Keybinding

[heck]

The time has come.  Too long have I been /pointed and /laughed at for not having keys bound.  Plus, I'm a shaman with ten hundred totems to plop every battle...it's getting to be regoddammeddickulous.

What keys are you guys using for what types of moves?  My first instinct was to use letter keys, but most of them also open up various windows.  wtf. 

[Rasix]

I only have two keys bound.  The "Q" and "E" keys are bound (all they were before is strafe buttons and I strafe with my mouse).  For my rogue, they're tied to the moves I use the most when solo grinding: cheapshot (from stealth), sinister strike, and eviscerate.  For my shaman, I bind my LHW and frost shock to these buttons, although only LHW is used enough to warrant this.

If I were more pvp active, I might bind an earth shock, earthbind totem, and weapon switch to a button.  Otherwise, I'd rather place my totems though clicking. I have them set up so it's very easy to choose one of each totem that's proper for the situation.  I've never found myself not being able to place my totems fast enough :)

A good idea might be to use some sort of bar mod and set up some custom totem group clusters depending on the situation.  You might want to have a GOA, SOE, FR cluser set up for when you're in a rogue group that doesn't need aggro control.

[heck]

I only have two keys bound.  The "Q" and "E" keys are bound (all they were before is strafe buttons and I strafe with my mouse).  For my rogue, they're tied to the moves I use the most when solo grinding: cheapshot (from stealth), sinister strike, and eviscerate.  For my shaman, I bind my LHW and frost shock to these buttons, although only LHW is used enough to warrant this.

If I were more pvp active, I might bind an earth shock, earthbind totem, and weapon switch to a button.  Otherwise, I'd rather place my totems though clicking. I have them set up so it's very easy to choose one of each totem that's proper for the situation.  I've never found myself not being able to place my totems fast enough :)

A good idea might be to use some sort of bar mod and set up some custom totem group clusters depending on the situation.  You might want to have a GOA, SOE, FR cluser set up for when you're in a rogue group that doesn't need aggro control.

Right on, thank you!

Yea right now pointing and clicking works pretty well, and I have some really important stuff on numbers 1-4.  Then I have a second main bar that I can flip to that is all totems, although I haven't used this yet.  At level 33, I'm doing fine in WSG and in dungeons...but ya know I'm always looking for a more streamlined system  :-D

And there really are a shitterton of totems.  Maybe I could try writing a mass totem dump macro...hit a button and then ploploploploplop.

[Hoax]

Here is my guide to keybinding.

First pick two skills that you use very often, but beyond that also involve timing (a mage might pick Frost Nova and Blink for example) those go to Q and E.

From there keep expanding out.  Once you are used to using Q and E for those skills it is time to bind R and F.  Followed by G, C and V.  You can keep the 1-5 as keybinds while Z and X work well for things like sit, bandage, eat/drink that you dont have to hit in the middle of combat.

The goals of your setup should be:

Get all important skills within your left hands reach.
Set things up in a way that you will remember and feels natural to your brain
Crucial skills (like the aforementioned FN and Blink, or things like vanish, earthbind, charge, hamstring, multi shot, wingclip) that when you need them it is important should be right next to your movement keys, that way you never have to pause no matter how lacking you are in fps-style skill to use them.  As you go out into the G, C, V and T range you can put useful pvp skills that are on timers or that you dont use as often also. 

Anyways, really you just have to decide what you need and make it happen, you can't really tell someone how to bind keys any more then you can tell them how to setup their UI.  But I think most of that is pretty rule of thumb and logical.

*goddamn w got away from me!*

[Phred]

And there really are a shitterton of totems.  Maybe I could try writing a mass totem dump macro...hit a button and then ploploploploplop.

Look for totem stomper. It was in cosmos back when I used it and allowed you to make sets of totems that would all be dropped by repeatedly hitting the same key. WoW's ui doesn't allow you to cast more than one spell per key press, so I don't think you can make a macro to dump all the totems you want with one keypress.

[Calantus]

I use the standard blizz bars with the bottom and sidebars turned on. I only bind the main and bottom bars, here's what I bound them to going main->left->right bars (S-<key> means [shift]+<key>):

Code:

  Q,   E,   Z,   X,   C,   R,   F,   V,   T,   G,   B,   Y
S-Q, S-E, S-Z, S-X, S-C, S-R, S-F, S-V, S-T, S-G, S-B, S-Y
  1,   2,   3,   4,   5,   6, S-1, S-2, S-3, S-4, S-5, S-6

Mainbar I like to keep defensive spells and abilities on, or abilities that I use all the damn time and like a little speed on. 2nd bar I keep open for defensive abilities I use seldom, that can take some time, or that are similar to the non-shifted letter (for example Q is my Gheal on my priest, and S-Q is group heal). The third bar I keep offensive abilities generally. And yes, I really do use all of those keys.

Reasons why... I don't like to search and peck on my buttons. I don't like the fact that I have to look away from the screen (maybe others don't, but I never can simply click them without looking), and I like to have my mouse free to click on enemies and friendlies for hurting and healing. You eventually get used to hitting X button to do Y effect and it's so much easier once it becomes automatic reflex so you can concentrate on what you're doing, not what you're clicking.

