Mouse clicker looking to better himself

[Crucious]

Hello. My name is Crucious and I am a mouse clicker. /sits back down in chair. I've always been a point and click guy. I think that the reason for this is my lack of faith in 1) my fingers going where they need to go for the next attack, when they need to get there. 2) Not entirely understanding how to set up the key bindings to effectively tank. I should mention that I am a W,A,S,D guy. I think that is better than the arrow keys.

Here's what i would like to know. What do you all bind to keys? SB,SW,CB,Dev,SS,HT,Rev? Is there more? Less?

What keys do you mostly use for your bindings?

I've heard that you can generate more threat through key binding than through point and clicking. Is this a true statement?

[Tendo]

Hello. My name is Crucious and I am a mouse clicker.

Hello, Crucious.

Here's what i would like to know. What do you all bind to keys? SB,SW,CB,Dev,SS,HT,Rev? Is there more? Less?

What keys do you mostly use for your bindings?

SS - 2
Rev - 3
Dev - 4
HT - 0 (I really have to change this but using it for pulling only right now (changing that will allow me to use it in fights to interrupt casters))
CB - 7 (really out of reach and hard to hit, needs to be rebound. I'm thinking Shift-E)
SW - = (I used to have Oh Noes! buttons on 0, -, =... bad spots. SW is the only one still there)

More that you didn't mention:

Charge - 1
Shockwave - 5
HS - Mwheelup
Cleave - Mwheeldown
Health Trinket - NumPad7
Last Stand - NumPad8
Enraged Regeneration - NumPad9 (these three Oh Noes! buttons are easy to hit in succession with my mouse hand)
Raid Target Markers - 1, 2, 3, 4 (Skull, X, Circle, Moon, respectively)
Rend - Q
Disarm - Shift - Q
Shield Bash - Shift-1
Warstomp - Shift-2
Heroic Throw might go to ` (tilde key) so my interrupts are near eachother.

I've heard that you can generate more threat through key binding than through point and clicking. Is this a true statement?

Only follows that you can click buttons faster off cooldown using 4 fingers on the keyboard than moving a single mouse cursor to 10 different buttons on the bars.

[Crucious]

This completely blows my mind. Makes me think you have 3 hands. One for the left side of the keyboard. One for the right side (numpad) and one for your mouse. I would think your hands are flying all over the place.

Then you though in combo's like Shift click. I think what I should do is set these up and go into some old BC instances and practice the rotations. No need to kill of anyone in my group in a heroic. I appreciate your reply. Other ideas would be appreciated as well.

[Omok]

Here is how I have my stuff set up, mine bindings use a Logitech G5 mouse with four extra buttons on it. If you notice, one through six are your most used abilities in a fight and as such are all grouped. F1 through F4 are dedicated to interrupts and debuffs. Mouse bound abilities are reactive use, and as such are controlled by my mouse hand. Support abilities all surround my movement keys to keep your hand stationary. Oh shit abilities use an ALT modifier, so you know you won't hit the wrong ability.

You can't mouse click as a warrior, and I firmly believe in that. The last Patchwerk I did, I let three white swings through and did not catch them with Heroic Strike. That's almost not possible as a clicker, as you would have to hit 2 through 4 on every single global cooldown, and then 1 on every single white swing (1.3 seconds hasted roughly). Obviously some people may be able to click that fast, but why would you want to? You can watch my Patchwerk video below to see it in action, you will see me click stuff occasionally when I am pumping out 1 through 4 extremely fast to put out maximum TPS and DPS.

I do miss the old days when you had to spam shield block, it was much more natural for me to drum three of my fingers on `, 1 , and 2. Now I drum my fingers on 1 and 2, but it does not seem as natural. Obviously you would not hit 1 (Heroic Strike) if you are not in a good rage position.

Offensive Abilities
1 = Heroic Strike
2 = Devastate
3 = Revenge
4 = Shield Slam
5 = Shockwave
6 = Concussion Blow

Second String Offensive Abilities
F1 = Shield Bash
F2 = Thunderclap
F3 = Demoralizing Shout
F4 = Warstomp

Mouse-Bound Abilities
8 = Mocking Blow
9 = Spell Reflect
0 = Charge
- = Challenging Shout
= = Taunt

Support Abilities
Q = Blood Rage
E = Beserker Rage
F = Heroic Throw/Shoot
R = Battle Shout
T = Vigilance
X = Intervene
Z = Bandage

Oh Shit Abilities
ALT-1 = Last Stand
ALT-2 = Shield Wall
ALT-3 = Enraged Regeneration
ALT-4 = Trinket

YouTube - Patchwerk

[Helmer]

its not that hard once u get used to it. my set up works like:
1-taunt
2-devastate
3-shield slam
4-revenge
5-shield block
mouse roll- heroic strike
beyond that i have shockwave, thunderclap, shield bash, etc farther down. i have all my stuff hotkeyed around my left hand and 6-10/top action bars i click.
shift 1-3 goes to my 3 pages of hotkeyed abilities, shift 2 has charge, mouse over sunder and vigilance. shift 3 has my pulls
i also use cntrl qwe for each of my stances. everything is set up so i can quickly click with my left hand or lesser used moves with my mouse.

