I was considering unbinding walking backwards a while back, since the S button really is top of the line keyboard real-estate.
I left it though, I'm not 100% comfortable losing walking backwards for some reason, my biggest concern was tanking while moving mobs. Think I'll have to try it for the expansion though. Anyone else have any experience playing with no walking backwards?
Definitely agree with A and D though, bound those to my stance changing macros ages ago. QWE for strafing and running for me.
As a tank I would not be comfortable losing the backwards key. Not only is it good for just repositioning mobs, but there's several high level encounters (Illidan to name one) where I need to move a heavy-hitting boss a decent distance and I don't want to outrange healers too quickly.
Rebinding your turn keys to strafe OTOH is crucial for faster movement in a lot of situations.
Which Nostromo pad is the best value for the money right now? There is like a 20 dollar one, a 60 dollar one and I guess a more expensive limited edition one. Is there any difference really?
I'd suggest people who are serious about optimizing keybind control to try out TFGH as a WASD replacement. I've been using it since playing q2ctf competitively, because I needed a shitload of binds for that. TFGH gives you access to basically every key on the keyboard. Granted, I have big hands and long fingers, but even with small hands it opens up a lot of possibilities.
The only real drawback is the positioning of your hands when you type. You have to get used to repositioning depending on what you're doing.
On an unrelated note, I bought BioShock the other day, and was supremely pissed off to find out that the "H" key is unbindable. Who the fuck does that shit in this day and age?
I don't get some of you people and your keybindings. My hands aren't that small, but shift-6 is really stretching is, ESDF loses me as many keys as it gains, and TFGH would rob me of modifier keys altogether. On the other hand, 5 button mouse + ctrl/shift/alt binds to all buttons (and the scroll wheel up/down)is lovely. I have no idea how I'd play without one. Also, consider binding your autorun to your mouse somewhere - I have it bound to the mouse back button, and I will constantly use it instead of forward for moving, leaving my left hand free for abilities.
Does anyone know if it's possible to set a mouse button as a modifier? I'm on a mac by the way.
I'm pretty sure this is possible. I'm on a mac, and I use a pretty cheap Logitech mouse at the moment as a replacement for my wireless one that went wonky. It comes with a control panel that lets you bind basically any of the functions as you see fit, to any kind of click or keystroke. I think you could do what you're talking about if you bound a mouse button to shift or some other modifier key. Mine is a $15 mouse, but I can still bind 4 abilities just to the mouse scroll and tilt. It's also very easy on a mac to rebind modifier keys. After reading the suggestion here, I just went to the keyboard control panel and changed caps lock to control, gaining 6 useful new keybinds.
Like others mentioned, I also use similar key bindings across different characters. There are a few exceptions that took some getting used to, though. For example, my druid's [`] key was bound to flight form, while on my rogue it was stealth. Felt natural most of the time, but every once and a while I would try to stealth in cat form and turn into a bird instead, or, once, jumped off a ledge and stealthed as I fell to my death.
For the most part, though, I give keybindings pretty careful thought, not just to avoid mixups like that, but also to have keys bound in tiers of necessary accessibility. Reactive or constant refresh abilities are on the mousewheel, so I can easily perform them while moving. Besides the usual keys (1-6, shift etc) on my DK, I've started using F1-F5 after that since I can reach those pretty easily without disrupting my regular hand position. I'm trying out Caps 1-6, but it's taking some getting used to. My pinky naturally rests on shift while playing, and caps lock is a little too close to distinguish without active thinking about it. I can do shift, tab, tilde, and escape without thinking, and that's really the kind of keybindings I look for-- something that can easily become "muscle memory", so my brain says "Cast Mind Freeze" and I cast it, taking out the middle-man.
I don't think I could ever do TFGH, though. You might pick up more keys in the immediate area, but are you actually gaining more bindings? I can't reach any modifiers comfortably from there. Almost seems like you're using more keys for the same number of bindings. It doesn't have seem to have a natural anchor, either-- I always know where my hand is based on pinky-shift.
Yeah, like I said in my post I might only be able to use TFGH due to my hand size and finger span. Plus I've been using it for around 10 years now, so I'm very adept. I use all the modifier buttons with no problem at all, and I'm very quick. Just figured I'd mention it as an option to explore
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.
Heh, I wasn't referring to fitting everything for every spec, just that with stance-dependent bars I found I forgot to rebind my SS/BT/MS key in all 3 stances when I did respec more than once - as for limiting bar-changing to abilities that are stance specific, my bars are organized around modifiers, so one bar is all no-modifier, etc, and stance-dependent-ness and how easily reached I wanted them didn't line up well for me. Certainly possible to have keybindings not systematically match your bars though if you can deal with whatever display you end up with, and if I get around to trying Bindpad or something similar that lets you keybind most things independently from bars I may try that.
