UI, Keybinds, Macros & Hardware

[duvar]

My keybinding setup is pretty unique. Most people who play warrior who have sat down on my keyboard to try it hate it. One thing unique about my setup is that I use NO MACROS. The second you drop a macro on your action bar, you lose a little bit of flexibility. What if I don't WANT to do all of that stuff that the macro does?

What a lot of people fail to realize though is that with clever use of standard action bar mechanics you can achieve a lot of the same effects as your macro does, with the added flexibility of not mashing it all into one macro.

Example: The standard Charge/Intervene/Intercept macro. Why is it necessary? Intervene requires Defensive Stance, Intercept requires Zerker Stance, and Charge requires Battle Stance. Your action bar changes depending on what stance you're in. Put all 3 of them in the same spot and you're gold. As long as your stance dancing is bound to a very easily accessible key, pressing two different buttons in succession is as fast as mashing the same button a million times until GCD is over.

So basically my whole action bar is set up like this. Mocking Blow / Taunt are on the keybind. Pummel / Shield Bash. etc. I also unbound ALL of my default interface functions like Map, Character Panel, etc and rebound them to Shift+<Default>. So like map is Shift+M, Character is Shift+C, etc. Then I use rtadfghzxcv12345 for all my commonly used keys. This way everything that I will ever need to access quickly is very close to my movement keys (qwes), and less frequently used stuff (shouts, bloodrage, etc) are on the F-keys.

[ttocs]

I typically only use 2 macros:

Stance dance/fear break, and healthstone. Only becuase they're significantly easier than doing them manually, even with keybinds. Though, my keybinds can use some work.

[duvar]

Actually I just realized I do use one macro. Intervene. I always have the mob targeted and I want to intervene his target, only less frequently do I have a player targeted that I want to intervene. So I made a macro that intervens target's target if an enemy is targeted, and target if a player is targeted. But it still fits with my philosophy of 1 button 1 action.

[Ripper522]

do you guys post your podcasts to iTunes? its how I manage my podcasts, if not would you guys consider it?

[Taelas]

Actually I just realized I do use one macro. Intervene. I always have the mob targeted and I want to intervene his target, only less frequently do I have a player targeted that I want to intervene. So I made a macro that intervens target's target if an enemy is targeted, and target if a player is targeted. But it still fits with my philosophy of 1 button 1 action.

You don't need a macro for this.

[duvar]

There was a debate in my guild about this when I asked because I figured the same thing, and finally I just went out and tried hitting Intervene on a mob when it was going after someone else in my group, and nothing happened. I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing anything wrong >.>

[Chuunks]

I found it vey effective to use my mouse buttons as my heroic strike rage dump.

In this way I can keep my normal rotation, and dump when necessary. Also I found that when I was clicking my heroic strike with the number keys, I would sometimes double-click it which would queue and unqueue the ability.

My other mouse button is for my Commanding Shout ..

[Taelas]

There was a debate in my guild about this when I asked because I figured the same thing, and finally I just went out and tried hitting Intervene on a mob when it was going after someone else in my group, and nothing happened. I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing anything wrong >.>

I've never used a macro for it, and it's always worked for me -- and I've only very rarely selected the target to be Intervened.

[Hypatia]

I will also chime in for "I'd rather have all of the tanking classes represented in every episode" rather than "stick to one class per episode." Being a good tank involves having at least a surface knowledge of how every other class/spec interacts with yours. Multiple tanks will interact in perhaps the most important ways, simply because you need to know how to back each other up.

I for one am rather unsatisfied with my knowledge of feral druids and protection paladins, and I welcome every chance for increasing my understanding.

[Nayre]

I'm gonna agree with the multi-tank perspective, as well. It makes things more interesting, and, honestly, I like to learn more about the other tanks.

[Turkson]

Need a druid tank.

And Lore needs to do 2-3 shots of Jack Daniels to loosen up.

[Tobius]

Never bothered with mouseturning before and only been using a few keybinds in conjuction with clicking (HS and Cleave mainly). Gonna give it a proper go - if only I can convince some guildies to put up with some useless tanking for a bit

[Fayre]

We put up with your useless tanking all the time, Tobius

These podcasts are a fantastic resource. Cheers for making them, Ciderhelm.

[Throng]

Thoroughly enjoying the podcasts so far! Regarding this particular one, I just want to say that I've been using a Fang gamepad with my laptop for a couple of months and love it. The layout is great, it feels solid and I'm sure it'll last a good long while.
Personally, I'd recommend it, but each to their own

[Lore]

Need a druid tank.

And Lore needs to do 2-3 shots of Jack Daniels to loosen up.

Done.

[Kim]

Cider, you mentioned using health, rage, and cast indicator bars near your character. Can you suggest an addon for this?

Great work on the podcasts!

