Someone please talk me out of mouse over healing

So im a new healer and the way i’ve been healing is putting my party frames to the left of my toon in the middle of the screen kinda and using mouse overs to heal. The main reason I like this is that I can always keep the enemy targeted bc as disc I am constantly attacking the enemy. I have target party 12 and self bound to mouse wheel up / down / click but i don’t use them.

Can someone please explain to me how i’m not being quicker by doing it this way? With targeting enemies I usually tab target or sometimes click their health bar bc I feel like the only keybinds I have left would be a shift + mouse wheel up/down/click.

Should i just keep targeting enemies how i’ve been and learn to keybind target my team first and maybe eventually switch? Just trying to optimize my gameplay and im starting with my binds and my UI bc both are not optimal

Targeting macros and using help harm macros is definitely quicker than mouseover

Every global kind of matters so being able to potentially like spam purge and then instantly dispel cc is kinda big

You’re also reducing the chance a human error, what if you accidentally mouseover yourself and dispel like a moonfire dot instead of the fear on your ret to win the game

Idk I don’t really heal but every time I’ve restarted from the ground up I’ve sucked for a while trying to get used to the change and then gotten way better than I was before

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I like mouseover macros, i don’t think theres anything wrong with them.
No one will ever convince me to use partyx/arenax macros.

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I really want to get like an MMO mouse, and just like one of the thumb buttons to shift, ctrl and alt, and then use like shift mousewheel up/down for Target 1 and 2, and then like ctrl up/down for target enemy or something. It’s just one of those things that’s going to suck until it doesn’t. It’s a huge muscle memory challenge to overcome but I imagine the payoff is great

One of my friends has alt bound to a mouse button which gives him a ton of keybinds

My current mouse only has two side buttons which is okay but I miss my old racer Naga hex(?) from when I was in high school

6 buttons felt like the perfect amount, all the ones with 12 these days feels like too much

Also before I had the mouse I played on my laptops trackpad haha, had the right half of my keyboard bound and it was honestly fun I just couldn’t play things with hard positional/facing requirements

I sucked so bad when I first made the swap but definitely saw improvement later

Iirc, one of the new naga’s or the logitechs(g600?) has a swappaple side panel so you can have 2, 6 or 12. So I’d check that out

Yeah one of my friends sent me that I’m just too lazy to replace mine until it stops working :dracthyr_hehe_animated:

I use a controller so :woman_shrugging:t5:

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Oh, Go on…,…

Started using the api in SL and testing for about 6months until I got pretty decent with it ( controller works really good with BM hunter and frost DK)

Continued into it from basic questing to dungeons then battlegrounds. Now playing arenas comfortable. I don’t expect to get very high rating but I enjoy the games I’m at right now.

I have a controller that can switch between X-input and D-input. X for skills and targetin. D for moving and macros. Dual analog press centers my cursor so I can use @cursor commands like traps, binds, etc

I don’t see any issue with how you’re playing. Healers are fairly GCD locked, so moving between frames and targets is fine. I know glad/R1 healers that still click on frames to heal. That said, having binds for dispels can be nice. I have used mouse wheel down + shift for dispeling dps. I usually have mouse wheel up for purge or offensive dispels since it’s something you can spam.

I typically keep the kill target as my main target and the off DPS as the setfocus.

People can argue that targeting macros are faster… but they really aren’t in all situations because you’re talking about doing two actions now instead of one. That’s why I like just binding dispel to the target rather than a target keystroke + dispel keystroke.

IMO what you’re doing is fine, unless you have found you hit a wall, which I can’t imagine would be the case.

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It depends really. Either way you will still make mistakes, whether you use mouseover or party macros.

I think game awareness is more important than how you target. Pikaboo rolled disc and clicked frames to heal and got to 2900. His game awareness obviously carried him far more than clicking frames held him back.

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mouseover is super clunky, prevents you from repositioning camera to move or see things while changing targets and just takes longer
get a gaming mouse, bind six of your side buttons to target arena and party 1-3, way nicer play once you get used to it

This would be the only downfall to mouse over targeting. Having to let go of your right click for camera adjustments and movement will suffer slightly, but it isn’t absolutely mandatory by any means.

Continue doing what is comfortable until you feel like it is holding you back. There are plenty of gameplay issues you can correct first before you need to worry about min/maxing targeting.

I want to disagree based on anecdote, but I could be wrong and in any case play whatever is fun for you?

I think there are some things, like your dmg rotation, that are easy to fix/change
And other things, like how you target, or how your ui is setup at the macro level, that are important to learn right first.
I got my gf into wow+arena for the first time, and I swear she’s improved several times faster because we prioritized setting up ui and learning good habits
She learned everything except how to do damage and what any of the other classes do first, and it’s so good to not have to break bad habits to learn new ones

Mouseover targeting is a really bad habit because you are changing targets all the time if playing optimally, but you need to look at your mouse to change targets, which means you are receiving no other information about the game during that time, it’s not just about repositioning camera.

She really hated it at first, would just tab everything, but shaman totems forced her to learn how to use mouse, and when she switched her play in all games improved a lot.

Most of that is correct. I would say it’s always better to learn good habits first and then develop game knowledge around those good habits. There would be a transitional period that you could entirely avoid later.

In previous metas where burst/damage wasn’t so fast mouseover / hard targeting would of been less of an issue then it currently is. I will say though for players coming over from PvE, healers especially, learning how to react to what is happening & game awareness will improve their gameplay faster then worrying about min/maxing targeting.

It’s entirely preference and what is familiar assuming their reaction time is negligible. Some high rated players do manually target and do just fine, as someone mentioned Pikaboo pushing 2900 without teammate binds. I have known plenty of other casters/melee who target using their frames and are still great at arena.

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