Long time clicker, first time key binder?

I like to set my main attacks in order on from 1-5, so I kind of just go right down the line. I also try and match keys to abilities, k for kill command, shift k for kill shot, l for launcher...etc. Power Auras has also really helped me out a bunch too, it helps know when to fire off what, so I just go down the line again. You're right though, practicing is going to be the best and you will get used to it trust me, I'm not just a spokesperson for key binders annonymous, I'm also the president...;)

8)

I appreciate the input, especially matching abilities to keys...  makes so much sense when you said it but wasn't something I thought of - lol.  Also, I went ahead and started a brand new hunter ( since I really
don't have much to do til cata anyway) who I do nothing but utilize
keybinds with.  Have found this to be MUCH less frustrating than trying
to immediately mapout all my lvl 80 abilities straight away.

I have looked at power auras since reading about it in several of Gar's posts but think I will hold off til I am comfortable with keybind basics first.  Once I graduate from keybind 101 then I have every intention of taking on more advanced learnings  🙂

Thanks again,

Wamp.

Wamp, that's basically what I did.  I have a mini-niika that I use to get comfortable with different macros and such, and it wicked hleps me out.

I'm not just a previous clicker, but am also a track-pad user.  My dps went way up going from clicking to keybinds.  I do use a combination of both.

Awesome!  I am certainly finding all sorts of useful things I can use my crash-test hunter for.  And it is always nice to get confirmation that one is headed in the right direction lol  🙂

thanks mate,

Wamp.

hmm maybe I should consider harder on using keybinds.    After patch I have used my first keybinds.. Q is explosive trap and E is Frost...  since i move with WASD  is makes it easy just to click though..    Maybe 1 keybind at a time ay?

Cel, one keybind at a time certainly makes things easier to learn for me, that's for sure, although you are a very fast learner it seems and will be quicker than I on the draw.  I keybind certain macros as well.  It's must faster than trackpad clicking.  

Niika

who is also a scenic skier too...

I have a question for the key binders, as I am clicker at heart, that's for sure.

How do you move your character when using keybinds exclusively?  Do you zoom out and click to move?

I have always thought about using keybinds myself, but love to play WoW as a 3rd person adventure game.  Camera is right behind the character while using WASD to move and using right click/mouse to pan the camera.  My friend has a conniption fit everytime she sees this, but this how I have played PC games for years and don't see me stopping.

If I bind the attacks to 1-5 as suggested, it makes it hard to play like I am used to.  So do I have to give up the 3rd person feel to be successful at keybinding?  I don't think I am ready for that sort of sacrifice.

Thanks

Hi Adam,

When raiding, I am almost always zoomed as far out as possible.  I like being able to see the whole room, and zapping a misdirect onto a wayward mob heading for a healer, for instance.  it's easier to see *for me* in zoomed out, slightly elevated, so that I can see other players, and that damnable paladin kiting the slime.    

I learned to love strafing.  You can get shots off VERY nicely when strafing, and am a two handed player.  I use WASD as well for movement (well, my S is now autorun, and I use disengage key to backup, basically.  rofl when there's a bridge involved and I forget...)  and the Q/E to strafe.  I know many others who use their mouse to do the same, but i'm on a laptop and at night, rarely have a mouse available to me.  

That is where my camera is.  I like to see my character; when I am in the character, I get nauseous.  You should see me in Steam, it's a mess when I play Day of Defeat.  If i were in school and wanted to skip a day, that would be one sure way to get me to Ferris Bueller it.

While my keybinds are on 1-10, my most active shots are from keys 6/7 through =, making it very easy for me to move with my left hand, and spam the hell out of my shots.  I am right handed, and found that the benefit of keeping my movement keys on my left is that it slows down my movement time enough so that I don't make bad decisions (hence my Disengage macro is #2 for me... next to my start attack macro #1)

I have always played third person, and will never give that up.  I can't, it's physically nauseating for me.  I think as Celika suggested, maybe try things out a key or two at a time.  You can always go back - that's the beauty of this.  You are just trying things on, you only keep what fits.

Adam-12 said:

.  So do I have to give up the 3rd person feel to be successful at keybinding?  I don't think I am ready for that sort of sacrifice.

Thanks

As Niika Said the farther out the better,  I think playing in first person would make me feel cornered and not fully aware.

Oh most definitely, no way I could play in first person mode either.  I guess my concern is how far back is ideal.  Statements like "farther out the better" leads me to believe that having your character look like an ant while zoomed out is how it works best.  This is kind of what I don't want to happen.  I watch my friend play this way and wonder if she is actually playing the game at all or just pushing a sequence of buttons when a timer tells her to.

Anyway, I am getting off track, hehe.  Thanks for the answers to my questions, but think I will stick to playing it like a Tomb Raider game for now

That is until I get tired of the scenery after doing the same dungeon for the 100th time at level 80 or leveling my 20th alt, but right now it is all new and exciting to me.

I'm glad, Adam.  i've been playing for years now, and all the new content, all the new instances, it never feels old.  There is always something to do, and if it gets old, something can always be made to look new.  It is so exciting to me too. 😀

I always used to have the camera fairly close in behind me, but when I recently started PvP (okay, Wintergrasp - not *proper* PvP) I found myself very often getting hit from goodness knows where and dying without even having time to look around and see who or what is hitting me.

Now I've learnt to zoom out quite a bit and set the camera quite high, and my survival rate has definitely improved as a result. It helps immensely to see the terrain and other players some distance around you. From bitter experience: Disengage does very little with a rising slope behind you, and an awful lot when it lands you right next to a battle-hardened enemy rogue!

