Started late BC. Raided WOLTK, Cata, and part of MOP, through multiple guild rebuilds. Other than leveling up, I skipped the expansions since. I mostly tanked back in the day, but, loved when stuff goes on farm and I can dps or heal for a change on alts. I burn-out when I have to play the same class/role ALL of the time. The constant developer push to focus a main class, and now a main role, has moved the game away from my preferred design, which is part of why I have been away so much.
I have played for years with an old Nostromo gamepad (14 buttons, D-pad and 1/2 modifier keys) and a multi-button mouse (6 side buttons on a Roccat Nyth). I bind all of my movement to the mouse, freeing up the gamepad for all of my rotation/utility keybinds. I also click-cast heals with the mouse side buttons, preferring VuhDo. This has worked great in the past.
Since I last was in a raid focused guild, I have had a stroke. Most people don’t know unless I tell them, but, it actually does really affect both my speed and accuracy with my left hand on the keys. I’m really only comfortable reaching about 12 of the 14 keys on the gamepad, but can get away with using the other two for rare situational skills. With the modifier, this lets me use about 20-22 binds, which is fine for most taking and dps. It’s healing where I’m feeling an issue due to the new design of doing dps in any and all empty GCD’s.
If I only need to move a little, I can typically slide the mouse slightly off of the unit frames to move, then right back on. For more movement, once upon a time, I was fast/accurate enough to move my hand to the standard keyboard to keyboard move and click cast to heal when I had to heal while moving. Now, I can’t. I’ve never been the best heal+moving player, but, it’s really a weakness now, just when gameplay videos make it seem like it’s more necessary than ever.
Would using mouseover macros make me better at this? If so, I am limiting my available keys so that I am further limited on having heals+cds+dmg skills in so few keys. I could move some of that to the mouse buttons, like possibly the cds, which typically aren’t targeted.
Just wanted to get an opinion from the players actually playing current content. Do I just need to accept that I shouldn’t heal anything difficult? Would mouseover heals give me more potential for move+heal or are ~20-ish binds just not enough?
What you may need to do is step back and and look at your keybinds from scratch. (Honestly, this isn’t a bad idea for anyone from time to time — I’m actually doing that right now.) I suspect you may find that a combination of mouseover macros and click casting may end up being best in your case.
Here’s my process:
I start by figuring out what keys I want to use for movement, then, I classify all of my other keybinds according to 3 properties:
(1) How easy it is for me to accurately hit.
(2) If I can hit it while using my movement keys.
(3) If it’s compatible with modifier keys. (This can mean both “can I hit it and a modifier comfortably” as well as “will using a modifier cause a conflict”.)
Then I categorize my abilities. Do I need to use it while moving? Is it something I hit a lot and therefor need to make sure it’s comfortable to hit? Am I going to want a modifier for it. (For example, will I want to have a macro that lets my hit “shift” with the keybind to add Nature’s Swiftness to the cast on my Druid.)
Then I just start matching them up. This is hard, because there will be more abilities you deem important than you have good keys for. It’s about prioritization. Also, be ready to experiment. Stuff that sounds good on paper might not work in practice.
Forgive me if I am not understanding your question correctly. Correct me if I misunderstood.
You are trying to:
- Find a way to heal with dps (as the meta demands it)
- do it with as little keybinds as possible
- less arm movement as much as possible
Is that about correct?
Currently maining a druid. Historically played a lot of Priest (this posting one). Most of the time I tab target and only move my mouse between the party frames. Some of my spells are combined in such a way where on the party frame it heals, move slightly off it does the damaging spells to the target. If that’s all the movement you can do that sounds about right what you need?
To use priest jargon, you can do mouseover power word: shield, move slightly off to do shadow word: pain (to the targeted). You can combine cooldowns this way as well. I use pain suppression mouse over, shadowfiend target. Both of those are examples of @mouseover noharm / @target harm macros. AOEs can be done as well, but I keep those separate. Scroll on friendly to do power word: radiance, off the friendly frames to do holy nova.
20 is more than enough keybinds if you get creative. The hardest part for you might be times when you have to put abilities somewhere (something like circle of healing or vortex) but I think there’s macros for setting stuff at target location.
