The Weekly Marmot -- Keyboard Turning

[Wani]

"Back peddling" as a tank is still bad. This does not mean I advocate turning your back and running, which is also bad. There is the third, and best, option of strafe running.

You can run at full speed while strafing AND your character can dodge/parry/block attacks from bosses/mobs that are attacking you from the side. Combine the two and you can be moving at full speed directly away from the boss/mobs, while still making full use of your avoidance.

I can think of two advantages to back peddling, one being positioning Onyxia because if you run off too quickly, chances are your healers aren't up with you. I've wiped at least once because of this. The second being positioning large groups of mobs such as on LK. You can't strafe-run because half of the mobs wind up behind you and moving back slightly also generally gets mobs just in position for a nie shockwave.

[Tinytankz]

Well i make it no secret that i click and keyboard turn ( a running joke on my ventrilo is that my mouse and keyboard are the loudest ones on the market as you can hear them constantly) i have been looking in game and am a little upset that i do not have the option to speed up my turning IE a setting on to how fast my guy turns when i press the turn button. A sensitivity setting is avialable in a large vareity of other games and it's lacking in wow has me looking into writing an addon to try and get the functionality.

[Bodasafa]

I mouse turn for the important stuff, ie sindragosas blistering cold. For everything else I use key board turning but its only slight adjustments as a tank you don't do a great deal of flipping around, you want your target to be still and when you move you want it to be minor. Something all tanks have had to learn to deal with since the AI pathing changes in Wrath.

I only back pedal when required like Lady Deathwhisper kiting for example. The rest of the time I strafe run from the boss if I need to move.

[Aberen]

I agree with Boda, I use both, just depending on the situation. As a warrior tank, the "s" key is my friend right before shockwave. I also have to keyturn while tanking large mobs, so I can click target the mobs I want to pay attention to. All the important situations get the mouse turn. I have also almost perfected the charge clap jump turn shockwave. (sometimes I turn too much hahahaha)

[Maritime]

I maintain that after 5+ years I am not "doing it wrong". I keybind everything, for both hands, with the vast majority of my abilities directly under my right hand on the numpad. Moving my right hand away from the numpad to the mouse mid-battle to turn then back to the numpad means a loss of hand orientation that requires looking down at the keyboard or risk hitting the wrong keys.

That turn may look slow, but did you notice that while I was turning the boss around I also put up Shield Block, hit him with Shield Slam and queued up Heroic Strike?

And for the record I've never actually had a complaint from anyone about my key-turning.

That said, there are times when you gotta move fast, and that's what the mouse is for (only because we lack a setting for adjusting your key-turn speed... come on Bliz!).

My playstyle/keyboard setup is admittedly terrible for PvP, where movement and positioning is so much more dynamic, but PvP isn't a significant portion of my game.

[Knighterrant81]

At least for Holy Priest, most of our instant casts do not require you to face the target. I undbound keyboard turning on all my toons long long ago and never looked back or missed them. I'd undbind backpedaling too but I still use that for slight adjustments when tanking mobs so that shockwave hits them.

I also bind autorun to a mouse button, so whenever I am on the move, I can cast instant heals anywhere on my grid frames.

[Trecus]

Not gonna lie to anyone about this: we literally have major problems with one of our retribution paladins for this exact reason. Now just to paint the story here. He's a great raider, good dps, reliable. But when we hit heroic Sindragosa... things just got bad. He would get killed from blistering cold like clockwork. When we had him try to run through the dragon it would work sometimes but occasionally raid damage would kill him before he got back to the healers. This week's tankspot will be a great eye opener to him.. I hope.

I will tell ya Maritime that key turning can be less dynamic for a tank. Although I've found it makes for picking up adds much easier, at least for my style.

[Insahnity]

Perhaps a little explanation of how keyboards are designed and work, and how they compare to mice, are in order.

