Keybindings

Not sure where to put this, so I'm sticking it in the UI forum.

I have decided that it is time for me to start using keybindings because my days of clicking are becoming numbered, the only problem is, is that i cant figure out what spells to bind to what. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

The answer you're most likely going to get is to keybind your abilities the way you're comfortable doing so. Most of us have built up a sort of muscle memory that we've just been used to playing with for a long time. I have my hand abilities keybound to shift + another key as mouseovers. There is so many ways to do this that it's best to just test it out on your own and see what works for you.

Evaluate what spells are most important to your role and what it is you're trying to do. That is really the key question, what is it you're doing? Are you doing BG's, raiding, PUGing 5 man heroics? In any case you will most likely need your 6969 rotation spells key-bound because you will be spamming them near constantly when raiding. Start taking note of what spells you rely on the most and make those the ones you bind. I like to have my regular spell bar for the 1-= row and then I have the row above it as shift+whatever key-binding is below it, it allows for a lot of versatility and quick responses with a wide range of spells.

I've bound the abilities for the 969 to the main action bar (keys 2 to 6) The rest is bound to other shortcuts I can access quickly. For exemple bubble wall is shift-1.

But the best thing I've done for tanking is setting up a mouseover macro :

Code: Select all

#showtooltip
/use [modifier=shift,target=mouseover] Avenger's Shield; [modifier:ctrl,target=mouseover] Hand of Reckoning; [modifier:alt,target=mouseover] Exorcism; [target=mouseover] Righteous Defense

Put it on an action bar with a shortcut you can easily access even while moving or doing your rotation.
(I've bound it to the < key (french keyboard))

Wrote a long-ish post on this some time ago, you might fight it interesting. There's also several different layouts in the various replies.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23315&start=38

I recently swapped from a hybrid click/keybind set up to a full keybind set up. It takes some getting used to, but be patient with yourself. Whatever you use as keybinds, it will make raiding difficult if you don't take some time in old world raids/dungeons or on a target dummy to practice with them.

If you are moving to keybinding for wrist pain issues (why I did it primarily) consider swapping over from wasd to esdf for movement. Also, bind strafe left and strafe right in place of the look left and look right keys. You will have to relearn so much swapping to keybinding from clicking that moving to esdf at the same time is relatively painless. For me, using keybinds and esdf has significantly lowered wrist pain. I bind most commonly used spells to w, shift w, ctrl w, and r, shift r, and ctrl r. I also use the two cast sequence macros from the macro sticky for the 969 rotation, though I do have the abilities on my bars elsewhere and with alternate keybindings. Other easy to reach key binds with esdf movement are: t, g, a, v, q, 2, 3, and 4 along with all the shifts and ctrls for them. I caution against putting anything with a cast time on 2, 3, 4 - when I had heals on those I often fumbled heals while tanking (and not to a good result lol). I have small hands so have always found shift and ctrl modifiers hard to use - moving to esdf made those modifiers more accessible.

I also suggest you make your bar mod show keybindings on the buttons, scale the button size up 100% from what it you are used to (for a week till you are used to the keybinds). Doing so will make anything you have not memorized easy to see. Resist the urge to click, better to be slow and use the keybinding after looking up what it is than to click - you are trying to break the clicking habit not re enforce it with new positions. After a week or two of the new keybinds, start scaling down the size of your bars again with the goal of ultitmately removing them entirely from UI (or making them only show on mouseover).

Also, start with an approximation and focus on learning 2 to 3 keybinds at one time. I probably bound my w, r, g, t skills right the first try but the shift, ctrl modifiers, a, 2, 3, 4, etc all got moved around over the course of 2 or 3 days till I found what I needed to have where.

Good luck!

Thanks everyone for the replies, they helped a lot when i was choosing my bindings.