Does this help you in any way or give you any ideas? Am I understanding your situation and offering what you’re looking for? Let me know I’ll post some examples.
That is the general idea.
Scenario 1
Unbind the movement keys on my mouse from any spells in VuhDo, which would be three of them; strafe left, strafe right, backpeddal. I have jump on the mouse, but I don’t need that when moving+healing. With them unbound in VuhDo, they will still work to move me even when over a unitframe. Then, any instant or short cast time spell could be macro’d into a @mouseover/@target macro on my gamepad so they can be cast while moving by moving with the mouse over the frame, but pressing a keybind on the gamepad.
The downside of this is my movement buttons on the mouse are also the most convenient to use for click-casting b/c they are where my thumb naturally lies. That means my most convenient buttons to click cast that I use all of the time have to move to an alt+bind or less convenient buttons.
This would also mean some heals would be on the mouse and some on the gamepad, which might cause a learning curve to adjust to having them mixed.
Scenario 2
Move all of my heals to the gamepad in @mouseover/@target keybinds. Doing this means that I can relearn with my heals in one consistent place.
The downside of this is with 8-12 targeted heals depending on which one I’m on, plus 6-10 healing cds or untargeted heals, plus 3-6 dps skills…I’m out of keybinds and have to get creative. The most obvious solution would be to move the cds to alt+mouse buttons. I haven’t sat down to try it or put it on paper to make sure it even all works out that way, but I suspect it is possible.
I suspect scenario 2 is the better option, if I am going to do either. Just one reason is shaman and Spiritwalker’s Grace will make more sense if I just have everything on the gamepad since all the heals would temporarily be castable while moving, and if I set it up that way for the shaman, then it might as well be consistent. Also, the druid has many that can be cast while moving, so no point having it different on different toons.
As a last note, I normally move forward by holding left+right click. I’m not sure what would happen since those are bound to target and dropdown menu in VuhDo. I suspect that wouldn’t work when over unitframes, then. I might have to simply get good with using autorun instead which is already on the D-pad of the gamepad.
Scenario two is more likely and you should aim for that.
Forget the vuhdo keybinds, use the regular raid frame that bunches the group up or find a group/raid frame add-on that you find easy for you and lessens the movement.
Make your own mouse over macros and bind them to the gamepad.
I use a mouse with only two side buttons, and my general rule is all healing buttons go to the side buttons. However, I also utilize regular keyboard ones as well, and if I really wanted to I can macro all the healing to dps.
I will get on either my paladin and priest tomorrow and see how many variations I can create to lower the amount of keybinds as much as possible. I’ll keep trinkets and racials in mind.
Also could you do me a favor and post what you try out and works later here in responses? It’d like to record your experience for future references in case someone else struggles with similar problem. Also head on over to the UI and Macro forums and see if you can get some inspirations or post there as well and see if people have creative ideas for you. I think they can be really helpful.
The left and right click to move doesn’t even work with the default UI when over a frame. The keybind “Move and Steer” has the same functionality as holding down the left and right click. So, if you could find another keybind for that that isn’t a mouse button, it’s an option.
I’m not familiar with the mouse you are using, but if there is a way to reprogram the extra buttons and map them to keyboard keys, then they will work even when over frames. (And then can be used for movement keys, hostile spells, or mouseover macros.)
So, I decided to get on my holy paladin and try to declutter as much as possible. I did it in a way that works for me, so if you need something more specific you’ll have to visit the UI forums for help (I suck at macros).
It actually really hit me how full of spells holy paladin is, and I must say, I don’t know holy paladin enough to know what all the useful spells are and if there are any useless spells. Use your own personal discretion. From my personal work and practice, I think holy paladin is doable with all the macrod keybinds. Going holy priest, or hell even disc priest, you might have a much easier time with keybinds. Consider that if you want to heal in the current meta.
Some things:
- I don’t know if auras are bound and work against the keybind limit
- I don’t know if you bind resurrections
imgur (.)com/a/3yw0usR (can’t post links so yeah).
Check the imgur link for how it looks cluttered and decluttered.
- All together, that’s 22 keybinds.
- For the sake of seeing full limits of decluttering I picked ability talents (except lvl 50 one since I’m not max level, imagine +1 to complicate it)
- Imagine the two mount icons as two trinkets
- I arranged the abilities neatly in my pictures for you to count it and visualize it.