[TaiSHi]

SS - 2
Rev - 3
Dev - 4

Agreed.


If you want to keep your stuff stick to your right hand + mousewheel. I suggest using:
1-2-3-4-5
QERT
ZXCVB
Shift will give you more flex on this. I have my mousewheel binded normally + shift + control, that's 6 binds on the wheel

Hope it helps, I'm trying to improve aswell.

Regards,
J

[Omok]

Some people also like to rebind their movement keys from WASD to ESDF to provide another row of extra keys to the left, I have not tried this myself. I have a lot of old school first person shooter ingrained in me, so it will take me a while to make that switch.

[Tendo]

This completely blows my mind. Makes me think you have 3 hands. One for the left side of the keyboard. One for the right side (numpad) and one for your mouse. I would think your hands are flying all over the place.

Then you though in combo's like Shift click. I think what I should do is set these up and go into some old BC instances and practice the rotations. No need to kill of anyone in my group in a heroic. I appreciate your reply. Other ideas would be appreciated as well.

The right side of the keyboard (only the number pad really, especially after I move that pesky out-of-place SW binding) is really for between fights, or Oh Shit times when I can move my hand off my mouse and tap those three in rapid succession. Tapping 1 to put up a skull in a large group of mobs is easy too, as my hand can move from mouse to numpad and back really fast.

I play guitar (sometimes) but even if you play Guitar Hero you should be able to train your pinky to be useful. That hits my modifiers (Shift, Ctrl, Alt can all be used as modifiers).

I'll update my list above for my keybindings to match Omok's list, as I like the way he organized it and it would force me to look at my abilities in an organized way.

its not that hard once u get used to it. my set up works like:
1-taunt
2-devastate
3-shield slam
4-revenge
5-shield block
mouse roll- heroic strike
beyond that i have shockwave, thunderclap, shield bash, etc farther down. i have all my stuff hotkeyed around my left hand and 6-10/top action bars i click.
shift 1-3 goes to my 3 pages of hotkeyed abilities, shift 2 has charge, mouse over sunder and vigilance. shift 3 has my pulls
i also use cntrl qwe for each of my stances. everything is set up so i can quickly click with my left hand or lesser used moves with my mouse.

What are the Stance buttons called in the default WoW interface? I looked through the list and couldn't find which ones they were.

Also, is there an easy way to quote multiple people in one reply? I had to make a reply quoting OP, then quote Helmer in a new reply box, copypasta that into this post's edit box just to get the two quotes formatted correctly!

[therman]

I hate modifiers, and i got tired of having limited options with 1-6, so I scrapped the entire system and rebuilt it. ( wall o text inc, since I have, well, everything keybound)

R - move forward
F - move backward
E - left strafe
T - right strafe

So my hand never moves from the middle of the keyboard with my fingers normally resting on those four keys.

Now I hit these keys with my right forefinger, my main action buttons.

G - shield slam
H - shield block(A throwback to TBC shield block really, but it's too ingrained to move it even though iI no longer spam it.
Y - Devastate
U - Shield Bash
B - Revenge
V - Shockwave
6 - Thunder Clap
7 - Concussion Blow
8 - Demo Shout

everything else is hit by whichever finger is closest(usually my pinky)

A - intervene
W - Taunt
S - Mocking Blow
D - charge
1 - disarm
2 - Herioc throw
3 - Berserker rage
4 - spell reflect
5 - Bloodrage

Wheel up - Heroic strike (this ensures that every attack is heroic strike without me actually having to spam a button, I just scroll my mouse wheel up throughout the fight)
Wheel down - Cleave

And I do use one modifier, because I ran out of buttons

Shift + Y = Challenging Shout
+U = enraged Regen
+G = Last stand
+H = shield wall
+B = trinket 1
+V = trinket 2
+7 = Intimidating shout(not much use in raid, but it can be a lifesaver in some 5 mans)
+8 = Health pot +Healthstone(not much of an O shit button anyway, so i might as well make it better by using both at the same time.


(I lied, I click Battle Shout, Commanding shout, and vigilance)

[Malificient]

Along the same lines... I am used to keybindings for my main (a shadow priest), but the sheer number of options/necessities on my warrior has me a little thrown.

I use a Logitech G15 keyboard (with 18 extra buttons on the left, macro-able) and a G5 mouse (with up to 5 bindable buttons on the mouse without using wheel-up/wheel-down).