When you press a key, the key (Say the "a" key) contains a contact, which completes a circuit. A keyboard is designed for typing, so as soon as the contact is a closed, a single "a" is sent as a signal. However, a long time ago, computer designers quickly discovered that you can be in a situation that the computer will CONTINUOUSLY insert "a" for the duration that the contact is closed. The net result is every time somebody touched a key, they got, no joke, hundreds of "a" because the computer is so much faster than the human hand lifting off the key.To counter this, they programmed all computers to "wait" before putting another letter. This is know as a Typematic Delay, Repeat Delay, or Repeat Rate, and is a few miliseconds. So now, when you press a key, it will wait a few miliseconds between "a".

In context of WoW:
When you press the "a" key, the character turns by one pixel. Then the Typematic Delay kicks in before it moves another pixel. You might say a few milliseconds is not much, up until you factor you have to turn a thousand pixels to change directions, then a few milliseconds between a pixel becomes significant. BTW, when Lore comically turns slowly, this is in fact what he is doing, pausing between turns, which corresponds to a delayed key repeat.

Now a mouse, it was designed to track every motion, up, down, left, right, rotational, whatever. And many mice sport 1200 or 2400 DPI or Dots Per Inch, which means that a mouse "presses the key" 1200 or 2400 times PER INCH of travel. That is why characters move so quick with a mouse, especially if you see how fast it takes for your mouse to travel 1 inch (or 25.4 mm, for us international members).

NOTE:
To all you smarty pants who think you can turn fiddle with Typematic Delayto prove you can keyboard turn as good as a mouse turner, (which, in some BIOSes, you can adjust or reduce to comical values). DON'T! While it would be fantastic for WoW, you will never be able to type anything coherent again, breaking your PC. If you do this, I will laugh at your stupidity and won't be held responsible for it.

[Maritime]

I will tell ya Maritime that key turning can be less dynamic for a tank. Although I've found it makes for picking up adds much easier, at least for my style.

Possibly. But I don't see the point in retraining years of muscle memory for what has never, to my knowledge, been a problem. Of course, for all I know my guildmates are happy I'm on a raiding sabbatical. :P

[Synistah]

Well my guess is that we all started with some sort of keyboard turning and mouse clicking. Hell I clicked a lot of spells myself still at the beginning of WotLK (mainly hs and cleave). It worked all the way trough classic naxx and sunwell but I wasn't happy with the overall situation so I took Xavs advice and:
Keybind everything!!!!

And my reactiontime as well as my overall capabillity to play WoW rised up quite a notch. So I guess if it works for you it is ok BUT I can tell from my own experience that you could be a much better player with mouseturning and keybindings.That's all i guess.

I understand what you are saying in terms of effectivness and efficiency between keyboard turning, clicking and binding. Now just to repeat again before i go ahead because it seems you didnt read it, I can keybind everything perfectly well and i infact CHOOSE to click, Of course situations occur where i will use complete mouse clicking and keybinds such as PvP, and Core Progression Nights where the small gains i experience by binding add up with everyone in the raid combined.

I have tried numerous times, Clicking and Binding the same fights (i never keyboard turn anywhere except Dalaran), The difference in performance is maybe 2% in total and about a 1% increase in DoT uptime. Now i am NOT in anyway condoning clicking or saying that people shouldnt learn to keybind, But what i am saying is that in my personal experiences it does not effect my performance, my raid awareness and my general ability to raid.

Im a raid leader in my guild and was for a period of time a member of a Top 100 Raiding guild(Yes i know, means nothing). But apparently i must be doing something right..

So troll and/or flame me all you want for willingly being a clicker while having the ability to key bind perfectly fine, But as far as i am concerned if i can fulfill my role as good and even better then my fellow guild mates, If i dont die to fire or blistering cold, if i can maintain great raid awareness i am doing my job.. And there is nothing else i can ask for, or as a matter of fact my guild leader could ask for, Regardless if i do so while clicking or key binding it really shouldn't matter, And as alot of people have found out you would not know i clicked unless i told you.

But anyway long story short, I do my job, I have fun raiding and have fun playing. Nothing will change on me behalf.

