Resto Shaman has way too many keybinds

Classes Shaman
1

I’ve never tried a spec before where I literally don’t have enough keybinds for all the abilities, I feel this is an issue.

2 Likes
2

git gud
lo

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There are classes with higher barriers for entry and ones with lower.

And I imagine going from an evoker or DH to anything feels like a huge jump in keybinds.

But yeah, shamans are among the harder classes. Lots of buttons, lots of utility.

4

OP - ignore the ‘git gud’ oafs and try some/all of the following:

  1. Mouse over macros coupled with help/harm conditionals. The same keybind can be healing surge on a friendly, and lightning bolt on a mob.

  2. Addons like OPie that allow you to move longer buffs like water shield or weapon imbues off your bars and still have them pretty accessible quickly.

  3. Try easing into the spec with more passive talents vs active buttons. Your mileage will vary on this depending on the content you are doing, but at the very least you can start off here and add more ability buttons at pace of your choosing.

  4. If you don’t already, an action bar addon that will allow you to display more bars/buttons than the default UI (though I believe this was changed with the DF UI revamp - you can add bars and customize them now in the base UI).

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Target of Target macros are also solid for your dps abilities — so you can always click them while targeting tank/friendly player — I like them a bit more than mouseover because things can get cluttered on screen, but they might not always be the best.

2 Likes
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I am having SUCH an easier time with resto shaman compared to mistweaver monk.

However, this is due to a couple KEY setup things. If I just had to use the keyboard, I would be in the exact same boat as you. The two things are: the Vuhdo addon, and creative use of efficient keybinds. Vuhdo is absolutely essential and makes it so your main targeted healing keybinds do not even have to be put on any of your bars if you do not want to. Specifically, I use these skills SOLELY on my Vuhdo party frames:

Healing Surge (right-click party frame)
Earth Shield (shift+leftclick party frame)
Riptide (shift+rightclick party frame)
Cleansing spirit (mousebutton4 on party frame)
Healing Wave (mousebutton5 on party frame)

(Then I have mousebutton4 bound to cloudburst totem, mousebutton5 bound to nature’s swiftness. These cast if I use those mouse buttons without having my mouse over the Vuhdo party frames.)

The above is much easier to play as a healer for my main healing spells. Without Vuhdo I used to click on my target on the party frame first, and then hit my keyboard keybind to cast the heal on them. The above makes it so every spell cast listed above is just a single click. This also allows me to maintain my targetting on an enemy mob. That way I always target a high-priority interrupt target, meaning all the heals I cast through Vuhdo do not require me to change my target off of them. Overall, this reduces my keyboard keybind burden, and reduces the amount of actions/clicks I need to do all the time.

I then utilize keys 1234QERF and shift modifiers for each of those as a lot of my other main spells/abilities (All my DPS spells are shift modifiers. So whenever I switch to DPS mode, I basically hold shift down.) My main cooldowns I keep on ZXCV. I do use shift+ZXCV but these are for less-used abilities, like Earth Elemental. I also use shift+W and shift+S for some other niche spells (primarily poison cleansing/tremor totem, thunderstorm)

Lastly, I also bind mouse scroll wheel up, down, and mousewheel click for movement abilities (and do this for every class I play. It makes it extremely intuitive. Want to be moving faster/forward? Scroll wheel up!)

Scrollup = Ghost form
Middleclick = Windrush Totem
Scrolldown = Spiritwalker’s Grace

(Shaman, surprisingly, has a lot more movement buttons than many other classes, which supports OP’s main point to this post. There is also Spirit Walk/Gust of Wind/Feral Lunge. Elemental will have trouble fitting Spiritwalker’s grace AND gust of wind, but enhance generally doesn’t take Feral Lunge anyway. But it still makes it tricky. I will often move Wind Rush totem to Shift+W if I do take 3 others of the above. Shift+Middle click can also be used)

Anyway, hope this can inspire some kind of idea to make things more useful.

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