There are many examples of what I’m about to list, this is just two to give you an idea of what I’m asking:
Say you’re strafing right (by hitting the “e” or “d” key, which ever you have strafe right bound to. I’m assuming you’re using your pointer finger to strafe right), now say you want use an ability bound to 4. It’s very awkward. How do you compensate?
Same example as above but along with strafing right you’re also moving forward (now you have “e” or “d” pressed along with “w”). Now hit an ability bound to “4”
I can think of 4 options to compensate. Are the pros using one of these options? Or something else?
Option 1 - Move with mouse holding right and left click freeing left hand finger to hit 4.
Option 2 - Pivot your left wrist and hit 4 with left ring finger
Option 3 - flatten pointer finger and slide it up smashing “e” and “4” with pointer finger at same time. (this would be near impossible if strafe right was bound to “d”)
Option 4 - preempt needing to hit 4 and strafe left instead of right
Though really, I just avoid having very critical abilities on 4 or 5 because of this. They’re typically abilities I have to stop moving to use as well.
I use my mouse for all character movement; forward, backward, left, right and Strafe left/right (assigned to the mouse wheel L/R side clicks) Some of the more critical abilities are also bound to mouse buttons which leaves my left hand entirely free to use abilities.
In some specific situations I might use the strafing on the mouse and the forward running on the keyboard in order to use the abilities bound to other mouse buttons or specific keyboard keys.
Basically use a combination of the mouse AND keyboard to move depending on situation.
Anyway, as a leftie, I use the arrow keys for strafe, and the right control button under my thumb with an arrow key to cause turn instead of strafe. Mouse is generally used for directions though, and auto-run on Mouse 4.
I also use the Numpad for my action bar bindings so it’s relatively easy to switch.
WASD here for movement. But A and D are strafe. I use 1-5 for most uses skills and F keys for others.
It won’t be this way in Classic but for Live F3 is my interrupt no matter what.
For healing, I use Clique with Mouse Left and Right modifiers. Shift, Cntrl and Alt. or a combo of most. Left-click is usually quick heal while right is longer then ctrl-left is my decurse/cleanse
I use mouse to steer mostly but will use my keyboard at times.
I’m really weird in that I use the arrow keys and mouse to move and the numpad for my spell bindings (with Ctrl and Alt as modifiers for extra action bars). This is how I always would set up my key binds for other games before WoW so I could never get used to WASD and definitely never got used to the regular 1-9 keyboard keys for abilities. They seem so stretched out and far from each other.
This means I can’t strafe with Q or E which makes me not ideal at some classes and I am better at casters than melee but I make it work. Threads disparaging keyboard turners always amuse me because I may not be the best but I do pretty well. For a while I was using a Naga mouse which helped with being more precise in some games but also lead to carpal tunnel issues and lately I’ve found those mice to be extremely unreliable.
Just bind 4 to a casted ability. If your class doesn’t have any casted abilities, you are probably not the type to use keybinds, but you can always bind it to hearthstone even so.
Use a multibutton gaming mouse. Then you have access to 4 on your right hand!
I’m just an average player but generally I will try to strafe the opposite direction if I know it’s something I’m going to be doing and positioning also isn’t badly affected by it.
Or if I’m intending to move a specific direction but need to press a button with that finger, I will simply strafe and hop. That way I have a split second to press the button before returning to strafing whilst using the initial continued motion of the jump to make it a smooth transition.
Yeah someone suggested it to me years ago and I tried it but just could not get used to it. I think really at this point because I have been doing this so long (and am really really old) that it is just muscle memory and I have a hard time making a change.
I read thread after thread about how people who key turn are garbage and I’m like “OK. I guess I’m garbage. Still not going to have a had time killing you with my warlock.” Ideal thing for me would be someone to make a keyboard with a 6 arrow key configuration instead of 4 but until then I’m fine.
And actually I do use the mouse to move around quite a bit. Mouse isn’t that far from the numpad so it isn’t that difficult.
Yeah it doesn’t bother me that much. I sort of do see what they are talking about with melee. I just don’t think it is as bid a deal with casters. It isn’t like I am a spell clicker or something. And outside of PvP I definitely don’t see what the difference is.
It can be helpful in some modern encounters.
Think the Snake boss in Temple of Seth or the Champions of Light in BoD.
The big one is blinding mechanics, or simply mechanics that require you to face a specific direction (especially when only briefly).
With mouse turning you can wait a lot longer before turning away/towards without any penalty, whereas generally speaking, turning with your keyboard requires a longer period and thus potential down time from what your task was.
It’s especially useful for casters with directional requirements. You can theoretically face an npc start casting, turn away, and if you have time quickly rotate back as the cast goes off, and then spin back so that you don’t get the “you are facing the wrong direction” notification and spell failure. Whilst also avoiding the mechanic.
Oh it also requires two additional keybinds that are close to your movement ones that could be used effectively for other abilities instead.
I guess because I do also use my mouse to move it doesn’t impact me that much. There probably are some people that only move with their keys and would have a hard time adapting to those sort of encounters.
Of course when I raided as a holy priest I used that click to heal app so in that case I was doing almost everything with my mouse.