I would have to say that accross toons, the only thing that really stays the same are my keybinding combinations. The keys that get use on my ui are Q-R, 1-5, F1-F4, and shit or alt modifications of all of those if needed. For shamaning, I keybind the entire numberpad with totems and abilities.

On all of my toons, I move exclusively with the mouse (except strafe), but for some arcane reason keep WASD in their regular keybinds (sometimes you just gotta be lazy and keyboard turn). One of my side buttons is bound to auto run and I just mouse-look, toggle autorun, and/or hold down both buttons to get around(It can get me into trouble once or twice a week if I bump it by mistake though ).

Sometimes when people comment on my healing I tend to joke that my ui does most of the work, but I think that if a healer doesn't take advantage of keybinding/mouse-overs/clique-mechanics then they are just lengthening the time between "damage recognized" and "damage healed" by quite a large margin.

I use the same concept for keeping similar/same abilities on the some keybind across characters. Recently when leveling a pallie alt, I wound up confusing myself as I had holy light bound to where GHeal is on my priest, which also happens to be taunt on my warrior. When I got righteous defense, I was at a loss for where to put it. I wound up giving righteous defense the "natural" spot and sticking holy light somewhere random, since I use RD more.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned alot is that you can save keybinding space via macros. As a Warrior, some abilities are not available in every stance so this works well (it does work for Druids as well and I guess for Shadowpriests as well).

Just a few examples:

MACRO 16777242 "De/Ex" INV_Misc_QuestionMark
#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1/3] Execute(Rank 7); [stance:2] Devastate
END

This macro saves me a keybind since it Devastates in D-stance, otherwise it will function as Execute. The tooltip also updates according to your stance so that's pretty nifty, too.

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast [stance:1/3] Victory Rush; [stance:2] Throw;
END

Throw to pull in D-stance, otherwise Victory Rush

And a last one that seems like a no brainer but I have seen atleast one person that had both his land and flying mount on two different keybinds. This macro will use the flying mount where applicable, otherwise just your land mount (replace mount names as usual of course):

MACRO 16777222 "Mount" INV_Misc_QuestionMark
#showtooltip
/use [flyable] Reins of the Onyx Netherwing Drake; Amani War Bear
END

I got this one bound on K on the standard WASD setup. It's pretty far off from my normal keys but that's good enough since moving around and the process of mounting up exclude each other so you can use your left hand for it.

Maybe slightly offtopic, but I can recommend TrinketMenu - Addons - Curse to you. It basically does the same but it doesn't take up any action bar slots and updates for every trinket automatically.

Having a G15 is basically invaluable to me at the moment. I can bind roughly 13 different abilities on outlandish keybinds (say alt+shift+k) and still able to hit them reliably. I say 13, since I can hit G6 to G18 easily with just a slight or no movement of hand.

On my warlock, I have my curses, banishes and the like bound there and on my warrior, I have the not-so-often used skills like Victory Rush and Sweeping Strikes for example.

Druids get a 'free' action bar tied to form switches. Warriors might, or addons do. To me that means there's not a lot of space saved, since you switch the action bars around anyway - no need to add modifiers like [ctrl] or [shift].

One thing I would like to point out:
Do not tie [Mount] to the [`] key. Yes, you can mount up in Zul'Aman. And yes, to do so, you shift out of Bear form.

Actually, Warriors do as well and I am really hurting on keybinds with the advent of Wrath. I'll have 3-4 more skills to bind and that's on top of my normal action bars that change with stances. I shy away from binding Ctrl+Keys because I tend to hit my Windows key like this more often than not which produces quite silly results. Is there any way to prevent this from happening via programs or does this really just happen to me? <_<

My own system focuses on never moving my hand away from the movement keys (WASD), so my spells are bound to combinations like Shift+W for shadow bolt, Ctrl+F for Fear, Shift+Q for CoA, etc. For casting on the move I've learned to use a combination of moving with the mouse and Auto-run (which is also conveniently bound to an aux mouse button).

