see what you're saying, but as a console addict, I just find the action required to jumpshoot and kite far more intuitive when done using a stick or even a d-pad. Got to play to your strengths, and I'd like to make my total waste of my childhood on console games pay off in some way.

What i'm curious about, is what sort of formulative theory people use with their key layouts.

Mine goes like this. Look at what keys I need to hold down, then put all my press and release keys around that, with varying priorities. Mouse takes care of aiming and targeting. Functions I would hold down when playing WoW are movement keys, and voicechat key. High priority keys would be both mouse buttons, and then various raid important spells, such as cleanse and heals. Buffs on another line.

As for actual key layout itself, I used .oeu movement, or ESDF for you non-Dvorak people. Ability buttons were "a'23456fd", or "aq23456yf" for qwerty. Control and Shift covered key modifiers. Shift was buffs, mouse roll up was raid version (after they finally threw it in, thank god.) Standard line took care of main abilities, max rank heals, cleanse, etc. Control took care of less used abilities, and low-rank heals.

One neat thing I did by accident, was I had max HL bound to 4, and divine favor to Control-4. So if I wanted to force a crit heal, i didn't have to move my fingers between button presses. Max FoL and low-rank FoL were also similarly set up. UI was default UI, though if I had one thing I could change about that, it would be to allow any key to be a key modifier, instead of just shift, control, and alt.

maybe its just cause i play a warrior... but i get by jsut fine quazi clicking. yeah.. im a PVE clicker. pvp on the other hand; i click my cooldowns, but all my abilities are bound ~ to backspace, with my stances being on my mouse...

i get by fine and dandy.

now if im eating pizza while tanking or DPSing during a farmed instance clear... then yeah ill use my keyboard.

Any left handers out there have a good setup? WASD isn't very ergonomic for a lefty :(

further to earlier responses, a friend has just recommended http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=157024 to me.

I will try one out and see how it goes.

I started out using the n52, but have moved away from it. Primary reason was I found the button resistance to be far too much for really enthusiastic rogue spamming. Although the fact that others use it without complaint make me think it might just be my unit.

A while ago a guildy was advocating ewsd instead of wasd as a more natural wrist position. Personally I don't see it, but was curious of there are other fans out there.

I'm really tempted to try the Wolf Claw II. It's not very expensive and would actually function as a real keyboard in case I accidently found myself not playing WoW.

Regarding the N52 button stickiness which is what I believe you're referring to - the only problem button I have is the "shift" key, the thumb accessed rectangular button below the directional. Mine would get stuck down, which would cause a repeating key error which would crash my computer and not allow it to reboot until I unplugged the N52. My solution: physically remove the key, a la the F1 key when using Windows/Excel.

Regarding being a button spamming rogue, I'm really not one to talk b/c I don't consider myself a "good" rogue (i just try hard), but that was one of my early bad habits that I forced myself to break. I'm of the opinion that the only time I want to be stuck w/ -zero- energy is when I know a fear is imminent in a pve encounter. Any other time I'd rather have a feint/gouge/kick/stun readily available. The way I taught myself to break the habit was to repeatedly (few hours at a time, on numerous occasions) duel the best disc/holy priest I knew - the kind of player who can head fake a kick and flash heal around a 1.5 second global. I've found that my both DPS and playing enjoyment has improved. However, I never defined spamming keys emphatically for 4 hours as 'fun' so YMMV.

I don't spam in order to run out of energy, it's more like when trying to get that evis off to dump combo points on a trash mob before it gets executed down. Otherwise I take a much more deliberate approach. Except on Vael.

However, I was misleading, I actually dropped the n52 when leveling my rogue, my fingers couldn't hold up to a couple hours of SS'ing. And yes, I'm actually talking about resistance, not stickyness, the strain was cramping my wrist and causing pain in my middle phalange. I went back to using my normal keyboard and have never had any problems on longer sessions.

Guess I misunderstood your "spamming" comment, sorry about that. It is funny when you jump on a new vent server and you can tell who the rogues are by the volume of their keystrokes.

