Q & A: My Key Bindings

First off, if you’ve sent me an email that I never replied to, please do not take offense. I receive a decent amount of email now and again – mostly pertaining to my UI – and it gets very difficult for me to devote time to detailed responses, especially when things are crazy around here. I wish I could respond to each and every one of you, but unfortunately my role as WoW blogger has dropped a few rungs in terms of priority and importance in my life.

However, once in awhile someone catches me during a good time where I’m able to provide a thorough reply. The following was an answer to a question sent in by David, in which he asked how I configured my UI and keybinds – most importantly, how I use my action bars. Those of you who’ve seen my UI know that most of my abilities are hidden from view, so David wanted to know where I stuck my skills and how I clicked on them, or if I had everything bound.

Before we continue, here’s a look at how I have my UI configured. (additional images can be seen here)

Gar Hunter UI Updated for Patch 5.4
Click to enlargify

In the image you only see 2 action bars, plus a tiny 4-slotter which has my traps. All others bars are hidden; however, I do set them to display in the very rare case that I am dabbling with an alt (i.e., lesser class). If you’re thinking of going to a setup like mine, it’s a good idea to have all of your abilities viewable on screen until you get the hangs of things. I have all of my skills committed to memory so I like to hide everything, with nothing showing but mainly the cooldowns I want to monitor.

Some of you may benefit from this response as well, so I figured I’d share it with everyone!

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Updates and Goings-On

Part of my intent in reviving the site is to make it run more efficiently so that I can eliminate the expensive VPS bill each month. In doing this, I’m fiddling around with the forums in hopes that I can lessen the resource load once people start using it again.

I may end up chucking the forums altogether, but I’d like to try and get the community active again. We shall see. In the meantime, forum access will likely be spotty, but it has been that way for quite some time anyway. Upon checking them out today I noticed the forum was throwing back an error, and I’ve no idea how long that’s been going on. If you’ve tried to access the forums this year and have been denied, I do apologize. 🙁

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A few random bits – related and unrelated to Patch 4.3

HL Forum Wonkiness I discovered that the forum went glitchy today at some point. I have no idea how it happened, but somehow the forum permalink got reset and suddenly it couldn’t locate any of its posts. I’m not sure how long this went on, but I fixed it within minutes of discovering the issue. If you had problems accessing …

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Handy pet “move to” macro

For those interested in a macro for the new pet Move To command, here’s the one I’m using: /click PetActionButton3 /petdefensive It pops out the target circle and puts your pet in defensive mode. Nothing fancy really, but I hate having to click on skills when I’m playing, especially in PvP. This macro enables you to position your pet while …

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Training Wheels

Training WheelsJust as the old saying goes, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”. In keeping with this belief, I offer you my version of how I’m adapting to the new hunter mechanics in 4.0.1…

Playing a hunter feels a lot more “frenzied” right now, as far as I’m concerned. Without a predictable resource system, we’re having to constantly make split-second decisions on which abilities to use and when. I imagine in time a natural rhythm will start to develop, but until then, we need to re-learn appropriate usage and prioritization of our abilities.

Since I’m a BM hunter at heart, I’ve elected to set out and make it the first spec I’ve decided to conquer. The following image is a demonstration of what I’ve done to help myself adjust to the new BM priority and hunter resource mechanics.

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