Abilities that are used only in certain situations are around the backspace area so they aren't fat-fingered by accident or anything. This is includes Healthstones (shift+backspace), pvp trinkets (backspace), agro dumps (Insert), etc.

These assignments came primarily from heavy amounts of PvPing before BC; to me it's quicker to "know" what my spells are by combinations of Shift, Ctrl, and Alt, instead of having to click or glance at the number row to hit the right thing. PvPing is also good for getting acquainted with new bindings (especially for my melee classes) and adjustments.

Or simpler, and less destructive: How to disable the keyboard Windows key

You could try KeyTweak for making Ctrl key bindings accessible.

Looking at the above I see that nobody is using the F1-4 keys and after trying to use them I think I know now why.

They're too freaking far away on a standard keyboard. It messes up my hand position when I use them. I'd do better to shift my hand down a row and bind more of the lower keys. If I dropped two rows, into my typing "home row - asdf". using shift might actually be plausible but the tab key is harder to reach. Ctrl and alt are too awkwardly situated for me to be comfortable using them. They mess up my hand placement too much, it doesn't "remember" where it should be. I used the default UI for too long, it just didn't occur to me to bind ANY letter keys until very recently. I've also been a touch typist for 25 years, I really should leverage that muscle memory more.

I'm like many posters, I use the same keys on different characters for similar functions. The Fireball key on the mage is the Judgement key on the paladin. Blessing of freedom goes where blink does. The stun hammer goes where counterspell goes. It's never perfect match but it helps.

I can think of a perfectly fine reason to skip using [f4] at least. [Alt] is the self-cast key of choice. Tieing [f4] to something useful like MotW and then casting it as self-buff produces hilarious results. Honestly.

Try one of the options listed above or get a better keyboard. The Logitech one I have allows you to turn off keys, which I instantly did. Both [Windows] and [Caps Lock] are disabled and don't do anything. It means I actually started liking the [Windows] key a bit more, as I'm less likely to fat-finger to the [Alt]-key instead of [Ctrl] due to the [Windows]-key being in the way. (With [Alt]+[4] being a 'special' such as Major Shadow Protection Potion for RoS or Tears of the Goddess for Archimonde and [Ctrl]+[4] being Trinket 1, think PvP trinket..., fat fingering the wrong one can have rather entertaining results, albeit for a very short time.)

Does anyone have foot pedals for racing games? Can they be used to act as alt, ctrl or shift?

I was wondering a while back if it was possible to use one of my mouse buttons as a modifier like alt, shift or control. I did some searches for it but never found any answers, so I gave up. I guess this thread is a suitable place to ask this question.

Does anyone know if it's possible to set a mouse button as a modifier? I'm on a mac by the way.

Might want to try out Bindpad. It has made things loads easier for me.

When I go from shadow to holy I just go into bindpad and change a few keybindings. (simple click, click) So things like CoH and inner focus are still in bindpad when I'm shadow, they just are not keybound. Very simple and does not mess with your action bars.

One thing I have found very useful in general is to just have a keybound empty slot on my action bar. (something fairly easy to hit) This gets used for any fight specific macro's that are needed. (Quick totem targeting, Naj/Kael,Vashj use items etc.)

Well, yes it's possible with several Logitech mice on PC, I use the G9 Laser mouse, and it comes with software where you can assign buttons to different keys.

I do exactly this, though on a PC (Razer mouse).

Please see:
How you can become a Gladiator: Keybindings Part I - Elitist Jerks on my views on this subject.

Summary: Keybindings will make you better, here's my take on keybindings with pictures.

Thanks, I'll have to check that out at some point. And yeah, having a slot for fight specific abilities is pretty much a necessity in my opinion, things like a macro for equipping and later using the shield on Kael, and the Tears of the Goddess on Archimonde are very nice to be able to hit quickly, and disrupting your standard keybindings to do so sounds like a good way to cause yourself major grief... <shudders at memories of people not *CLICKING* tears in time>. As a side note, yes I did have Tears of the Goddess bound even when tanking Archimonde, even survived melee stupidity getting me punted with it a few times, though that level of stupid going on usually meant something else was going to wipe us.