The main issue I'd have with TFGH is having to rebind all the Pane buttons (Character pane, quest log, spell book). ESDF is hard enough; I've rebound Reply to Y and Character to J, leaving me with few others. Though since you won't really need to see which guildies are online in the heat of battle, 'spose you could rebind them all to the Numpad.
Some topics for thought:
I know some people use to purely the mouse for movement (holding both buttons to move forward and turn). But what about using it to strafe? If you had a mouse that had a 4-way middle button, you could bind them to forward/back/strafe, freeing up WASD or whatever your movement keys are.
Racing pedals for movement? Hell, next time my brother's gone for a week, I'm gonna steal his racing set (wheel, pedals and gearstick) and try playing with it. I'll have 3 pedals, 4 buttons on the wheel and 12 buttons on the gearstick, plus the 7 gear positions. As long as I could get some sort of software to make it all work, it could be awesome
Any use in rebinding the Space Bar? Mostly Jump is used to get over small obstacles, which you can see from far away, so Jump might be to important to have a finger all to itself. I remember a friend of mine used Space to shoot in a FPS, perhaps Space could be used to Forward movement?
Of course, these would only be for the truly hardcore. There's a line between rebinding for efficiencies sake, and completely throwing gaming conventions out the window. Hell, if you really wanted to, you could completely remake a keyboard around the hand to provide ultra-efficiency. But that's too much effort for me.
The main issue I'd have with TFGH is having to rebind all the Pane buttons (Character pane, quest log, spell book). ESDF is hard enough; I've rebound Reply to Y and Character to J, leaving me with few others. Though since you won't really need to see which guildies are online in the heat of battle, 'spose you could rebind them all to the Numpad.
I have reply bound to backspace (it's out of the way, and I'm used to it from another game). Also, I find that having a key bound to open map/character panel/guild/whatever is fairly unneccessary. If you need to access them, it's never an immediate need(must open in under a second!), so you don't need a keybinding. And there are already spots to click on the default UI to bring them up.
I mapped the "sensitivity decrease" button (immediately behind/above the mousewheel) on an mx518 to ctrl. (I have never even considered actually using the on-the-fly sensitivity change functionality, even in FPS's.)
With esdf as movement, I then use qawrtyghcvbn for abilities (ring finger on qaw, index finger on rtygh, thumb on cvbn) with modifiers none, shift, ctrl, ctrl-shift. That's 48 abilities reachable without more than slight shifting of hand position. (I also use some of the number and ctrl-number keys for equipment swaps, but I have to shift my hand forward to reach them.)
As a tank I would not be comfortable losing the backwards key. Not only is it good for just repositioning mobs, but there's several high level encounters (Illidan to name one) where I need to move a heavy-hitting boss a decent distance and I don't want to outrange healers too quickly.
Rebinding your turn keys to strafe OTOH is crucial for faster movement in a lot of situations.
Out of interest, is this any faster than strafing by pressing the turn-right key while holding the right mouse button? That's how I've done it since the beginning and it seems effective to me.
No, its just two actions instead of one for the same result. If you're adept at mouselook, there's virtually no use for turn keys, which is why most people rebind A and D to strafe instead of turn. Also makes for some fun times when you're eating with one hand, and can only face the one direction. Certainly made tanking 5mans more interesting!
A bit of advice for anyone trying to transition to keybinding, greener players who might find some of this advice extensive or daunting at first glance: don't be afraid to start small. Even as a wasd turner, f r t g v and b are right there at your disposal, ready and easy to use. Once you start using them, you'll begin to understand what everyone in this thread is telling you, that keybindings really are more effective. Then you'll be ready to adopt the best practices described here.
I got started with keybinding on my resto druid, which is convenient as you can be effective playing that class with relatively few buttons. I set up mouseover macros for lifebloom, rejuvenation, decurse and abolish poison to f, r, g and t. I hover my mouse over my Grid frames, tap f with forefinger and strafe a lot. My question, as I'm working to convert to mouse turning now, is for other mouseover macro users: are there any tips for reconciling using the mouse to move, and also using it to select targets?
For example, I haven't found a good method for mouse turning in a larger scale battleground environment (think Alterac Valley Relief Hut defense). Typically I have one finger leaning on a strafe key, one tapping lifebloom, and my mouse hovering over as many targets as are in range. I feel like my reaction time would suffer if I was mouse turning and then also moving the mouse to find a new lifebloom target. (I also feel like this may be a non-issue, as mouse turning is more important when I'm cornered in pvp, or stop drop and rolling out of a pve fire, so perhaps this example isn't a good one.)
