Is using AutoHotKey bannable?

Basically when I play my Demon hunter I press Hold Shift (Force Attack Button), Hold Right Click (Strafe button) and Spam Left click (Hunger Arrow). I do this for almost the entire time when fighting.

This causes me to have pain in my right hand. So I would like to use a 3rd party to have a hot key like F2 to toggle holding right button, and F3 to toggle spamming left button, and F4 to toggle holding shift.

I don’t want to use anything that reads data from the game, or make the game play while I am AFK, or anything. I would be in control of my character the whole time, I just want to avoid pain and injury to my right hand.

So is this a bannable offense?

If it is bannable, any suggestion/tips to avoid injury?

I’m pretty certain the standard answer is ‘if you have to ask, the answer is no’.

Unfortunately, I am in the same boat. Like you, I’m getting a pain in my hand(s) and would love some toggle switches, like you describe. After all, we already have something very similiar with the numlock-toggle, unfortunately that doesn’t work for movement (but it might help, possibly, with autocasting HA). TBH the entire force-to-move vs. force-to-attack thing is a bit awkward; WASD would do a lot to alleviate the strain issue, but that’s been rejected by Blizz at least 10 million times.

Unfortunately, the slope is very slippery when it comes to stuff like you suggest. Autohotkey in general is a red flag for Blizz, I think. Where exactly do you draw the line between strain prevention and active cheat? Mind, as I said, I’m completely with you on this but I doubt our concerns will be heard.

I think that Blizzard know that macros are used by lots of players. The use of macros have been discussed in threads about the wizard used on meta group runs where a lot of actions had to be timed right. You can even see youtubers using macros by watching their skill icons flashing at a certain rate. Lots of players use gaming mouses and keyboards with programmable interfaces. But, as SyntaxError says, it’s not strictly legal and won’t be officially allowed.

You can use the numlock trick for skills like vengeance and fan of knives in this setup. That is probably as far as macroing is allowed in this game or at least not frowned upon. That is 2 less buttons to worry about but the spamming will not go away. I ve made a thread a while ago in the us forum requesting if they would allow devour (an essential skill in many necro builds) to be an aura with every rune, cause for me it seems impossible to spam one button every millisecond, for 3 straight hours. It is already numlocked by everyone and It will also make console more fair and playable, so I don’t see the reason not too.

I can see the logic behind your post and believe me one of the deciding factors of what builds I play is how easy they are on the hand. But my advice is don’t go to any third party programms. It is against blizzard rules and whether we like them or not we have to stick by them.

OMG yes. That would make me VERY happy indeed. It’s also the reason why I almost exclusively play my necro with Avarice equipped in normal rifts, because it allows me to trivially use the aura rune.

Mind telling us what builds you are favoring in this regard, @Yukos? It’s extremely relevant to me. I loved the Inarius Bonestorm build a few seasons back and the poison nova one last season (with aura-devour), as well as the original M6 turret spammer (when turrets still fired skills on their own), but they are all severely outdated or even nunfunctionial now. I’m currently levelling a DH with an eye on the new set, but I’m not sure how much of a strain it will be on my hands end-game.

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When I used to play D3 for 10 hours a day I had to use a vertical mouse. Way less strain on your arm/hand. That worked well for me, but I am a casual player now so I went back to normal mouse.

I can tell you that I usually avoid corpse skills on necromancer for that reason. I usually play lazy builds when I am farming t16 and speed GRs with not a lot of button smashing. Good examples is pet witch doctor with helltooth. Channelling barb and monk. Especially the barb feels so relaxing cause the buffs last for so long and you don’t need to spam them. Necro bone storm, as you just said, is another great example,although not really powerful for greater rifts and reaches its limit rather soon. Lod Hydra wizard is also pretty straightforward and easy to play and is even good for high pushing. Way more easier and relaxing to play than vyrs chantodo and also has similar power.

As for new dh yeah I also rolled one as my second character this season. The build is very powerful , has lots of ways to play it and it is fun at some extent. Although you pretty much need to spam hungering arrow even as you strafe , every second or so. That is 3600 button clicks in one hour of pure gameplay (without calculating the time in town , etc.). And it can get even harder if you decide to take also the entagling shot. That doubles the manual casts of generators. Right now I am using this new dh and also I made a lazy setup with the new necro carnival set for speed farming. I have aura of frailty, steuart greaves in the cube for the movement speed, and devour corpse with aura rune to constantly keep my essence up. If you want to be even more comfortable with resource management it can be paired with captain crimson set + ring of royal grandeur. It is great for farming up to 90-95 GRs with not many paragons and no augments in gear. It is does not require to much skill for that content and it doesn’t exhaust my fingers. I use poison scythe necro for pushing too. I don’t find it that hard to play as long as you get used to keeping the nayr stacks as high as possible and synchronize your bone armor dislocation to stun during poison cycle with the conventions of elements. It is the first time I try something like this so I am not very good but I keep getting the hang of it the more I play. Also very tanky, and not so punishing as other necro builds.

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@Yukos, thank you very much for typing all that out. Necro is probably my favourite class flavour-wise (edgy, yeah, I know, sue me), but I think I really need a change for a while, though if I do get back to it, as I suspect, I’ll keep carnival (+ crimson?) in mind. For now I might go hydra wizard – thanks for the suggestion! --, but her constant ‘if my master could see me now’ babble shortens the expected lifespan of my computer screen considerably. =(

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