It’s a question of dynamics. Experience. On paper, it seems good. In practice, I have no idea.
I’ve been clicking since 2007. I really can’t do arenas well. I’m good at call of duty simply because of the simplicity of the keys and the controller, with that my skill can shine through.
I never got used to a keyboard and the jump from clicking for years feels steep for me. It feels very fiddley and weary with my long fingers.
I thought of buying an MMO mouse assigning CTRL, SHIFT and ALT as three easy to remember buttons, all assigned to just Q’W’E on the keyboard. I feel like 9 hotkeys is enough lol. I main a arms warrior.
Anyone else ever done a simple setup like this and it work well in arena? I’m freaked out by mapping loads of hotkeys. Physically it feels uncomfortable and seems like it would take ages to get used to.
I don’t really know what answers I’m looking for with this subject, I’m just shooting in the dark and seeing what happens.
I don’t think a MMO mouse makes sense if you want to just use 3 buttons^^
I’d say as a CoD player you are probably used to these buttons: WASD, shift, ctrl, C, 123, F, G?
Add Q, E, X, Y, 4, 5, ^ (or whatever you have next to 1), re-bind S.
Now, if you get Razer Naga Trinity, you can start with at least 3 more buttons and use more later once you get comfortable with. All the buttons I mentioned are easy to reach and you can start to use shift (and maybe ctrl?) as a modifier.
Plenty of buttons, easy reachable, can be modified and you will get used to them within one week. Just remember to use buttons which are further away for longer CDs, basically you might not wanna have mortal strike on G.
definitely helps to spread out what hand has to do what, at least. i have about half of my binds on my keyboard and half on my mouse as trying to do everything with one hand is too much for my slow hands.
one thing i will say is that MMO mice tend to be super heavy which makes them pretty bad for just about anything that requires precision or fast movement. 120 grams is the average weight for one, and that’s over twice what my current mouse weighs. it is personal preference though and your mileage may vary.
i used to have a razer naga and miss having the extra binds. the tradeoff is worth the mild keyboard bloat though, and i don’t have to worry about being at a big disadvantage in other games. i think there were some tracking issues and the infamous double clicking problem too, but those might be fixed now.
If you play call of duty you are already used to some keybinds just put keybinds on your keyboard on the keys 1,2,3,4,Q,E,R,F,V,C,X,Z and shift all of them too and then if you do get a mouse dont use modifiers use new keybinds on the mouse too you will suck a lot but you are going to learn it over 1-3 weeks just because you clicked forever does not mean you cant do it you just dont put in the time and commitment for you to memorize it its like learning the piano or another instrument if you do that you will have 36 keybinds and in the future you can add more but just start with the basics of these keybinds and move on to shift after you learnt them or add other keys in.
When i was young and had to teach myself how to do it there was no videos for keybinds also it was 100% what is best for you i actually cut little pieces of paper out and stuck it to the keys with the name of the spell it took me a few weeks but i had got used to around 20 keybinds and then i added modifiers to them and got a naga after if you do it this way you will 100% learn it but again it does take time dont expect anything fast will be 1-2 weeks of not been able to do end game content you just need to remember you cant go back to clicking one night to do raids/pvp you need to stick to it or you wont learn.
In my opinion mouse won’t help you much, because the problem lies with you not being used to it.
I’d advise go slowly. Pick few spells (one, two, three or four) and bind them somewhere.
Skill capped did good keybinding guide, I advise watching that too (free on youtube).
Then try to press the keys instead of clicking spells on those few spells.
Sure, you may panic in some moments and still click that. It’s a process. But once in a while, when you think about it, try to press keys for it instead of clicking.
I tried to learn the same way and it worked. Currently I moved it to targetting, the last thing I missed. Sometimes I click my arena partners to heal them. But other time I realize I have the key bind, so I try to use it. Usually when it goes like that, at the start of arena, I’m slower than when I would’ve been if I clicked on them… but if the match lasts long enough, by doing it from the start, it speeds me up and I get into it during the match.
I’d say few more weeks and I’ll drop clicking teammates as I’d be transation completely and gotten used to it.
Tbf your still miles ahead of my gf who only uses 1,2,3 and 4.
I myself am left handed and only have a 6 button mouse but use W,Q and E, Then have A,D,R,S, and F for hot keys. I hold Ctrl and press these 12 keys again and hold Shift to use them again another 12 times. Takes a bit of fiddling and getting use to but i hope you find a set up thats comfortable for you
The size of your hands matters as well, for example having a larger-than-normal hand means you probably won’t be able to press alt as a modifier while also pressing other keys normally. (At least not fast…)
This is something that can be solved with something like a razer naga, and doing alt and ctrl keybindings on the side of the mouse to move some of the burden away from your other hand.
Just buy any MMO mouse and make the jump. The sooner the better.
I’m not sure where you’re based but when my Naga died I bought the Red Dragon MMO Mouse as a cheap alternative. It’s doing very well!
Makes 1-12 plus shift 1-12 super easy to access leaving Q,W,E,R,S,F free for my ‘main’ abilities. Also can shift modify that!
I tend to stray away from CTRL modifier as I find it god awful to do. But with the above I’ve never felt short on keybinds apart from my Druid which is mainly macros that use up the excess space.
