Eh? I'm not aware of any /attack command. The issue is the difference between "/assist %t", "/assist <name>", and "/assist".
First off. If you aren't using those in a hotkey, you should. It's a pain in the butt to try to actually type out /assist when in combat. Don't do it.
When in a hotkey, the three commands above will do the following things:
1. "/assist %t". Lot's of confusion on this one. %t will resolve to the name of whomever you happen to have targeted at the time. This is a *special case* (and will beome clear in a moment). If you have a hotkey with the line "/assist %t", the very first time you hit it, it will change the actual line in the hotkey to make the "%t" match whoever you had targeted when you hit the command. Subsequent uses will act exactly like "/assist <name>", except <name> will be whoever you had targted that first time.
2. "/assist <name>". This is used during raids and really anytime you feel like saving yourself an extra click or three. I have a hotkey called "MA", whith this line in it. I edit the line so that <name> matches the MA of my group. What happens is that everytime you hit the button, you will automatically target whoever <name> has targeted. Typically <name> will be the name of someone in your group/raid (the MA).
3. "/assist". The /assist command by itself, with no arguments will automatically target the current target of whoever you have targeted. If you are targeting your groups main tank, your target will change to whomever he's fighting (or just happens to be looking at at that moment). If you are currently targeting a mob, it will change you target to whomever the mob is targeting. This is part of the reason why the "/assist %t" does something special. There's no need for the %t since your target is already assisted without putting anything in. Adding %t would have been redundant, so they made it do something different.
I personally never use the "/assist %t" syntax. There's really not much need. I suppose you could set up a hot key with that and it would allow you to create a "/assist <name>" key very quickly (just target the MA and hit the button). However, once set, you'll have to manually edit it anyway. Honestly, if you've got to edit it each time you are in a new group/raid anyway, why not just type the MA's name in? I suppose if you have an MA with a completely ridiculously hard to spell name, this might come in handy, but that's the only reason to use this.
I *always* have both a "/assist", and a "/assist <name>" key ready. There's a reason for this. You want to use the "/assist <name>" for assisting your MA. During a typical group/raid, you're going to be assisting that person a hell of a lot of times (every single mob kill). Continually targeting your MA and hitting your "/assist" key adds an extra bit of time that you don't need to waste. Not to mention an extra step you can ***** up that could result with you on the wrong mob. Imagin if your MA is the 4th person in your group and the chanter is the 5th. One miskey on the function keys (or drifting mouse over the group box), and you end up assisting the chanter instead of the MA without knowing it. This can have disasterous consequences. Just always use an MA key with the line "/assist <name>" in it (with <name> replaced with the name of the MA). It'll save you a ton of problems and guarantee a really smooth grouping experience.
You still want an "/assist" key though. Ok. Most classes do anyway. I suppose a pure melee in a support role doesn't need it. But everyone else will. There will be occasions when you'll want to know who that mob is targeting. "/assist" on the mob will tell you that. If you are the MA, you'll probably want to use /assist to obtain a target from the puller. If you are the CCer, you might want to use /assist for any of a number of reasons. Same with slowers. I've just found so many situations where being able to just find the target of something is incredibly useful that I always have this key on my primary hotbank. It's just one of those things that when you need it, you need it now, and you cant take time typing or fumbling with key banks.
Another piece of advice. I can't for the life of me remember the exact syntax, but there's a command you can run that will turn off autoattack on assist. You want to do this. If you don't have autoatttack turned off yet, do it now. Don't wait. You only need to do it once for all your characters on your account (its in the account INI I believe). As I indicated above, there are a whole ton of situations in which you'll want to use /assist for targetting without actually attacking. EQ by default (unless they've changed it) starts you out automatically turning on autoattack whenever you /assist something. That's a really bad thing. If you do nothing else to change your configuration from the default, change this. It's right up there with remapping the autoattack key from "a" (which SoE eventually changed the default for). It'll kill you and your group just as often.
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