One thing that freed up a few options for me was using a single (mouse) button for stance dancing: Thumb is Battle stance, Shift-Thumb Berserker, and Ctrl-Thumb Defensive. With up to three modifier keys, as warriors don't need to selfcast, you shouldn't possibly run out of keybind possibilities. You have at least 3 buttons on your mouse (often 5+), and about 25 easily reachable keys for a WASD setup. That multiplies to more than a hundred combinations, even more for ESDF or on a G15. And don't forget that you can use ^ or the key left to Z/Y for keybindings as well. Not to mention that you don't need everything at your fingertips - OOR keys are great for mount, food or whatever else where a slight delay is acceptable.


Fitting everything for every spec is probably quite clunky - you only need to swap 4-5 skills and not bind any differently with a respec if the interface is thought out.

On the stance-dependant bar changing: Don't use it for skills that are available in any stance, like Heroic Strike, SS/BT/MS and the like. You can get along fine if you limit that bar to skills limited to one stance, maybe even put skills that are available in two stances (Reflect, Hamstring) somewhere general.

Personally, I've never had a problem with default move key placement, and have learned from a variety of RPGs and FPSs to use my left hand to both move and hotkey from the 5\t\g\b key line left...but I don't put too many hotkeys over there except 1-5 and things that don't come up often [like binding feather fall to Z, for instance]. This works for me both as a mage and a prot warrior, and I've adjusted to using my right hand as an umbrella typer ready to use the mouse as needed [I use it very little except to select a specific target hotkeys and tab don't cover or using Decursive to well...decurse]. As far as actually binding, I've found the numberpad useful for a variety of things. As my mage I have a keybind setup that accesses macros in my second action bar [the one that's usually 'hidden' behind your main bar even when you have max bars on screen]:

7 - Counterspell [current target] | 8 - Polymorph [focus target] | 9 - Change Focus to current target

4 - Counterspell [focus target] | 5 - Polymorph [current target] | 6 - unfocus

1 - Spellsteal [current target] | 2 - Spellsteal [focus target] | 3 - Target = target's target

I've found this setup to be extremele helpful in most every PvE and PvP situation in conjunction with Z through M bindings of spells like Ice Block, Feather Fall, shields/wards, and cooldowns. It gives me the fast options to hit every spell I need while having a standard attack-spell bar. Y - P and H - L cover trinkets and other cooldowns, including the macro to cast Water Elemental and have it attack my target, pop a spell damage trinket based on Shift, and pop Icy Viens.


My warrior setup serves a similar purpose:

7 - Defensive Stance | 8 - Battle Stance | 9 - Berserker stance
4 - Disarm
1 - Concussion Blow

I'm still working on what to bind to 2,3,5,6 but since my warrior is usually tanking I've found the attack bar including offensive prot abilities to be fine, and am considering Shield Wall, Last Stand, and the Battle Shouts with a rebind setup when stance changes. But the idea is the same, fast access to non-attack abilities and control, and a 'Left Hand offense, Right Hand defense and miscellaneous' setup.

This is what works for me, and I'm still working on my Shaman alt setup [only three classes I have experience with so far], and just uses a default keyboard with set apart numpad with not much mouse use. Call me crazy, but an almost pure keyboard setup is most efficient for me and can certainly work for others who have mouse/joystick woes.

Not to divert into an addon thread, but I really like Trinity Bars for this. You can make any action bar into a "stance" bar that switches along with your main bar. You can also add a near infinite amount of buttons to your main bar if you so desire. I just like having everything "mirrored" on each stance bar (execute becomes taunt in Dstance, shield bash becomes pummel in zerker stance).

One thing that frees up three buttons you won't miss is binding strafe to a and d (or whatever buttons you use) and just completely unbinding back up. This will also prevent you from ever keyboard turning or backing up which are simply not as fast as mouse turning.