Thanks

[cagneyed]

Hello,

Thank you for the excellent podcast! One thing that I was reminded of while listening to this episode was that the Logitech G15 macro keys do not work on the Mac (yet). They keyboard itself works fine, as well as the media keys, but the "G" keys and the LCD are not supported by Logitech or Apple.

[Machus]

Hey, I'm a keyboard-turner and proud of it. Well, in most cases...

The point of this is that I use only the keyboard during a fight. All my abilities are bound to the right side of the keyboard (I'm right handed) so with both hands on the keyboard I'm very effective at using my rotations, hitting the panic buttons, stance-dancing, and so on. Doing these while moving (with the QWEASD keys) is no issue. Overall I feel this makes me more effective than trying to use my abilities with the left hand, or moving the right between mouse and keyboard.

Until Blizzard designs some stupid encounter like Kael'thas Sunstrider where they assume that you are a mouse-turner and fast loot-clicker. Bah! It also sucks in PvP obviously, which i don't do.

[Maxlegosu]

i've been doing alot of PvP and... i just cant imagine how u could possibly fight a rogue using keyboard turn ! especialy when he pops sprint ! I use 'Q' and 'E' for turning only if my mouse is busy at clicking the few moves i dont have binds for,
nice podcast ! (thats my 1rst post! xD)
Oh, since I played alot of FPS games, I switched Q-E to A-D to strafe and A-D to Q-E to turn... I'm guessing that thats what everyone does ? And i was already use to turning my 'head' with the mouse... so in WoW, its basicaly the same, except that u have to right click while doing it.

Here I'll tell u guys what controls i use and a few things that I think help improving my speed as a WoW player.

Personnaly, i use 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - mouse3 - R - G - X
I use the standard F= assist, T= auto attack, Tab= switch target. And as i said, i sometimes use Q and E for turning.
As i leveled and learned new moves, I soon felt the need to add Shift and Ctrl to all of these. So now i play with those 9 keys + my 2 'modifier keys'. Thats 28 binds that i can push. I even use 6 and shift+6 but most of the time i click it coz I need to look at my keyboard for my finger to land properly on 6 :P

mouse3, shift+mouse3 and ctrl+mouse3 are my PANIC buttons, aka last stand, shiel wall and avoidance trinkets.
I think its nice to have those 3 ''oh-crap-moves'' on the same button. It makes it easier for me to remember what to click in those situations where u need to react fast. (thats also about the muscular memory :P )

As for my panic button, I like to bind any moves that i can associate together on the same button. For example, I have 'charge', 'intervene' and 'sprint' all binded on the number 4. That way, I know that when i need to charge at something, once im in the right stance, I always use the same key to perform a ''charge-like'' move.
Another nice exemple is my taunt key. I use X to taunt in defencive stance, and X for mocking blow in combat stance. I also use Shift+X for my mocking macro that switches me in combat stance. and guess what... i use Ctrl+X for my AoE taunt. Thats 3 taunts on the same button. Isnt it amazing ? Ctrl+X is just a little bit ''painful'' to click, so that way i know I aint gonna waste my AoE taunt CD due to miss clicking. xD

For thunderclap, i use Shift+1, which is another bind thats need a little effort to use. I like to have thunderclap on a ''difficult'' bind like that because its an AoE move that can break CC and wanna be 100% sure of what im doing when using that one. Also, I think thunderclap isnt a move that really needs to be pulled in a perfect timing, so, its a move u could offord to be clicking or to map a slower key.


I use shift+2 shift+3 and shift+4 for my 3 stances. I tried to use F1 F2 F3 but never did good at it =/ i wish i had a footswitch !
Anyways, i think its important to have your 3 stances lined in a row somewhere on your keyboard, wether its E-R-T, X-C-V, etc...


My friends think i'm crazy coz i use Shift and Ctrl all the time oO. I tell them they are nub clickers :P
The only thing that handicaps me i guess are the C and Z keys that refuse to remap coz i like using Z to DRAWWWW MYYY WEAAAPOONNN and C is a fast and fun way to look at your chars gear/stats... and they are default controls...

oh, i wrote alot.
Anyways, I guess that reading someones keymapping isnt that much electryfying so i'll stop now.
I just hope that maybe someone gonna find something usefull in this.

BONUS (lol)
The only macros i use are ''battle stance + mocking''', ''last stand + potion/HS'', and sometimes ''intervene + that_stupid_omenless_mage''. I wish i had a add-on that display a big ShieldBlock CD so i'd never forget to click it every 6 secs, coz from time to time I forget to click =/

Thats it ! my 1rst post in here as a nub geared tank ! i respecced prot from MS 2 weeks ago after like 2 years of playing my rogue and MS warr. I'm back into tanking and god I Love it !

[Josey]

How do you keybind a letter to abilities not listed in keybindings? The stances are not listed in there.

Examples: Mapping Revenge to the Q key or the stances to letter keys.