How many times have you been in a group where the tank totally sucks at quickly picking up the next target for the group to kill? So there is a long pause on DPS as the tank slowly gets his/her next target, because the rest of the group should be targeting through the tank to focus all DPS to quickly burn mobs down and control group agro. How many times have you been soloing and just sucked at quickly grabbing your next target while you're getting gang-***** by about 8 gobos?! LOL There is a simple solution for this that's way better than your tab key. Somebody showed me this trick a long time ago, but I forgot who. Make a targeting macro and put it on your hotbar right next to your ranged and melee attack buttons. The command portion of your macro will read like so: /target_nearest_NPC So say you fighting 8 gobos, kill the first one, hit your macro, you then target the closest gobo of the remaining 7, and can beat him down. This is way faster than clicking on the mobs, and you will never accidentally target a mob 30 feet away like you can sometimes when using tab to get your next target. This macro works correctly about 95% of the time. The only time where you will experience issues is if you're close to a quest NPC or shiney, as this macro will also pick those up, but this happens way less than you would think. I think this macro is useful for all classes and essential for all tanks.
Another option to accomplish the same thing is to make one quick change to your options and free up that hotkey. Go into Options->Controls->View Options and look for Target Nearest with Autoattack and make sure it's checked. This will make your autoattack key (default is the ` key) also target the nearest NPC. One potential issue with both changing the auto attack key and your macro is that target nearest tends to target the nearest NPC that you can see in your current camera view. The best way to help that in a major fight is to scroll your camera out as far as possible and then position it so you have a top down view. This will allow you to see stuff coming up behind you as well and will make your targeting much easier. One other thing you can do that works with the whole scroll out thing is to go into Options->View Options and set the Max Camera Distance to Far. This will allow you to pull the camera back as far as the geography of the dungeon will allow and give you a much bigger view of the battle.
Great tips for those that do not know them. I know lots of people that use TAB to target, and its very infective at best. This should probably be stickied or put in a FAQ for future reference.
I completely forgot about that feature! LOL I would still rather do it my way personally, as I find it comforting to have that button on my hotbar verses a keyboard button. Another way of doing this for sure though, and better for those peeps that prefer a non-hot bar method. Great addition to this thread!
If I remember correctly, /target_nearest_npc is also bound to F8 by default. I've got F8 bound to a thumb button on my mouse so it's easier to reach, but you could bind it to whatever is handy for you. I use that instead of tab, because accidentally pulling another group 30 yards away doesn't always make for a long life. Just another way of doing the same thing you're doing. Like you said, though, it will also target quest NPCs and anything you can harvest, but usually whatever wants to kill you is closer than the shrubbery.