On my priest, I have my dots & main nukes bound to the first 6 keys G15 keys, emergency spells and mana restoration measures on the next set, and heals on the bottom 6 keys. This is more than enough, and non-combat things like buffs can easily be clicked or activated from bindings on the normal keyboard. I find myself quickly running out of buttons on my warrior.

Do any of you that use similar setups have suggestions? I am reasonably comfortable with macros, though I admit that I probably don't have enough set up on the warrior yet.

[Bloodwraith]

I put together a guide on setting up effective keybinds here(not pecific for tanking but I hope that it helps ): http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...binds-you.html

[Volador]

I'm a partial clicker myself. My set up is something like this.

2: Shield Bash (macro, uses trinkets/shield block)
3: Revenge
4: Devestate
5: Heroic Strike (on boss fights, this is where my cursor typically stays, and is spammed by right click ... although the mouse wheel thing discussed further up in this thread is a great idea)
6: Shockwave (another clicked ability)
8: Cleave (clicky)
0: Last Stand (clicky)
-: Shield Block (need to remove this)
=: Shield Wall (clicky)

Heroic Throw & Shoot are both click abilities on my action bar above.
Thunderclap is also on the bar above, and is clicked on almost every cooldown.

So, I guess I should edit my hotkeys too.

[Tendo]

To throw a Wall O'Text at this thread again, I decided to remap (on paper) my keys, then will change this when I get home. I hope the organization makes sense as I tried explaining my theory. Let's hope I can stick to this!

Pre-battle Skills (all on number pad)
NumLock - Bloodrage
/ - Battle Shout
- - Commanding Shout
7 - Health Trinket
8 - Last Stand
9 - Enraged Regeneration

(These bindings allow me to Bloodrage (if I'm rage starved), Commanding Shout, Trinket, Last Stand, and ER (in that order for max health) to heal me for over a grand a tick)

1 - Skull
2 - Cross
4 - Circle
5 - Moon

Battle Skills
1 - Charge
2 - SS
3 - Rev
4 - Dev
5 - Shockwave
Shift 4 - Thunderclap
Mwheelup - Heroic Strike
Mwheeldown - Cleave
6 - Shield Block
Shift 6 - Shield Wall
F - Spell Reflect
X - Taunt
C - Taunt
Z - Challenging Shout
E - Rend
Shift E - Disarm

(These are a little messy. I would like to get TClap off of a modifier and easier to do but I've become trained to where it is now. Taunt is on 2 keys so it's easier to hit should my hand be off a key. That's why Challenging Shout is there too. Spell Reflect is right next to my movement keys, instead of a more important skill, so if my hand slips out of position and I click F instead of D to strafe, I don't blow an important cooldown. Spell Reflect comes up fast enough that accidentally blowing it won't be a big deal)

Q - Heroic Throw
Shift Q - Concussion Blow
Shift 1 - Shield Bash
Shift 2 - Warstomp

(Interrupts. SBash and WS are carryovers from bad habits, the Q keys are there to be grouped with the other interrupts)

A few things are still clickers: Vigilance, Shoot, Intimidating shot, the once-per-battle or once-per-raid skills. Bandages should be keyed, and I like the idea of macroing a single key for health pot/Healthstone, and maybe combining the --7-8-9 (CS, Trinket, LS, ER) oh shit keys to one key (of course for raids where another warrior can keep BS or CS up, I don't need to change my shout to do it and can remove that from the macro). I haven't played with macros yet, and there's no excuse to not do it. "-" could be pot/stone, and + could be ER (all on number pad).

I really ought to move my set over one set of keys so they are centered on ESDF for movement, but I'm afraid my short pinkie finger won't be very good for modifiers then. Also, should I ever go back to my huntard, I make extensive use of Ctrl and Alt as modifiers for my pet skills.

[Grizlor]

~ (or mouse5) Charge/Mark macro, intervenes ToT if any modifier key is held
1 Dev
2 SS
3 Revenge/heroic strike macro
4 Tclap (Alt-4 is cleave)
5 Shockwave
Q Shield Bash
E taunt

Easy peasy!

[zander1976]

Personally I use:

Q, E, R, F for all my really important spells
1, 2, 3, 4 for the next level of spells

Then Shift for the same keys.

To get started, I binded all the keys to slots then I start putting abilities in those slots instead of trying to bind keys to your spells.

