As silly as that topic might sound, I think it's an actual issue for some people --- my girlfriend, who plays a shaman, has tiny hands; she has a very hard time finding a keyboard shortcut / UI combination that works well for her. Whereas I for example use 1-5, alt 1-5, e, alt-e, and so forth, that setup is very uncomfortable for her, and the alternative of manually clicking every single buff, totem and ability is equally unappealing.

I was hoping that this would be the right place to ask for advice on this subject.

Thanks in advance!

If she is resto shaman, hell even if not. Snag Clique and bind various mouse buttons to keys. I've seen rogues use Clique to bind actions to mouse buttons. 5+ button mouse is great and you can find smaller ones too. In addition use Shift + Z, . . .V, or invest in smaller keyboard or even into G15.

I second the idea of using a multi button mouse. I passed on getting the Logitech G7 and picked up the Logitech MX518 simply because it had 2 buttons on the side rather than 1. I use the one button for Ventrilo push to talk and I use the other button (m5) for:

m5 = Cloak of Shadows
shift + m5 = Blind
ctrl + m5 = /castsequence reset=120 Abacus of Violent Odds, Blade Flurry, Haste Potion, Adrenaline Rush

In addition I use the mouse wheel extensively:

ctrl + wheel up = Sprint
ctrl + wheel down = self banadage macro
wheel click = stealth
ctrl + wheel click = vanish
shift + wheel up/down = tab targetting forward and back

Also, I modded my registry such that my Caps Lock key is now Control. Even though my hands aren't very small, I find this change to be MUCH more comfortable as the Caps Lock key is near the natural position for my pinky to rest, whereas the default Control key is very out of the way comparatively.

You can do a google search to find a .reg file that will switch the keys for you, and it will take some time to get used to it, but it's well worth the relearning in the long run.

Hope any of that can help. :]

Not sure how much this'll help you or your girlfriend, but Clique/Click2Cast, atleast for individual healing spells/buffs, is definitely enjoyable for me on my slowly leveling (62 at the moment) pally alt. I could never manage the alt/ctrl + 1-5, just shift, so I just ramped up on the Q E R T F Z keys, shift included, to give me a little more keybinding space, as well as binding several mouse keys.

As for totems, I don't play a shaman so I don't know for sure, but either macros or addons should be able to help out on the mouseclicking/sheer number of buttons needed for totem dropping.

How about picking up a g15 keyboard? the entire left side of the keyboard contains custom macro buttons which can easily be configured to her needs.

It takes a while to get used to, but I highly recommend doing this. If you have your left hand on the home row, it moves control from a fairly inconvenient location to less than an inch away from where your pinky normally rests, and if your left hand is on WASD your pinky probably is already resting on caps lock. It's an incredibly accessible location, and having it bound to caps lock is a complete waste.

Check out the Zboard Fang game pad. I had to pick one up since I am left handed and WASD just doesn't work for me. Not all the buttons are **very** close but you have direct very short access to about 20 buttons that can be setup to any keybinding you wish.

I picked mine up for about 20 or 30 dollars about a year ago and I would never play a PC game without it.

http://www.ideazon.com/us/products/fanggamepad.asp

If you wind up getting it and have any questions about setting it up, please feel free to shoot me a PM.

I actually used one of these for a few days after BC came out while leveling... from a gameplay aspect it's superior in many ways to a keyboard, but I found it a hassle to jump back to the keyboard to type something in guild or party chat. I found myself only using the pad when I was on vent with the people I was grouping with and forced myself not to care about guild chat. :P

Conclusion: It's a great thing to use.. but I can't use it for a social game like WoW.

That is a slight draw back of it, however it is a LOT better then having to use arrows + number keys (having hand off mouse) for a good portion of the time. To be honest, it bothered me a little when I first got it, however now I barely notice that I shift my hands while playing.

Plus you move your hand off your mouse to type anyway so just bring both hands in at the same time

Hmmm maybe I need a bigger desk so I can make that happen. I might have to try it out again.

This one is going to be long.

-----------------------------------------
Main bindings:
-----------------------------------------
WASD movement
^ water shield
1 grounding totem
2 chain lighning
3 lightning bolt (shift+3 rank 1)
4 frost shock
5 flame shock
6 lightning shield
7-´ different weapon buffs and heal ranks, earth shield if I am specced for it
q earth shock
e lesser healing wave (shift+e healing wave)
r purge
t tremor
z searing
u drink water
i eat food
f earthbind
g fire nova
h magma
< poison cleansing totem
x totemic recall? whatever spell removes totems
c stoneclaw totem (yea, I know~ I use it when farming)
-----------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
Secondary bindings:
-----------------------------------------
f1 elemental mastery
f2 ghost wolf
f3 berzerking
f4 blood lust
f5 pvp trinket
f6 drum of war
f7 far sight
f8 drum of panic
f9 water walk
f10 water breathing
f11 astral recall
f12 ancestral spirit
-----------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
Totem block:
-----------------------------------------
up/down/left/right castsequence macros for most common PvE combinations
NUM block totems that are not covered by the main binds, such as windfury
-----------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
Mouse:
-----------------------------------------
wheel up earth shock rank 1
wheel down cure poison
mouse middle healing stone/pot
click right healing wave
click middle chain heal
shift+click cure poison
ctrl+click cure disease
-----------------------------------------

That's it. I hate modifiers. And yes, I have small hands, too.

Don't forget we're trying to find ways for small handed people to function without abandoning keybinds. :P

It's not exactly shortcut/UI, but I use this "keyboard" called Ergodex DX1- it's basically a custom keyboard that you can rearrange keys any way you like. I also have rather small hands myself (too small to play guitar), and I found it very fitting for my WoW needs.