For movement while mousing-over I use a combination of the strafe, forward and backpedal keys, as a healer it generally doesn't matter which way your character is facing as long as you're going in the right direction, and if that isn't good enough I just quickly right click and drag my character to the right direction... only takes a fraction of a second.
Any use in rebinding the Space Bar? Mostly Jump is used to get over small obstacles, which you can see from far away, so Jump might be to important to have a finger all to itself. I remember a friend of mine used Space to shoot in a FPS, perhaps Space could be used to Forward movement?
I think that is probably going a bit far. Any classes with instant cast abilities that require facing a target to cast can make good use of Jump. Yes, you can achieve a similar effect by cutting a close strafing angle, but you definitely loose a lot of potential freedom in direction, as well as hitting targets other than the primary kiting target (eg Silencing Shot on a distant target while kiting a melee class). I cant imagine playing without jump.
Jumping for extended AoE range before the fix was a laugh too.
My two cents on keybindings, basically reinforcing something that was previously mentioned:
Smalls steps. If you feel like you are being left behind, feel frustrated that you still use "R" for reply, "C" for your character pane, and "X" for sit/move down? Dont go changing them all at once. I did this back when I made my keybinding stance, and it did not go well. Getting used to one at a time worked nicely however. After doing that a few times, something clicked, and I found myself being able to adapt to new keys with ease.
Also, be smart when changing those "new" keys. Dont go binding your previous character/bag/etc button to a binding that may shoot and aggro a boss while the raid is buffing. You can always change later when you get more comfortable.
One more thing: bind first, ask questions later. Dont ask yourself "do I really need to bind that?". Just bind it to something that you have spare! If you find yourself using the bind, great. If you cant stop yourself clicking it, and it's just not urgent enough to force yourself, then no loss. You can always use they key-real-estate for another ability if the need arises. For example, I had gone years without binding my mount. I never thought it was needed. Only recently I bound it to shift-H and it's amazing.
Second one more thing: it worries me how many people dont bind their healthstone macro (and protection pots for fights such as KJ). It hurts me so much seeing WWS parses, filtering the combat log with "healthstone" and seeing ~15 people out of 25 using them on a KJ wipe.
I think that is probably going a bit far. Any classes with instant cast abilities that require facing a target to cast can make good use of Jump. Yes, you can achieve a similar effect by cutting a close strafing angle, but you definitely loose a lot of potential freedom in direction, as well as hitting targets other than the primary kiting target (eg Silencing Shot on a distant target while kiting a melee class). I cant imagine playing without jump.
While I agree with the jumping can stay space bar sentiments, I have found Shift+Space bar to be my bread and butter bind. It's my PVP 'spam' button on all 8 of my 70's (Mortal strike, hemo, etc). I have passed the bind on to a few others in game who have come to love it like I have, and there really isn't a downside to it (unless you are really into BG scoreboards!). It allows you to keep your left hand on all the movement keys while still allowing you to use the mouse for turning/camera angles. Pretty handy for a melee spam attack.
I unbind S (backpedal) on all non-melee classes. It's still situationally useful on melee chars, definitely useful tanking, but probably worthless on a caster and frees up S and all the shift/ctrl. variations
Other than that, as mentioned already, make use of the 'one key away' keys as much as possible when starting out, there is not really a need for a fast whisper reply (typing "/r" isn't really much slower), un/sheathing , sitting, etc - so make use of those keys! r-f-c-z-x and their shift variations are all very accessible for a beginning key binder.
I have mousewheel bound to quick reaction things (all of my pummels, counterspells, spell locks, etc. are mousewheel DOWN and the focus variations as shift+mousewheel DOWN) as it seems like this is the least finger movement bind on either hand as well as not being able to fat-finger it (there's nothing else you can hit accidentally).
I don't recommend binding shift-space or shift-wasd to anything for a simple reason, what if you have to do any of your other shift-x abilities while jumping/moving? The chance of messing up and doing the wrong action is quite high.
I also do the same for ctrl because it's my vent push to talk button and if I move/jump while talking I'll end up triggering any ctrl-wasd/space binds by mistake.
The only movement keys I have bound are ASD for strafe L, backstep, strafe R. I bound a key to the thumb button on my mouse to toggle autorun, but depressing both the L/R mousebuttons is how I move.
I've got a 70 mage and lock, and am leveling a rogue. As others have posted about, trying to get similar skills bound to similar keys helps a bit.
