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Good post. I agree the fifth method is to /assist.
Another way, which I don’t use much anymore as a tank, but I did use more often as a healer, is target-of-target raid frames.
ORA2 for example will show the tanks and bosses, and you can see when the boss’ target changes, to adjust your healing.
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June 12th, 2009 at 10:01 am
I predominantly tab target but I use my mouse to target some as well. I would say this is probably my biggest opportunity to improve. I am almost always the MT on the boss so I’m not in the multi-mob situations that much.
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June 12th, 2009 at 11:49 am
when i was about level 20, i remember having trouble changing targets in SFK. i could not click select the stupid ghosts and tabbing seem too clumsy and slow.
i experimented and finally found that using my mouse wheel worked great for me:
mouse wheel up = next target
mouse wheel down = previous target
some people like to use their wheel for other thing, so it doesn’t work for everyone, but i don’t think i could do without it now.
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Morrick reply on July 24, 2009 1:51 am:
I never thought of this before, true i do use the mouse wheel for herioc strike and cleave but if i did’nt i would definetly do this
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June 12th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Focus targeting is awesome for tank rotations. I have my focus window set to only show debuffs, and then focus on the tank I need to taunt the boss off of. On Kologarn I usually know that there are 2 stacks on the other tank before he does.
I do a combo of mouse, tab, and macro targeting, depending on the situation. I am a keybinder.
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June 14th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Blizzard basically designed the game with the assumption that you press buttons for your abilities using your left hand and you click to move or to target using your right hand. You can certainly play most of the game very effectively in other ways, but every now and then you come up to an encounter where you go “oh *&^$% Blizzard and it’s UI assumptions”. Flame leviathan is an example, where suddenly the mouse and/or the cursor keys work for targeting and the QWEASD keys don’t.
It’s possible to get quite good with TAB-targeting with a bit of practice because you can sort of predict how it’s going to target mobs that are spread out. When they’re all in a clump you can’t but not sure you could click on them either. TAB also works if you can tell when you’ve got the right mob from its portrait, resource bars, or mark. It’s not effective when you want to get the mob that’s running away or something like that.
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June 14th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
“it’s one of the most notable differences between an average and a skilled player” - this.
Other players will love you (and will be impressed by your “skill”) when you can quickly catch a group of mobs that was just ninja pulled by some non-tanking players. This is one of the things you have to “farm” from the very beggining and ability to quickly catch and change targets can ease you the process of gaining it - reputation with other players.
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June 16th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Focus targeting: Great for 10man IC when you’re tanking Brundir and Molgeim. Molgeim is being nuked down first, and the /focus macro helps on keeping track of Brundir’s casts, especially the Overload.
Speaking of IC, I love being the big, badass Draenei when we’re doing it hardmode :E (mostly because of the sexy shield slam crits)
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June 18th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Strange no-one mentions mouseover as opposed to mouse clicking? The one macro i have tied to almost all my abilities goes like this :
#show
#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover, exists, harm] Shield Bash; Shield Bash
/startattack
Then just change the spell to what you lwant there instead, like devastate, shield slam etc.
Besides this i use both click, focus and tab to pick targets, which is situational, but with mouseover i can easily keep my eyes on the action and for example toss a shield slam to my right, or when i see a spell animation on a mob, mousover and shield slam, or select you pull target, mouseover the neighboring mob, charge, slam, move mouse out and go full out on main mob etc.
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Drae reply on June 19, 2009 12:14 pm:
Mouse over selection is really useful, removing one click per transaction might not seem like alot, but it’s the aspect of NOT De-selcting your current target that is truly where the power lies.
Meaning you can keep mashing the standard rotation on your main target and shield bash without ever selecting the bashed target. Similar advantages can be exploited using focus cast macros. Great as a healer in arenas.
Great observation and recommendations flee!
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June 19th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Depends on the situation:
AoE trash pull - tab through stacked mobs till I hit the caster, and focus it. They’re usually too stacked and overlapped to mouseclick-target or mouseover-target them effectively, tabbing works better here.
Catching a runner - mouseclick-target or mouseover-target it, then taunt or Death Grip. Tab targetting is not so reliable when you need to catch it quickly b/f it gets to a dps or healer.
If I were a warrior, I’d use tab-target on trash to also spam heroic strikes and other threat moves, but with DK AoE I don’t need to do that.
Still need to learn how and when to use focus-targetting, which I don’t fully grok yet (I get how to write the macro, I macro everthing and know lua pretty well, just not the situations it’s best used in) - chalk that up to lack of experience.
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June 21st, 2009 at 11:35 pm
I recommend a mouse-over Devastate or Sunder macro (I can post later) that saves you a lot of time multi-mob tanking. You keep the first mob to be killed targeted and mouse-over devastate the others. Combine that with appropriate thunderclaps, demoralizing shouts and shockwaves and you can tank 5 mobs with ease.
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Arvernien reply on June 21, 2009 11:55 pm:
I just saw Flee’s comment above. Use his macro - it’s great.
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