Starting to play disc in arena, and I’m having trouble with targeting. Do good arena healers bind target party members, target enemies, cast X on focus, cast X on party members and cast X on enemy?
I’m struggling to find enough key combinations and modifiers that don’t feel horrible to use.
Would love to hear from better healers about their targeting methods.
Do you have a gaming mouse with additional keys?
I have my target self, party 1 and 2 on 7, 8 and 9 respectively, and target arena 1, 2 and 3 on 10 (0), 11 (-) and 12 (=).
I have dispel macros for each but those I got used to before I had a gaming mouse, so my dispel self is r, dispel party 1 is shift + r, and dispel party 2 is shift + e.
Depending on the class, I’ll have certain things I know I may need in a quick instant, without wanting to drop my current target (typically a friendly target since i’m usually healing), like hex arena 1-3, clone 1-3, bash 1-3, MC 1-3, shear 1-3, etc.
I think first getting used to targeting and navigating through your targets is the biggest thing. As I’ve gotten comfortable with my targeting binds, things like my party 1/2 dispels I’ve kind of gotten used to not even needing and can just target the correct friendly target quick enough, and same with purges, hex, etc. and now it’s really just dependent on what will be the most efficient.
I’m not sure how many binds you play with or what set up you have, but I’d try to get comfortable with using something like 1-3 for enemy or friendly frames, and say z, x, c for the other, then try to work in shift, ctrl, alt modifiers for specific things you feel you need to be able to use quickly. Only thing I’d say about using something like z, x and c for is, once you start adding in a lot of modifiers, if you are having to transition from say alt + 3 to ctrl + z, you’ll be more prone to mechanical errors or hitting the wrong spells.
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Usually qwe or asd, or mouse wheel up/down+mouse button, are used for targeting yourself/teammates. Shift on those to target enemys.
some party useful 123 macros are
#showtooltip Dispel
/cast [target=party1] Dispel
some 123 arena target macros could be
#showtooltip Purge the wicked
/cast [target=arena1] Purge the Wicked
#showtooltip Mind Control
/cast [target=arena1] Mind Control
Then here is a useful @ target macro for disc for pennance, this is so you dont have to untarget your dps and retarget an enemy then switch targets back again, instead to just press this button
#showtooltip Penance
/cast [harm,nodead][@targettarget,harm] Penance
But yes best practice is to bind your arena targets and friendly targets, i really like using the mouse for all of that then my keyboard hand can jsut worry about pressing spells. Keybinds are kinda personal though so whatever works for you really.
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Thank you, very informative.
I was actually thinking of having 1,2,3 being target self+party and mod+1,2,3 being target enemy. My only concern was how annoying it would be for those keys to be useless in pve.
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Anyone who says u need a dispel 1/2/self is wasting keybinds
Simply bind target self and party 1/2 with mouse wheel or F2 keys etc
You need more keybinds as a healer don’t over complicate it and make every ability a macro to target someone particular
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That is one of the downsides to it, but tbh I don’t really pve enough to have it effect me. Plus, with mine being on my mouse to target party/arena frames, I still have all the binds on my keyboard available for my normal spells. So I can just target with my mouse on things I need to, outside of arena. I also have some focus binds, like focus shear so I can interrupt things in mythic+, open world or BGs and not have to worry about targeting issues.
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I use Shift+ 1/2/3 for my arena 1/2/3 hex, F1/2/3 for my arena 1/2/3 shear target party 1/2 on my mouse buttons with shift as a modifiers for dispell. I tend to keep alt unused because thats how i heal myself and thats just the way I think. Do one thing at a time. Don’t try and learn 50 new keybinds at once. Get better at one and then slowly add in others!
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