I've been needing to play mage in groups more often lately by using my succy to seduce.  Because seduce isn't an instant cast and only lasts a short duration with a good chance of breaking early I've been pulling my hair out trying to keep the seduce up without missing out on too much DPS.  I've been wondering about the new /focus ability and after finally looking into it learned it may help me out.  I thought I'd post what I learned in case there are others who don't know about the new focus abiilty who could also use it to their advantage.

Focus basically allows you to have two targets selected at the same time.  You can mark one target as your focus target, which is retained even when you target another mob.  I read, though I haven't verified it yet, that you can bind a key to the focus ability as well.  And btw, to &quot;unfocus&quot; you just use the focus command when not selected on anything.  Using focus you can cast spells and use abilities on either the mob you're selected on or the focus mob without switching from your targeted mob to do so!  I wrote a little macro to help with my seduction spell and sharing that macro may be the best way I can desribe how this ability works.

/cast [button:1, pet:succubus, target=focus] seduction
/cast [button:2, pet:succubus, target=focus] soothing kiss
/focus [button:3]
/cast [button:4] banish
/tar [button:5] focus

Line by line:

/cast [button:1, pet:succubus, target=focus] seduction
If I use mouse button 1 with the macro it casts seduction on the focus target only if the succubus is out.  Note that if there is no focus target defined the spell will be cast on the main target.

/cast [button:2, pet:succubus, target=focus] soothing kiss
If I use mouse button 2 with the macro it casts soothing kiss on the focus target only if the succubus is out.  Note that if there is no focus target defined the spell will be cast on the main target.

/focus [button:3]
Using mouse button 3 with the macro assigns the target as the focus target.

/cast [button:4] banish
This isn't related to the whole focus target part of the macro.  I just wanted to save bar space by adding the ability into the macro to banish my currently selected target by using mouse button 4.

/tar [button:5] focus
If I use mouse button 5 with the macro it simply selects my focus target.

Basically it work likes this (at least in theory so far).  I select the mob I want to keep seduced and use button 3 with the macro to assign it as my focus target.  I then select the mt's target.  When mt pulls I use button 1 with my macro to seduce the focus target.  I then start casting to DPS the target I'm selected on.  When seduce breaks, without having to switch targets, I simply use button 2 with my macro to cast soothing kiss then use button 1 to re-seduce.  I can then continue DPS on the mt's target, all without having to keep selecting different mobs.

I'm not very big into macros at all, but whether via macro or a regular key binding I can see where the new focus ability could come in handy for many classes.  There is much more information available regarding some of the new macro commands at [url=http://www.noggaddicts.com/guides/neuros-macro-guide/]noggaddicts.com[/url] which I located while simply Googling to find out what a &quot;focus target&quot; even was.  There is also a more concise description of the usage of focus within macros on this page.  As we all know my posts aren't exaclty short and concise. :)