Hey, I just wanted to thank everyone for the great input so far. We haven't gotten around to actually trying any of it yet, but I'm hoping to try some of the low-tech suggestions that don't involve buying a new set of keyboard & mouse tonight. At any rate, I really appreciate the input!

i prefer the Nostromo n52 and its not even expensive, you should get it anywhere for around 25 bucks

G11 / G15 are really nice, from a shaman perspective you can completely disregard totem keybindings since they all fit on the extra keys, clearing up valuable room around WASD. They're not exactly easy to reach if you have trouble doing stuff like shift+4 though.

I am using a Nostromo n52 as well. The 14 buttons match perfectly for the 4 movement keys plus 10 buttons for one action bar. I have set up the configuration so that the main keys are mapped to 1-0 and wsad. The nice thing about this is that you don't need to modify any standard key bindings in WoW. Now I can access all my spells on Bar 1 just with my left hand. Everything is comfortably reachable and can even be triggered while moving. To be able to move and cast an instant at the same time I moved wasd one row down. (See picture above).

Additionally I have set the thumb wheel so it triggers "shift" and "alt" when pushed up and down. You can then comfortably use the thumb to change shift states and have the shift and alt bars mapped as well. Also without changing any key settings in game.

The icing on the cake is the Bartender3 mod which has an action bar switching feature. I set it up that the three bars switch on the screen when I press Thumb-Up and Thumb-Down. The UI always reflects the exact state of the action bars and you have a visual indication what your are going to activate and what shift state your action bar is in.

All the additional buttons are free to your disposal as well. The red button for example is mapped to Healthpot/Healthstone. The scroll wheel can be used for focusing or tab-targeting. You hardly need more buttons than that.

Using this method you have 30 spells in easy reach of your left hand. I highly recommend you to try it out.

I've got pretty tiny hands and it used to drive me nuts trying to keybind all my spells within reach, plus this is the first PC game I've ever really played so just getting used to using the keyboard took a while. After hitting the wrong spells way too many times, I finally sat down and figured out hotkeys I could reach and divided my spells into 4 groups based on how often I use them. I still have to mouse-click some stuff, but I would say I got 95% of commonly used spells keybound.

Using WASD as movement keys:
Number keys 1-5 and ~ (alt is the only modifier I can kind of reach, and that's with my thumb and not very easy to do)
Surrounding letter keys to R,F,and V (shift and alt work for me here)
Mouse buttons (ctrl, shift, and alt all reachable if I'm not trying to hit anything else on the keyboard)
That's not a ton of buttons to work with, so changed all the default keybinds for stuff I rarely use here, like the default Z,X,C,V, etc.

The spells I use all the time are bound to 1-5 and to the 2 side mouse buttons with single key modifiers.

My second group of spells is bound to alt 1-5 and the mouse buttons with double modifiers. These are ones I may use during a fight, or counterparts to the spells on 1-5. My primary curse is on 1, the other curse I will drop on the OT mob is on alt 1. Corruption is 2, SoC is alt 2, etc. Since the alt modifier isn't really easy to reach, just the easiest one, I'll move spells between the 2 bars depending on which one I'm spamming.

The more situational spells, but ones I still need quick access too, are bound to the letters around WASD. Fear, deathcoil, banish, seduce, etc.

As far as my actual UI goes, since I'm limited in my keybinds, I still have to click occasionally, so all my clickable stuff is grouped in one place. If you look at my screen like a tic-tac-toe grid, everything I might need to click during a fight is in the lower right corner along with the stuff I usually use out of combat.

Not all that familiar with shamans, but the setup I use for curses might work well for totems. I have 2 keybinds for curses, 1 and alt1. Next to the 2 hotbars for 1-5 and alt1-5, I have a bar with no keybindings that I stick the rest of my curses on, so I can swap them out easily depending on the curses I'll be using for a specific fight. Way too many curses to keybind all them, so I can see shamans having a much worse problem with totems.


I sympathize with your girlfriend; this was a major problem for me too. All yall guys with your big hands have no idea what a pain this is.

I have a pretty tough time reaching lots of keybindings because of smaller hands, also. I have 1-7 that use (1-5 mostly), and other important spells bound to Shift + C, V, B, N. I hit shift with my pinky finger and C-N with my thumb while still controlling movement and the number keys. Anything else is bound alt + 1-4 which i barely use. Shaman are probably going to have to click a lot more than other classes.

While my hands aren't quite that small, Control combinations still require some serious finger stretching for me. One workaround I can recommend is to use an addon that turns other keys into pseudo shift keys by doing a /changeactionbar on press/release (for me, it's the backquote and backslash keys, conveniently located on/near the number row). I'm still using a heavily modified version of Marsbar for that, but there should be other addons that support it now, I'd wager.

For raid tanking, I use my numeric keypad as the place of choice where I drop all abilities that I use in a rotation so that I can access them all without using any shift keys and without moving my fingers much.

I don't understand why everybody is so hung up on WASD movement. For me the logical step was to move my movement binds to UHJK. The nice thing about UHJK is that you gain an enormous space at the pinky side for your primary binds and still have a lot of reachable buttons on the index finger side. In this position you can easily reach the alt key with your thumb to double the possibilities.

A positive side effect is that you bring your keyboard hand closer to your mouse (provided you are mousing on the right hand side) making it a better ergonomic position as well..

The last selling point is that on my keyboard the J key has a little edge on it. So you can feel when your fingers are positioned correctly.

I once tried to change my movement to ESDF and my hands started to hurt horribly from being out of the natural typing position by even just a couple degrees. On top of that I had to look down and readjust my hands every time I wanted to write into the chat. So it is fully understandable that many longtime keyboard users are hung up on certain hand positions.