- I counted for racial in the Q button
That’s 22 keybinds. 23 if you consider another talent. Though I’d reckon in the actual game you won’t always pick abilities only, so use discretion for the actual count. There might be better and more complicated ways of decluttering further.
Some ideas to further lower keybind count:
- Depending on race, you can ignore your racial. Or you can look up a way to castsequence it with other dps
- I don’t know which Paladin abilities are in gcd. Figuring it out and being creative you can combine certain abilities to make it easier, or to combine trinkets with abilities etc.
This is how every single macro looked like:
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead] Holy Light; [@target,harm,nodead] Judement;[@player] Holy Light
This will cast Holy Light on mouseover, Judgment if cursor is not on a party frame but you have a target, and Holy Light on yourself if you have nothing targeted.
Cooldowns looked like this and works the same as above:
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead] Blessing of Protection; [@target,harm,nodead] Turn Evil;[@player] Blessing of Protection
These are the combos I used
- Holy Light/Judgment
- Flash of Light/Crusader Strike
- Word of Glory/ Holy Shock
- Repentance/Beacon of Light
- Bestow Faith/ Hammer of Wrath
- Cleanse/Hammer of Justice
- Light of Dawn/Consecration
- Seraphim/Light of the Martyr
- Blessing of Freedom/Divine Protection
- Turn Evil/Blessing of Protection
- Rule of Law/ Avenging Crusader
I recommend you put your keybinds to your gamepad (scenario 2 as you described earlier) and learn to heal this way. Check the UI and Macro forums for inspiration and even further ways of combining macros. There might be smart cast sequence macros, or combining spells outside of GCDs (avenging crusader maybe with trinket). Ask if they can offer further help and quality of life macros. As a healer doing some M+, I see no reason why this would not work given your constraints.
Thank you for that. Oddly enough, I sussed out almost identical macros and just finished them on the holy priest.
This one on the easiest button to hit so that it will auto-res out of combat. Also, I think the default action (the “; Flash Heal” at the end) will automatically cast on self if it fails the first two; mouseover and target, so I don’t think the @player is necessary. I’m not as experience with this specific macro, though, so if you know of a reason I should edit mine to use the explicit @player, just let me know. Testing at the dummies seems to work to cast on self if there is no mouseover or target.
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, nocombat, dead] Resurrection; [@mouseover, nodead, help] Flash Heal; [@target, harm] Smite; Flash Heal
I wish there was a way for it to be “smart” and cast mass res if more than one person is dead. That’s one feature I will miss about VuhDo, but, that feature is currently broken on my VuhDo, which is why I started this project to begin with.
This on untargeted skills
/cast [@mouseover, nodead, help] Flash Heal; Holy Nova
This one seems to work for cds, too.
In setting this up, I realized where my mental plan shortcut was off. I don’t have to use a modifier to differentiate between harm/help, so one bind works for both, saving me a lot of binds.
Two questions;
1 Do you ever have issues with it being slow to evaluate conditionals and casting a harm because it has not registered the mouseover yet?
2 My tooltips sometimes get stuck. E.g. I move the mouse off of the frame and the tooltips still show the heals. If I press the bind, it still casts the harm on my target and updates the tooltip at that point, but, going back and forth either way, it sometimes updates and sometimes doesn’t on just hovering the mouseover or moving away from the frame. Is that my addon, or just something that happens? Anything I can edit to improve the polling rate on that? This is primarily so I can check cds on things like Prayer of Mending without wasting a keypress to force the tooltips to update.
Again, thanks for all of the help.
…now the long work of updating disc, pally, druid and shaman…
EDIT:
Oh, lordy. I just realized how much work is ahead of me. I need to update dps/tank specs, too, since I’ve always used VuhDo click casting for utility and off-heals, too, e.g. misdirection, BoF, Tricks, etc.
I have never had this issue.
From my experience that doesn’t happen, it’s near instant for me.
Consider installing weakauras addon instead and messing with those so you don’t have to look at your keybinds. Especially with the way many of those keybinds will be macrod it’ll be difficult to track. There’s already packages for each class people put up, so you don’t have to overwhelm yourself even further.
