I have been reading a bunch of theories on key bindings and they all seem to focus on the best placement for spells and abilities, which is clearly super important. As far as movement goes I have seen a number of theories on which keyboard bindings should be used for movement but little to nothing on what I have been doing since early vanilla. Does anyone else move their character exclusively using the mouse? My theory has always been that if my right hand can manage 100% of my character movement, then my left hand is completely free to reach any part of my keyboard, maximising my ability to reach spells and abilities with ease.
Movement Keybindings
- Both left & right mouse buttons together = move forward.
- Scroll Wheel Press = Auto Run
- Mouse Button 5 (typically the browser back button) = Strafe right
- Mouse Button 4 (Typically the browser forward button) = Strafe Left
- I have little to no need for backpedal
This leaves my left hand completely free from having to hold down any keys for character movement and provides the ability to reach any part of the keyboard at any time for spells/abilities without having one of my fingers chained to a key in order to continue moving forward.
Am I the only one who plays with this type of movement keybindings?
yea, I unbind all movement keys from the keyboard including ‘S’’ and rebind them to the mouse. I dont typically rebind ‘S’ however since its not particularly useful to backpedal, imo.
I’d keep backpedal bound, there’s ledges you can drop to that require too much precision to land on moving forward.
I keep WASD for movement but rebind strafe to A and D. I put some abilities on the mouse so having to hold down right click to strafe just doesn’t work for me.
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I do not hold down right click to strafe. I use the side button (traditionally the back browser button.) This frees up both A and D for spells and never forces me into a position where i have to think about how to reach a key while still holding A,S,D, or W for movement.
Also, I’ve never needed to walk backwards off of a ledge. I can always jump, and then tap forward while in the air which greatly decreases the amount you move forward and I can also always toggle on walk, which reduces you forward movement speed to the same (if not very close to the same) speed as backpedaling.
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The right click strafe is how you’d have to strafe if you unbound it and relied only on keyboard turning movement. I replace keyboard turning with strafing because it’s extremely useful as a hunter.
Backpedal gets a bad rap because of newbies but it does have its uses. I keep backpedal bound because repositioning without it can be annoying. For example moving to far into a boss as melee dps/repositioning a boss as a tank where you don’t want to crab shuffle or turn your back on it and eat a hit.
I think you may be misunderstanding what I am saying. While I do unbind strafe from the keyboard, I bind it to the ‘back’ and ‘forward’ buttons on the side of the mouse. So ‘Right Click’ strafe is not the only way to do it once it is unbound from the keyboard.
And yes, I totally agree the backpedal is much more needed for a tank than other roles.