Question for the keybinders

So in my ongoing efforts to fail less, I've been working on changing from clicking icons to keybinding them. The problem I'm having is seeing when things are available for casting. I ended up moving the 969 abilities from the normal action bars and putting them just below my character so I can see them easier. But this clutters up the UI, makes it hard to see the fire I'm not supposed to stand in, and just generally annoys me.

So how do I manage when abilities are ready to use without looking at the icons? Just spam the appropriate button? Set up a generic global cooldown timer to display?
_________________
Wtb mentor Eldre'Thalas

GCD is pretty hard to miss, considering it's every button on your screen.

And you can just spam the next button in the rotation.
_________________
armory | youtube | pally stole my bike

I have keybinds for Hammer, ShoR, HS and Judgement; I click Consecration, Exorcism and Holy Wrath.

How did you remember the rotation when you were clicking it? I say "short, long, short, long, short...break" to myself and that plus short-term memory is enough to keep me on track. Handling the global cooldowns is just a matter of hitting things rhythmically, which I found I was doing automatically after fifteen minutes when I had the sequence fairly locked in.

(Play more Guitar Hero? )

Edit: I don't use Quartz but I think you can have it display a heads-up bar showing your global cooldown. Check a warrior forum; they used to really need that to optimize their threat and maybe still do.
_________________
Everything in war is very simple. But in war, even the simplest thing is difficult.

Shield/Hammer is a macro.

HS
Macro
Judge
Macro
Cons
Macro
HS
Macro
Judge
Macro
Cons
Macro

09929
(those are all numberpad btw)
_________________
armory | youtube | pally stole my bike

My advice would be to get something that shows you the GCD and then just learn the rotation. Quartz is good, if annoying.
_________________
If you shoot Anthony several hundred times with an anti-tank rifle whilst he is stabbed to death by a squad of ninja monkeys, he will be dead.

OK?

i use the standard 1-"=" for my first action bar, with modifiers shift, alt, and ctrl all accessing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th bars.

1 = judgement - i drag whichever judgement I plan on using per fight down to that spot. the other judgements are accessible on my bars (usually off to the side, but in an emergency I can click it and/or drag it onto the bar).

2 = holy shield - always was, always will be...same with shield block on my warr (still 70).

3 = hammer
4 = holy shield slam
5 = hammer of justice...this changes when i go holy, but its more of a sentimental/built-into-my-head stubbornness that keeps it here.
6 = avenger's shield

shift + 5 = consecrate (again mostly out of stubbornness...its strangely natural for me nowadays to hit that...i think i kept it on the "shift" bar so I would give it a half a second to make sure I wanted to drop it back in the first days of tanking 25 mans...just in case the CC would be standing it in)

so, typical tanking rotation would be 1 4 2 3 s5 4 1 3 2 4 s5...i just get into the pattern and keep with it. if I ever lose my place or have to use a gcd for something important, i prioritize how i get back on track...holy shield for bosses, massively huge waves of mobs that are already on me, judgement then holy shield slam for more single target threat, consecrate or hammer for more aoe threat...etc

i do use jim's cooldown pulse for a nice steady pulse-sound whenever my abilities are up on cd, and it's basically constantly going off during a rotation...probably not entirely necessary but I like it for especially watching the longer (aka 2/3 minute cd) abilities.
_________________

best way to get into the groove of it for me was to always put things in order of appearance. from there i just let habit and muscle memory take over.

1-judge
2-shor
3-holy shield
4-hotr
5-consecrate

also if you have a mouse with an extra button on either side, i set AS to the left, and RD to the right. naturally, this is what works for me and ymmv. just make sure that whatever you do that it is all easily accessible, don't want to form bad habits that are hard to break.
_________________

When I was clicking I had the 6's on the bottom left, and the 9's just to the right. I went "left-right, left right." I put bubblewall, taunts etc just above the 6's. Have to screw around and get a gcd timer to display, maybe macro the 6's.
_________________
Wtb mentor Eldre'Thalas

OmniCC is a nice CD tracker. I'll put a numeric countdown and pulses the image when it comes off CD.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/omni-cc.aspx
_________________

1) MSBT (a combat text scroller) allows you to set up a notificationi area that will pop up words like "Holy Shield is ready!"

- After using it for a few months on my warlock and paladin, I find it quite useless for short cooldowns. It becomes practically spam after a few instance runs.

2) Lots of timer UIs have cooldown timers that you can move around. I used to have target debuff timers on the left of my character, cooldown timers on my right.

- Once you get used to things you ignore the cooldown timers anyway. I now only have the debuff timers active.

3) I now use Omni-CC, it puts up nice and large count-downs on my action bars, which I've came to like more than extra timer bars.

GCDs have just become second nature to me, though I do show the Quartz GCD bar. The default bar settings there is too hard to see, though, so you might want to tweak the colours a little.

My bindings made learning the 969 rather easy.

I've remapped my strafing keys (Q, E) to my turning keys (A, D). I use the mouse-look to turn and such anyways, so it was an easy sacrifice. That freed up my Q and E keys for easy bindings for abilities that I use constantly. Then I set up my buttons like this:

1) Holy Shield
Q) Hammer of the Righteous
2) Judgement
E) Shield of Righteousness
3) Consecration

The rotation then became 1 - Q - 2 - E - 3 - Repeat. I can perform the rotation while moving with little to no trouble, and can use my mouse for all my other actions if need be.

Most of my other really important abilities are mapped to Alt- and Shift- versions of those buttons too, which makes them all quickly usable.

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11847-Whack.html

I believe Whack is an addon that aims to help with the 969696 rotation by showing a column of spell icons, ordered by cooldown and priority. Basically the spell at the top of the column is the next one in the rotation.

I tried it by placing the column just to the left of the centre of my screen, thinking I would be able to use it as a reminder of what ability I should be using next but in practice I found that I ignored it most of the time.
_________________
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Chamber+of+Aspects&n=Fiction