You don’t need an mmo mouse to be top performing, a lot of pros play with standart gaming mouse with 2 extra buttons on the side.
However you need much more hotkeys either way, including combinations with shift, ctrl alt and mouse wheel
I find binding ctrl and alt to my mouse much easier and then I just use like 123456qertyfghzxcv`capslockspacebarf1f2f3mwheel and middle mouse. Any focus bind is normally shift and then ctrl/alt is for other stuff. I find ctrl/alt a pain to press, especially at speed but being able to press them on my mouse hand just takes all of that away.
I also have some other abilities bound on my mouse to buttons on the RHS of the keyboard like uiop90 etc.
that’s just so far away. maybe you have your hand placed a little differently. my starting point is WASD with my pinky on shift and my thumb on space bar, so ctrl and alt aren’t bad for me.
for me i cut it at 5, t, g and b and i don’t bind f-keys. i could go further but it has to do with speed as well, what i can comfortably press vs what i can press. especially as a sub rogue where so many things are off global and you sometimes need to press like 4 (or more) buttons in 1 global, i try to do all that with one hand while one of them is on an f-key somewhere and there’s a high chance it goes wrong for me.
Wait what’s so far away? I use 6hb as like last resort keys but otherwise I use the same things as you?
I find pressing a modifier with my mouse thumb and any key on my keyboard press straight forward. F keys are also for things I rarely ever have to use. I can literally modify every single key mentioned because the modifier is on my other hand but I can see some people just prefer extra keys that way.
I also think people seem to overlook keys like capslock and spacebar. I am a bit funny though, I haven’t used spacebar for jump in WoW (except playing healers) since I played in vanilla, because I came from an FPS background where the literal first thing I do, is bind mwheeldown to jump. Spacebar has been stealth for me since vanilla Capslock I think is garrote atm
Definitely as sub keybinding is pretty critical with the speed you have to press stuff. Like if you had shadow dance, symbols, blades, trinket, cheapshot etc on different modified/unmodified keys, you’d mess up constantly.
Playing TBC has been a bit weird for me - vanilla/tbc binds I had garrote/rupture and cs/ks on the same key but nowadays they are on different keys. I use my current binds to avoid things like accidentally kidneying when you want to CS.
ahh, if it’s not so important stuff then fair enough. for me it’s just too far to comfortably reach while doing other stuff. i have combat pot on Y and health pot on shift-Y so i do use it technically, but it’s minor. kinda same as you then i guess.
using modifiers like that could be good maybe. for me i have so much muscle memory of modifier being on keyboard and ability being either keyboard or mouse so even attempting it feels really weird and backwards.
i am never ever letting go of spacebar. i obsessively jump. i do have shift-space and ctrl-space bound though, actually very comfy binds. shift-space i have my hands on by default, ctrl i just hit with the middle of my pinky.
don’t forget about cold blood, duel, vanish, step and whatever else there is. imagine the actual nightmare scenario (in terms of buttons all at once) for sub rogue. i’ve definitely panicked in situations like that and pressed the wrong thing. for example i have vanish on shift-F and shuriken storm on F and i have shuriken stormed mid-burst a couple times when it’s too much. i’ve moved some stuff around to help myself.
yeah i’ve tried to replicate my retail rogue’s binds as best i can. but tbc is so much slower that it hasn’t really an issue for me. so much more is on global and you don’t really have these scenarios where your hand needs to do magic tricks.
Try it out,force yourself to play with keybinds even if you keep dying over and over again.
You will get used to it after few days.
When you get used to it you will regret for not trying it sooner.
Try adding few keybinds,then as you go,keep adding one by one,spells you use the most.
Dont keybind mounts,hs,eating,or long cooldowns…start with the abilties you use the most,then progress from there.
I think most people were clickers when they started with wow,i was but my gameplay and fun in general improved drastically once i started using keybinds.
Most important thing when you switch to KB is not to give up to temptations to click something.
You dont need 70505606060 macros or billion keybinds.
Yeah I actually forgot what my legion/early bfa sub binds were. I used to use middle mouse for dance and something like shift-T for blades and vendetta, but CoS is on T and whilst I have never fat fingered CoS for Vendetta, I was doing it for blades which is obviously horrendous so I changed it. I generally try to keep my rogue spec binds similar.
I am mostly just used to shift being focus as that’s pretty natural for me. As an example of my F key binds, F1 was always bandage, F2 was pot and F3 was eat; since we have vial which I have on shift-v, my pot is now alt-v so out of all those, minus TBC I mostly just use f3 now :S
As for jump, yeah I’ve had spacebar as stealth since classic and I also jump a ton but always with my mousewheel. Only became an issue when I made a disc priest and was like “mwheel is so intuitive for target selection…damn”.
I generally try to fix my binds every patch or so to remove things that are severely busted / have caused problems. Just takes a while to get used to and some of my binds I know are terrible, I just have too much muscle memory for them. I mean, my racial has been 1 since classic and 1 is such a good key, I have no idea why I chose that for wotf back in the day. I think that’s my main trouble bind though.
I think capslock is my favourite bind; I feel no one uses it despite it being the second biggest key on the keyboard and easily accessible It just causes a lot of “shouting”.
Capslock I think is garrote atm
It just causes a lot of “shouting”.