You’re welcome. Can you post an update later what you’ve done and how it’s working it out?
EDIT:
To make life easier on yourself pull up a text document and try to create some sort of template. 1 min cooldowns with 1 min offensives, cleanses with stuns, etc. Typing them out and then copy/pasting will be best.
I’ve never had a problem with this. The main issue I’ve run into when using them is you have to really pay attention to where your mouse is when you want to damage something. If you mouse over a player in the world, it will do the friendly spell on them instead of casting at the enemy.
I’ve noticed some occasional weirdness with tooltips and macros even without any bar addons. I’m not sure what the cause is. (In general, mousing over the key usually causes them to update, but that’s not always practical.)
As Irrenhaus mentioned, you might want to find an alternative option for tracking your cooldowns. Aside from Weak Auras, if you use a bar addon and have some extra empty bars, you can just throw your important cooldowns on those and put it somewhere easy to watch. (If you use the default form paging for your druid, then action bar “8” is the only safe one to use past 6.) You can also use an addon like Button Forge to just add new action bars independent of the default or bar addons.
I want to second this. It makes it so much easier to organize your thoughts, and makes it quicker to put together similar macros through copy and pasting. Setting the document to plain text will ensure you don’t get any annoyances like smart quotes for copy and paste.
If I tap my alt key, it tends to make the tooltip update, but, it’s still annoying.
I definitely use weakauras. In fact, if anything, I use them too much. I have to go back and audit them to make sure I don’t have TOO MUCH info on the screen. I also will sometimes import two for the same purpose to evaluate them and have to go back and delete ones I’ve marked not to load for a long time without going back to them. My loading screen thanks me when I do, lol.
The gamepad has two rows of 5 buttons and a bottom row of 4 buttons. I set up my bars to physically represent the key layout on the gamepad. Obviously, with a little repetition, that becomes sort of redundant. However, with making such a dramatic change like this, for a while, it may really help me find that spell I want to cast, which is why I was concerned about seeing the tooltip and cd.
I use Neuron for my bar mod. It is hands down the most impressive bar mod I’ve ever seen. I can create the macros right on the individual buttons instead of consuming the limited Blizz macros. It is also unlimited on the number of buttons on an individual bar and the overall number of bars. If this tooltip issue really prevents me from learning my new binds, I might have to use the ElvUI bars or get Dominos/Bartender. I just hate the idea of relying on the limited Blizz macro UI. Moreover, Neuron handles druid shapeshifting better than anything else, by a MILE, and I would hate to lose that, too.
I used a spreadsheet, but, I did organize them a little differently, at least for holy. I put the dps and most used heals on the top row, where my fingers naturally rest. Then I made sure to prioritize the instant heals on the most convenient second row buttons to be used while moving. That pushed some of my standard binds for cds into new locations, but I think it will be for the best in the end.
I wish I could post a screenshot or a url. I’d show off the finished product when I’m done. IIRC, I used to be able to post links. I’m guessing that’s a new forum change since I last really played.
Perhaps you can make a physical paper sketch and set it next to your computer to quickly glance rather than down? Don’t know, I’m just brainstorming.
Also I forgot to reply earlier. At some point I had troubles with a macro and @player fixed it, but I can’t remember what the issue was. Like I said, I’m not good at macros, but yeah your macros do exactly as they say.
I use Bartender (as you can see from screenshot I put earlier) and have not noticed this issue.
Post it on imgur and do what I did earlier.
Blizzard’s rules be damned, we’re trying to help people play the game.
It’s been a while since I’ve tried Neuon (it might have still be Ion) but I think it can do what I described where you make independent bars to show you cooldowns. Of course, if you’re using WA already, that works too.
As for links, the best way to handle them is to use the preformatted text option. (It’s the </> symbol on the edit box toolbar — or you can just enclose the link in backticks.)
wowhead.com
That gives a nice easy link for people to copy and paste.
Ok, the self-cast on this one is not working.
/cast [@mouseover, nodead, help] Holy Shock(); [@target] Holy Shock(); [@player] Holy Shock()
Works to heal the mouseover or dps the target, but with no target and no mouseover, it is not healing me. “I need a target”.
Try
/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead][exists,nodead][@player]Holy Shock