So after a long hiatus (played hunter in WotLK and Cata) I’m planning to get my feet wet in the PvP world again. And I was wondering about general guidelines in regards of keybinds - and I ran into troubles:
Do you use ‘@mouseover’, ‘@focus’, ‘@arena1’, etc. macros to be faster (land a focus step-kick in time) or do you use them to lets say juke a warrior into using his spell reflect because he doesnt know he’s not the real target of your chaos bolt?
Do you use ‘arena1,2,3’ for both enemy and friendly players or do you use mouseover and/or focus macros? That means that every ability (maybe except the very basic skills such as Mutilate or Frostbolt) needs to have 3 or even 6 binds if it can be cast both on friendly and enemy players. That seems like a lot even in this pruned state of the game…
It got me wondering if it’s worth it at all… Lets say I have Kick bound to ‘Q’ and focus Kick to ‘Shift+Q’. I find myself being faster if I simply click on the focus frame or player nameplate and press ‘Q’ than not having to select target but having to hold down ‘Shift’ and then press ‘Q’.
Btw this is coming from a Monk and Rogue perspective if it matters…
Im oldfashioned. I got arena1,2,3 only for stormbolt and pummel. Then i got /target arena1,2,3 for targeting and its fine - muscle memory works while switching targets really quick. Ofc I could do arena1,2,3 intimidating shout macro and be like 0,2s faster while applying it but it does not matter I guess.
But ye, I am a warrior so, not many abilities need its own arena1,2,3 macros
I have NO targetting spells for friendly opponents (although I wish I did sometimes for flame heal)
I do have a shadowstep macro to party1 but that’s it
Targetting is completely preference as has most likely been said. I have arena 123 target/focus macros, and set current target to focus macro, then I use an addon to use nameplate numbers instead of names to make tracking easier. Then basically every spell I have has a target / focus version and I bind ctrl/alt to my mouse to make modifiers easier to work with. i tried blind 123 and kick 123 but to be honest, I’m so used to focusing I found it harder to use. I just constantly switch my focus around generally.
As an assa rogue imo you should be able to garrote, rupture, kick, blind, kidney, cheapshot, sap and poisoned knife at least two people at once without much target swapping if any but I guess even stating that is subjective since everyone is different.
You do that by using the default key to swap target?
Tbh I don’t use it often because my fingers are too short but Imo as a melee, especially when you have to deal with straff/having target in line, looks hard no? Or maybe the key target something you didn’t want to =D
Ye, basically for anything (kick/CC). Also party macros (@party1/2) for support spells. You barely have any spells these days, isn’t that hard to find keybinds for it. Example: You have kick on 4? You could use Alt+4 for arena1, Shift+4 for arena2 and Ctrl+4 for arena3. All done with one macro.
2.) already answered actually.
3.) Well, there are different ways to do so, but using binds for landing your spells faster can make the difference! Compare it with 50ms more ping in important situations. Some people also just have targeting macros for arena1-3 and focus… They don’t make macros for each spell, but pressing for example alt+a for arena1, alt+s for arena2 and alt+d for arena3 and then just the normal bind the spell has.
It will take some time to get used to, but deffo worth it.
If you use a NAGA mouse, you can afford to use kick 1/2/3, kidney 1/2/3 etc… if not i strongly suggest sticking to target/focus only for kick, kidney and step kick.
PLS make a focus step kick macro, i am tired of seeing rogues in that don’t have that.
I use ctrl, shift and alt as modifiers for spells. So any spell I want can be counted as 4: 1 for the current target for wpvp or pve, and rest for arenas. I’m staring to get used to it dot wise aswell, started not long ago for baseline spells, but it basically allows me to reduce the amount of tabbing or clicking, which can get annoying vs elemental or dk for example. I need to get use to it but i feel it’s starting to pay off (i play affliction).
So for your dk you’ll get 5 keybinds for this list you mentionned or 7 for rogue and use modifiers. Pretty straightforward
I find alt to be a painful to use, so for those if you want you can always develop the habit of nomod, shift, ctrl instead of ctrl, shift, alt.
I do not own a gaming mouse, but with those they come with a software where you can pre map ctrl, alt and shift for example to mouse buttons. In game, just type your macro as normal and your mouse mapping will take care of the rest.
You can then also add other spells like burst cd to the mouse, to save spot on your keyboard for other binds.