[cevik]

My warlock's bindings:

` Target last target
1 Death Coil
2 sbolt
3 immolate
4 corruption
5 CoA
q Fear
e Drail life
shift-e Drain Mana
r secondary pet action in servitude (seduce, spell lock)
t pet attack
shift-t me attack (never use it)
f primary pet action (debuffs detected!)
shift-f MORE MANA FOR DESTROY (sorry, I mean, life tap)
g DESTROY (excuse me, I mean shadowburn)
shift-g banish
z rain of fire
x drain soul
c wand (for pve use only)
v searing pain
b CoW (for silly hunter pets)
tab cycle targets

I moved reply to n, everything else that I had to unbind to get those keys can be clicked from the interface and involve stuff like seeing my talent tree and character panes.  I used n for reply because if I'm going to type a reply to someone, I need both hands on the keyboard to type.  Yes it took a day or two to get used to not having r as reply.

I just got CoS, and I have not used CoE much yet.. so I'm going to have to bind those tonight.. Right now I click my buffs (demon armor, plus unending breath and detect invis for pvp so that I have some debuff protection.. :))  I think tonight I'm going to switch death coil and fear.. or move fear to shift q and put death coil at regular q.. Basically, everything is within reach os wasd, and in combat I NEVER click a button on the screen (though I have a bunch of buttons near the center of my screen using /flexbar.. it's just so that I can see the cooldowns without moving my head)..

[Zetor]

I dare you to come up with a setup more freaky than mine. Numpad for the ... win?
`:autorun
1: siphon life
2: shadowbolt
3: immolate
4: corruption
5: curse #1 [currently CoEx]
6: curse #2 [currently CoA]
7: drain life
^^ these are the ones I can reach with my left hand easily. I generally use 2 for my 'spam' key and the ones surrounding it as 'setup' keys. For my rogue 1 is eviscerate, 2 is hemorrhage, 3 is gouge, 4 is ghostly strike; for my warrior, 1 is charge/taunt/intercept, 2 is MS or HS [depending on stance], 3 is rend/whirlwind [depending on stance], 4 is disarm/hamstring. Etc.

8: fear (pretty much only use it in pve, being alliance /sadf)
9: drain soul (in pvp, shadowburn > *)
0: curse #3 [currently CoS]
-: banish 1
=: banish 2 (when soloing level 61 elite demons, you need to keep them banished for 50-52 seconds while your curse of doom ticks down... so I use CoD, then banish 2, then banish 1, repeat)

num0: escape artist
num.: shadow ward
num1: amplify curse OR fel domination
num2: deathcoil
num3: shadowburn OR fel domination
num4: demon armor
num5: lifetap
num6: howl of terror
num7: mount
num8: curse of tongues
num9: hellfire

RoF, drain mana, unending breath and detect invis are click-only, as are most summons [normal pets are hotkeyed to ctrl+q-w-e-r]. They just aren't used that often and RoF needs manual targeting anyway.

And I still manage to be pretty effective in pvp... maybe my enemies just suck. :p Yeah, looking this over, I really need to redo my keybinds one of these days.


-- Z.

[Jayce]

Is there a way to tie a spellcast or ability use to a given key directly, or do you have to put it on some out of the way bar slot and then tie the bar slot to a key (my first thought as to a solution).

I thought I remembered seeing a macro command to cast spells, but clear on whether that still works given the anti-botting code that was later added.

[cevik]

Is there a way to tie a spellcast or ability use to a given key directly, or do you have to put it on some out of the way bar slot and then tie the bar slot to a key (my first thought as to a solution).

I thought I remembered seeing a macro command to cast spells, but clear on whether that still works given the anti-botting code that was later added.

Well.. you can macro a single spell cast, but not multiple (i.e. /cast Greater Heal(Rank3) (or something like that) will cast greater heal, but you can't, say "while(stillInRaid) do /cast Flash Heal(Rank 7) end" and then switch to your dps class on another computer to have fun in a raid or anything)..

The only way I know to bind a macro/ability/spell to a key is to put it on a hotbar and bind a key to that bar.  If you get flexbar you can /flexbar show button=1-120, then put the things you want to bind on all those buttons, then use flexbar's keybindings to bind those keys (I think you can bind all 120 buttons when you have flexbar installed), then /flexbar hide button=1-120.  But that will still take up hotbar space (as you add stuff to the flexbar buttons, you'll see the stuff pop up on your regular bars because flexbar, like all other bar addons, just uses the 120 available hotbar spaces provided by the blizzard UI).  And I've never done it quite that way (I did all my keybindings before I installed flexbar, so my buttons were already bound to the visible action bars and I just used flexbar to show me those slots so I could move them around), but if it works you can almost do what you seem to be wanting to do (bind stuff that isn't visible, i.e. not all 120 hotbar slots can possibly be visible on the screen at once, so you put stuff in the ones that are "invisible" and then hide them and you should get the basic functionality you are asking for)..

[heck]

Hey just wanted to say thanks!!  Got me on the right track now.

[bhodi]

I use the ` - 6 keys pretty exclusively combined with the shift, alt, and ctrl. The only non-numbered keys I use are shift-C and shift-V for my two trinket slots.

[Warryyr]

Wow, awesome stuff.  I'm about at the stage where keybinding is becoming something to delve into.

I'm not too familiar with the macro system in WoW, anyone have any handy tips or links to good guides? 

[Chenghiz]

http://ui.worldofwar.net has some macros on it, which will give you a good idea of how to write them. To put an ability into a  macro, just open your spellbook next to the macro window, put your cursor in the edit box, and shift-click the ability you want in the macro.

Also, I believe there are a few mods that allow you to directly bind spells to keys - Hunter Keybindings(http://ui.worldofwar.net/ui.php?id=1389) being a prime example.