Regarding keybindings... this is the approach I have developed, which suits my style of right-hand mouse-controlled movement and left-hand keyboard-controlled actions.

I use Bartender4. I've set up four rows of 12 small buttons in the top right corner of the screen in a keyboard layout, and in the Keybindings I have permanently and globally bound the standard keyboard keys to these buttons. So the top bar in my BT4 layout is keyboard keys '1' through '=', the second bar down is 'Q' through ']', then 'A' through '' ('@' on a PC), then '`' through '.', and the last two of the bottom bar are bound to 'Clear' ('NumLock' on a PC) and 'NumPad-/'. This gives me an on-screen 48-key keyboard layout, onto which I can just drag and drop my actions (shots/spells/macros etc.) wherever I want them.

I find this method really easy because, the way I play, the keyboard position of my most-often-used actions is more important than the bound letter or number. This simple drag-and-drop setup makes it very quick and easy for me to experiment with different layouts, or incorporate a newly-learnt action into my rotation and shift others around to make way for it.

A point to note is that most of my non-combat actions are now bound to modified keystrokes - e.g. Social is now Ctrl-O instead of O. I also have the rest of the NumPad keys bound to another BT4 bar at the bottom of the screen, and a vertical bar on the right for click-only actions such as fishing, cooking, professions, gearswaps, etc.

So this is my first time posting here, but I thought I'd add my twopence as well.  Just last year I went from clicking to keybinds and it is certainly an adjustment.  However, I am really happy that I made the switch.  I use a Razer Deathadder mouse and have bound all my movement to the mouse.  I strafe using the side keys and disengage by pressing the scroll wheel.  That freed up lots of keys for keybinds.

I think your idea of practicing on a newbie hunter is excellent.  Also, if you want to try it out on your level 80 hunter, I found that a great place to practice anything new is on the elite elementals in Crystalsong Forest.  You won't be able to one shot them, so you can try out different keybinds and see how it works with your movement.

I just ran through all this in another post for the thread about strafing, but i figure it's more appropriate in this thread so i'll just copy/paste it here.

I play with WASD keys, with Q and E as my strafe keys, this puts all my full speed movment keys in a single like so it's less likely my hand

will get 'lost' on my keyboard. It also means that my fingers are already right next to my hotkeys #1-5, with 6 and 7 being slightly harder to reach. If you use your Shift and Ctrl keys for modifiers you can easily bind up to 15 abilities within easy reach, and another 6 you'll have to stretch your hand a bit for, you just need to train your pinky finger a bit to be comfortable with holding down Shift and Ctrl a lot and with precise timing depending on how you spread your abilities out. If you get really crazy about it you can even bind another 5 keys with Shift+Ctrl as the modifier, it's a bit harder to pull off but you can get used to holding down both buttons with just your pinky while you press other buttons with your other fingers.

I use all these tricks and I've got the Naga MMO mouse too…so that's another 12 buttons on top of all those others. I STILL run out of hotkeys at times.

I've never been a fulltime 'clicker' I keep my bars on screen and I click on stuff sometimes, but I pretty much run on pure hotkeys. It's probably a holdover from playing lots of FPS and RTS games. Clicking isn't an option in most FPS games, you need to press #1-5 to change your weapons. In an RTS game clicking on commands will generally slow you down so much that you'll just get overrun, so you learn what the hotkeys are and you learn to love them so you don't have to move your mouse to the bottom of the screen each time you want to do something. It's silly but those fractions of a second moving your mouse around add up over time and during a long game can put you minutes behind your opponents.

If you're just starting off with hotkeys instead of clicking I'd suggest you start off simple with just keys #1-5, bind them to your most used abilities (not stuff like auto attack, use them for things like Arcane Shot and Steady Shot so you have to use them often) and force yourself to use the hotkeys not click them.  Once you're accustomed to that you can add another 5 buttons using Shift as a modifier key, so Shift+1, Shift+2, etc… Later you can add another 5 buy using Ctrl as a modifier key too,  so Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, etc…  If 15 keys isn't enough and you're confident in your hotkey skills try out the double modifier i talked about earlier, Shift+Ctrl+1, Shift+Ctrl+2, etc…

I use Bartender for my bars and they're all on screen for me and they're all bound to my number keys 1 thru =. Bar 1 uses no modifiers, Bar 2 uses Shift, Bar 3 uses  Ctrl, Bar 4 uses Shift+Ctrl, Bar 5 uses Shift+Alt, Bar 6 uses Ctrl+Alt, Bar 7 uses my numpad which is bound to the 12 keys on the side of my Naga mouse. If you need more keys than that then you're doing something very wrong 🙂

For other binds I've got my ` (thats a tilde, the one to the left of your 1) key as my auto run key, and my F key is bound to assist, with Shift+F being 'Target Focus', and Ctrl+Alt+F being 'Create Focus'. T is bound to 'Auto Attack' with Shift+T being 'Pet Attack' and Ctrl+T being 'Pet Passive', the other pet commands I click for but most of them are auto cast these days so I'm rarely forced to do even that.

I suppose the way i do things may seem complicated, but it's become 2nd nature to me. I recently came back from a year away from WoW and I was very worried that I'd have trouble picking it all back up again, but I just fell right back into it.

It won't just improve your playing in WoW either, if you get good with hotkeys it will improve you typing and your manual dexterity too so it has benefits outside of video games 🙂