I got my N52 somewhere around lvl3 with my first character (this rogue). My hands would cramp, I'd get pains and all that, however I just attributed it to playing for extended periods of time with a new game (diablo series was 99% of my previous PC gaming experiences), popped some ibuprofen, stretched, iced and went on :/ Never figured it was due to the N52, which I've since gotten very used to, but I probably could have saved myself a bunch of pain it sounds like.

That's what I do. (Well, ESDF.)

Two major reasons:

--It's the natural position of your hand while typing, so no shifts necessary to chat and your ctrl/alt/shift keys are still in easy reach.

--More buttons surrounding your "home key" positions. I have most of my actions bound to keys adjacent to my movement keys.

Plus, your keyboard has that little bump on the "F" key to let you know your hand's in the right place.

Breaking news: Blizzard Endorses WASD as Superior Control Scheme

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...tmp=1#blizzard

I'm sorry, but if a CM posts something that means it's the official company position, doesn't it?

By the way, anyone have a recommendation on a good new mouse for, let's say, a max of $60? I have an old intellimouse optical, and I rather like having a 'strafe key' on each side of the mouse, but after a few late nights PvPing as combat daggers, well, let's just say the mouse learned how frustrating that can be.

There don't seem to be any good new mouses with that setup, so I was considering a logitech G5 or G7, or a Razer Copperhead. Anyone have experience with those, and whether the things that originally appear "gimmicky" actually are (ie. weighting to make the mouse respond best to your particular touch).

I have a G5 with weight, I can feel a difference between it and normal mouses, and perfer having the weight. The G7 is wireless if that is your perf; is costs about $70.

I paid about $45 for my G5.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search...ogitech+mx1000

Love mine.

Mass cancellations this weeked as clickers and arrow key users discover that they are regarded as second-class citizens by Blizz. This is even worse than when Tom Chilton said paladins were designed for speshul childrenz.

I'm eyeing the G5/7 line right now, basically trying to balance between going back to the leash on the G5 after a while cordless, or dealing with a battery life on the G7 that means my mouse is guaranteed to fail some time in the middle of every raid. The battery quickswap thing is nifty, but unless I'm proactive with it I'd probably end up doing something embarassing and costly.

I use a logitech wireless/optical mouse. In like 3-4 months of using it I've replaced the batteries once, and that is with an awful lot of playing.

That's good to know, but I do feel it's within the scope of this topic to point out that the logitech website claims about a 10 hour battery life for the G7.

This is my last broken record post, promise: but do check out the mx1000. The quick charge feature, combined w/ the long battery life and numerous buttons are what sold me. The excellent 'resolution' (for lack of a better term) of the laser was initially a secondary feature, but it's gained in importance in my post-purchase review. It's definitely my "stranger over the internet" recommendation.

Ah, I use a LX7. I guess its not considered a gaming mouse, but it has worked fine for me. It fit better to my hand than the MX1000 when I tried it at the store. The response time is well over fast enough (never noticed a difference for me from my old mouseball/corded mouses), and the batteries last for months. Also not too heavy, not too light. I generally play on a recliner with my mouse being used on the arm of the recliner. No mouse pad here for me and it works just fine.

I bit the bullet and changed to using the mouse for movement a while back. My other hand is on the keypad so I have all those keys to work with.

To be more specific I have it set up as follows (note that one of my characters is a dagger rogue so I need/try to be very manuverable):

5-button mouse:
The two extra buttons are mapped to strafe left/right.

Keypad:
4 turn left (hold with strafe button on mouse to circle strafe)
6 turn right (hold with strafe button on mouse to circle strafe)
0 back up

This leaves ., 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, +, /, *, and - for actions. Each of those 12 keys is mapped to one of the 12 slots on the action bar. 5 is used for the most common skills (BS for the rogue) and the least common ones are placed on the /*- row. In addition I've made a macro to flip to action bar 2 and tied that to the Page Down key. I can reach that easily with my index finger without losing my place on the keypad. Bar 2 is filled with macros that perform a skill and then flip back to action bar 1.

With this setup I can move any direction and have 24 actions available without moving my hands very far and without looking at the keyboard. It's not as good as a Nostromo but it works for me. It took about a week to get used to the change but I'm much better with this setup.