T: Mage, Counterspell; Rogue, Kick
`: Mage, Mana sheild; Rogue, Vanish
s3: Mage, Ice block; Rogue, Evasion
sV: Mage, Invisibility; Rogue, Stealth
r: Mage, blink; Rogue, sprint
sR: racials on all characters (Usually escape artist, but I have a couple draenei).
aV: some sort of "I WIN" trinket/ability macro
And so on. Tradeskills, hearthstone, general macros are all in the same keybind spots.
I use X to flip the camera. The keys used by ability binds are 12345FQWERTG, with Q replaced by V for the modifier buttons, and shift-1 replaced by the tilde button. I manage to hit Alt with my thumb, and I have control mapped to the pinky button on my mouse. Least used are alt-shift and ctrl-shift, but they come up now and then.
Of the 72 keybinds I have mapped, four are unused, and I'd say I have about thirty of them down to reflex. There's a lot of odd ones though, like equipping a diving helmet or a fishing pole or casting a fishing line.
I'd really recommend finding a way to put the autorun toggle on an extra mousebutton somewhere. I use it all the time.
I don't recommend binding shift-space or shift-wasd to anything for a simple reason, what if you have to do any of your other shift-x abilities while jumping/moving? The chance of messing up and doing the wrong action is quite high.
I also do the same for ctrl because it's my vent push to talk button and if I move/jump while talking I'll end up triggering any ctrl-wasd/space binds by mistake.
I personally have no problem with binding shift+(wasd) to abilities. As a caster, if I have to use any of those abilities bound as such, I can't be moving anyway. You can still use the mouse for moving if you need to. You have so much control (moving, camera) with the mouse alone that I end up using it most of the time anyway.
Shift+Spacebar brings up the BG scoreboard as mentioned so I don't have it bound. I do, however, use Ctrl+Spacebar as my macro bind. Whether it's a boss target macro or an item used for dailies, I can just pop things in and out of that slot in bartender.
I've completing removed attack on my Rogue and Druid, and have /startattack macro'd into their staple offensive abilities (SS, Hemo, Mangle, etc.). I've thus become accustomed to right-clicking a target to swing on it. Has anyone else tried this out with reasonable success? It hasn't given me much trouble and I find that mashing attack has the same effect as tabbing anyway. I'm glad other people are buying into the ingenuity of using a bound action slot for variable use items such as raid macros, pvp trinket, quest item, etc. Personally I use 6 for this.
I've completing removed attack on my Rogue and Druid, and have /startattack macro'd into their staple offensive abilities (SS, Hemo, Mangle, etc.). I've thus become accustomed to right-clicking a target to swing on it. Has anyone else tried this out with reasonable success?
I've never needed the "1" key to turn on autoattack, but I've kept that bind because as a tank there are times when I want to just turn off autoattack (e.g., when Hex Lord gets that super-thorns buff). I could probably just detarget for the same effect, but for some reason my hindbrain has a fear of something bad happening if I do that.
[e]By the way, this thread is golden. I've been wanting to redo my keybinds from scratch for awhile, and it looks like WotLK will be my chance to do that without wiping a raid. Big thanks to whoever necro'd this.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
I agree Cathela, quite a timely nerco of this thread. One thing that hasn't really be touched on is the different keys needed for different specs on the same character. In pve you can get away with standing still and just mousing or clicking but that just doesn't work for pvp/arena very well.
Also for paladins... Holy has divine favor, divine illumination, holy shock and beacon of light. Prot has holy shield, hammer of the righteous. Ret has repentance, crusader strike, seal of command. So that's 3-4 keys to change every time you respec and if you respec 2 or 3x a week it's going to get a bit confusing.
It seems like there are about 40+ things to hotkey with wotlk level 80 skills/talents for a paladin. If you pvp or arena and care about focus, mouseover and party targets there's 50-60.
Repentance for example... you don't want to put it on a single hotkey with a macro that has fall through logic because you will end up wasting the ability on the wrong target when your intended target goes out of los or range. So you end up with something like:
Then the same thing for HoJ so that's 6 hotkeys for 2 abilities! It gets worse for Cleanse/Hand of Protection/Hand of Freedom because you want to be able to reliably target party1-4 so you end up with..
Party1...
Cleanse: F1
Freedom: Shift-F1
Hand of Protection: Ctrl-F1
Hand of Sacrifice: Alt-F1
party2...
party3 ...
etc
I think I will definitely be moving to esdf instead of wasd for wotlk to allow for the new skills (divine plea, new judgements etc). However modifier key + F1 is huge stretch when trying to strafe with s and f so the F1-etc keys will probably have to go in favor of 1 to 5 or z to b
Last edited by Ragnor : 10/07/08 at 7:58 PM.
The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.
10/04/08, 3:28 PM
, sitting, etc - so make use of those keys! r-f-c-z-x and their shift variations are all very accessible for a beginning key binder. 