So:
bar 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Q, E, R, F, ` (Switches with stances)
bar 2: Shift + 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Q, E, R, F

In defense stance:
q - SS
e - revenge/heroic strike macro
r - dev
f - tclap

` shield bash ( really easy to hit, pummel when in berserker )
1 - shield block
2 - shockwave
3 - spell reflect
4 - disarm

shift + q - (forget off hand, don't find it easy to hit)
shift + e - intervene
shift + r - mount
shift + f - cleave

shift + 1 - charge
shift + 2 - con blow
shift + 3 - warstomp
shift + 4 - throw

Then I just ran around pvping till i got confortable with the keys. I would recommend pvping for a day or 2 before you start tanking again. Also, it doesn't hurt to hid your ui so you can't click it. Hitting alt + z will hide it for you or us bt4.

[Ariedan]

I'm going to come right out and say this: this will be the hardest habit you ever have to fix. I used to click, and I even went so far as to defend myself if people knew I clicked. It took me half a year to finally get out of the habit, and it took a lot of work to finally be rid of it.

Here's the biggest suggestion I can make: take baby steps. Don't try to keybind everything at once and expect to have muscle-memory responses. Start with one or two main abilities, then add in more and more as you learn to feel comfortable with using your keyboard. I would also suggest going out and practicing while farming and/or doing dailies.

As for set-up, this is what I find the easiest.

I have a small hand, so I don't set any keybindings past 5. I don't believe in moving my hand at all, as I feel like it sort of loses its effectiveness if I take too long to hit a key.

`- Bloodrage
1- Devastate
2- Revenge
3- Shield Slam
4- Heroic Strike
5- Thunderclap

I rest my left hand with my pinky hovering over the control/shift area, my pointer finger always on four, my middle finger hovering between two and three, and my ring finger resting on one. This allows me to consistently queue up heroic strike while going about my normal rotation simultaneously. I have bloodrage set to the ` key because it's out of the way, but easy to hit with my ring finger.

The rest of the keybindings are really up to personal preference. I have my often-used non-rotation abilities keybound to control 1-5 and shift 1-5, which is where keeping your pinky hovering over the control comes in use. You eventually run out of things to use with the numbers, but if you have bigger hands, you might be able to stretch your numbers out to 6. I prefer to just keybind my other abilities (things like shield wall) to control/shift + some letter that is right below my numbers so I don't have to worry about moving my hand very far.

Good luck, though... like I said, it's going to take a long time. Take baby steps, and don't give up- it's all mental. Keep determined, and you'll get it eventually.

[Tenderheart]

There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but here's some more generic advice than all the specifics earlier.

1> All commonly used abilities should be keybound where your left hand can get to them. I use 1-6 and Shift 1-6 for most of these. Less common abilities can be clicked or bound to harder to reach things.
2> You must train yourself to move with the mouse and WASD or ESDF. To accomplish this, I made a noob alt and played it for a few days with my arrow keys unbound.

All of the rest of it is just implementation details that you can work out to your specific needs.

[Warwench]

One thing I do is my revenge is a macro that does revenge, then Heroic Strike.

When Revenge is up, it hits revenge then does the free HS, when revenge is not up, it purely ques up Heroic Strike. It works out great for me.

[Jalousie]

My key bindings are fairly simple and all close together - I have pretty small hands as Criss wrote so if my three middle fingers sit at 2-3-4 even getting my index finger to 6 can be a stretch. I use F1 - F5 for shouts, 2 - 5 for staples like Heroic Strike, Devastate and Revenge, Q - T for my next most used attacks and ` for potions so I can hit it in an emergency. Anything non-essential or rarely used is on A - G.

I use Tab to target because it's convenient, Z-X-C for my three stances and that's about it. V is for my mount as it's where my thumb lies on the space bar. Seems like a good way of finding out where you should put your keys is to lie your hand on the keyboard comfortably and work from there. I try not to put anything a stretch away because I don't want to risk hitting the wrong key more than I have to.

I wouldn't necessarily agree with Criss about the baby steps: I re-bound everything in one go and then did low-level instances a few times and I seemed to pick it up quite quickly. But that's really up to you.

[Shadevarr]

Being left handed, I have everything bound around the numpad.

arrow keys for movement

0 - shield block
. - berzerker rage
1 - devastate
2 - revenge
3 - shield slam
4 - heroic strike
5 - shield bash
6 - thunderclap
7 - shockwave
8 - concussion blow
9 - cleave
/ - disarm
* - bloodrage
- - spell reflect
+ - intevene/taunt macro

page up - last stand
home - shoot
insert - shield wall
page down - lifeblood/enraged regen/health pot/ healthstone macro
end - heroic throw
delete - baudmark addon key

middle mouse button - camera flip


things I click manually

retaliation stance dance macro
recklessness stance dance macro
gift of the naaru
vigilance
all shouts (they are in a seperate floating mini-bar near the center of the screen)



Irregardless of how you set up your keybindings, it will take a few days to learn them. The end goal imho is to not think of what to press when tanking, having it all go to muscle memory so you can focus on the fight and adjusting to changing situations.