I am currently using an older naga mouse with the 12 buttons on the side and pretty much use that for most of my common controls, but as I progress and am learning how to run my toon more, I find myself needing more hotkeys ( I do double up on some of them with Shift+button, but once I get down into the lower half of buttons I’m not very good at reaching without having to look to verify. Any recommendations for different input devices or common keybinds (i know I have a whole keyboard - just used to the original UI and don’t want to overwrite something I don’t realize is important yet.
CDPS classes tend to have two basic rotations based upon what abilities are coming off of Cooldown. One for single/few targets, and one for many targets. The two rotations should be your primary emphasis for keybinding. Icy-veins.com covers rotations in some depth.
Your scondary emphasis would be on either healing or escape abilities depending upon what your class relies on.
Movement abilities may become your primary secondary ability focus in PvP. Strafe left and right are the most useful.
Do not try to Keybind everything. Many abilities will be very situational and can be clicked instead of key bound. e.g. Hunter’s have flare which is useful in PvP to uncover stealthed players, it is only occasionally useful in PvE.
Arms warriors have one of the more convoluted rotations. In addition to having single and multi target priorities, your rotation is also impacted if the health of your target reaches 25/35%.
Make macros to cover single and multi target scenarios.
So if your third priority attack Ability changes based upon a single/multi target, bind that key to a macro that normally executes the single target attack but executes the multI target attack if the shift key is pressed. This keeps your keypress rotation the same regardless of if it is a single or multI target attack.
In a similar vein, you can add an alt key attack to the macro for when the targets health gets low enough to use execute.
Your goal is to always use no additional keypress for single target attacks, always us shift for multi target attacks, and always use alt when the health is low enough.
If your mouse scroll wheel allows left and right clicks, bind them to strafe left and strafe right.
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Use modifiers like ALT, CTRL, ALT & CTRL.
(sounds like you already doing it with shift)
for example, your 12 buttons on the mouse side…
12.
1 - 12
now set them up for ALT + 1 -12, now you have 24
with CRTL also, 36
hold alt and ctrl = 12 more
turn 12 buttons into 48
Just like using 1 - 0 (- and = ) on row of numbers on the keyboard. 12 of em…they are modded with other buttons to multiply that amount.
Look into remapping other keys that are close to hitting, but not used in combat.
C still open character panel? Need that in combat? remap C
X to sit? Z to take out a weapon? Q and E?
Non help in combat, and hit menu buttons outside of combat, so those are more you can use. Then you can modify those with shift, alt, ctrl, etc.
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that is just time and practice
spend a bit of time looking through your keybinding / keymapping menu…read over them, see what you find useful, plus you can always add them back.
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- Z
- X
- C
- V
- F
- G
- Q
- E
- R
- T
- Y
- Caps Lock
Are all keybinds that can be changed freely without disrupting the normal game inputs too much and aside from Shift+ mods they’re all pretty common.
Muscle memory is going to take over eventually even if your setup is FUBAR so don’t overthink the placement of each ability. The important thing is to do what’s comfortable and what makes sense for you visually to make the learning process easier for you.
As you level up I’d just cluster abilities based on how frequently you use them and what other abilities you chain them with.
I don’t know your range of motion, I doubt it’s like mine, but I personally can’t reach past F5 and I can’t use buttons 6 - 12 on my Naga so I’ve set up accordingly.
F1 - F4 and 1 - 5 being the easiest reached buttons mean that my rotational abilities are going to end up here. To make it easier to switch between characters I play infrequently I keep similar abilities relatively the same across all of them so whenever I do need to look at my action bar for whatever reason my eyes are already headed in the general direction of the ability.
F1 is always my movement ability. Flying Serpent Kick, Charge, Shadowstep, Displace Beast, etc.
F2 is always my heavy hitter. Fists of Fury, Colossus Smash, Stormbringer, etc.
F3 is my generator / utility button. Fist of the White Tiger, Skullsplitter, previously Kingsbane, Totem Mastery, etc.
“R” is always my interrupt
“C” is always my big cooldown
F7 - F12 are my Naga buttons.
I won’t go through every button but that is generally how I start each new character and go through the learning process of the rotation and the keybinds.
All of these keybinds were also not done at the same time. I started with Q and E. I think sometime in WoD I picked up z , x, c, v. Towards the end of hellfire citadel I needed more and eventually practiced with shift modifiers, starting with Shift+Q and Shift+E, and in Legion I started using caps lock and more advanced macro’s.
The wowhead guide on effective keybinding is pretty good. Make sure to check the comment section for more tips by other players.
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A lot of it is going to be muscle memory and practice like Litleshiznit said. My personal method for keybinding is idiosyncratic due to my having played on a laptop with no mouse until very recently.
I typically put my main rotation abilities, a buff or self heal, and my interrupt on 1-6 because those are abilities that I use frequently, and those are the keys I can reach easily with my left hand.
When I actually bind things on my mouse, I bind 7 through = to the easiest to access buttons in the first two ranks, with my personal buffs (Avenging Wrath/Bestial Wrath) in the first position, and defensives (on - and =) in the first and second positions on the second rank of buttons. I leave 1-6 as keyboard-only because I can just use my left hand for those.
I correspond my shift binds in a similar fashion, using those spots for “secondary” abilities (things like Misdirection and Feign Death for my Hunter, and Flash of Light and Lay on Hands for my Paladin) although I tend to put my more commonly used secondary abilities on shift + 1-4 because those are the easiest to hit one-handed.
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Additionally - you could download the Clique add-on (or use mouse over macros) and bind any friendly/self casts using this method… Its great for heals as I can use the same buttons on my mouse w/o shift - it just depends on if I am hovering over a player frame or not.
Not sure how this would work for warrior, but for self heals, or even for things like shaman totems that “drop” and don’t need to be placed - it gives some additional functionality. I imagine it would work for self buffs, you would just have to hover above your self in the party frame when casting it.
I set up my bars so the main spells are on the bottom bar (1-12) and the bar right above has the shift &/or Clique spells.
Edit… reread and seems a bit confusing…
If you 1 button is say execute you can use clique so that if you press 1 over your party frame it will cast a buff/heal, but otherwise act normally.
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I greatly appreciate all of the input, I have been slowly working everyone’s advice into my setup to see what is working best for me. I’m not sure if I can setup my naga buttons to be separate from normal keyboard numbers but will give it a shot. That and I just got a half keyboard that’s a little more ergonomic and has 4 or 5 macro buttons which I will also have to research. So I will continue working on it.