[Rennadrel]

Back peddling or S-Keying is a tank is fine, S-Keying as a DPS away from fire is not.. Certain situations excluded. Walking away while facing boss with your next rotation being instant casts, S-Keying in PvP, now thats where you have problems =P

Yes, us Facerolladins know this all too well.

[Viertel]

There are a lot of people that run around with poorly placed talents and mis-matched gear. They've probably been doing it for years, just like a lot of people have been keyboard turning for years. Just because you've been doing something and have been "getting by" with it "OK" for years just like they've been "getting by" with their wonky talent choices "OK" doesn't mean it's right.

With the exception of *maybe* frontal conal attacks, there's never really any reason to backpedal. It's slower, and inefficient. If you have a problem running out of range of healers as a tank, then make them actually start moving before you're out of range. Why something with that much common sense would need to be said is beyond me. With the exception of knockback/punting attacks, "OOR!" is an only an excuse in raiding, *never* a reason*, and should be used to weed out people not paying attention from those that are.

I also don't get the mentality some people have of "it's OK to keyboard in this situation, but not in others" or "I KBT here but MT here". It makes no sense; instead of just using the mouse (which is faster and more responsive to quick adjustments), you're going to now train yourself to try to use *TWO* movement patterns? I can only imagine how many times people screw up on what they WANT to do but end up doing something else because neurons got crosswired when adjusting from two different moving patterns.

[Klaerth]

There are a lot of people that run around with poorly placed talents and mis-matched gear. They've probably been doing it for years, just like a lot of people have been keyboard turning for years. Just because you've been doing something and have been "getting by" with it "OK" for years just like they've been "getting by" with their wonky talent choices "OK" doesn't mean it's right.

I've been trying to keep my two cents out of this one, even though this is an issue that hits me personally pretty hard in regards to WoW and the way I play.

However, this is a fallacy. Running around with poorly placed talents and mis-matched gear does not equate to whether or not you move with the keyboard or the mouse. Or whether or not you switch it up depending on what, exactly you are doing. There are definite standards regarding talents and gear that must be met, they are not relative. Whereas using a mouse or a keyboard to move your character is. There are things that as long as they do get the job done, it doesn't matter how one does them. Gemming, enchanting, using the right gear...these are not those things. The way you move your character is one of those things.

I will give you my own personal example. WoW is the first MMO I ever played. Ever. It is the one I learned on and I learned on it by playing on a laptop with no external mouse and no separate keypad. I use the four direction keys on the bottom right side. Yes. The up, down, left, and right arrows. I use shift-left to strafe left and shift-right to strafe right. I have every single ability I have bound to keys that I can access with my left hand without ever moving my fingers from the "home row" using combinations of shift, ctrl, and alt. I will every now and then use the touchpad mouse on my laptop to reposition my camera angle. I never use the mouse to target. I never use the mouse to click abilities.

Sound clunky? Sure it does.

But...

I also touch type at almost 120 words per minute with 99-100% accuracy. It is actually faster for me to do things by using the keys on the keyboard than by manipulating a mouse. And on the rare occasion when I do have to use the touchpad mouse, I can instantly get my hand back where it goes simply by feeling the bump on the F key. I can...and do...even take the time to type short messages in raid chat or even guild chat...without ever missing any part of my rotation.

Using the keyboard, for me (as someone else has already pointed out in this very thread) has become a matter of muscle-memory and habit to the point that it's almost second nature. Much like one of the greatest trumpet players in history played by puffing out his cheeks, which is the "wrong" way to do it and any music instructor worth their credentials will tell you that under no circumstances you should ever puff your cheeks out when playing the trumpet.

Sure I could turn faster with the mouse. But I've never seen the need to disrupt my muscle memory and my habits by learning the "right" way to do things. Has any of this affected my raiding ability? Not really.

People have actually accused me of either making a joke or outright lying before when I tell them that I never use the mouse. Why? Because they can't tell the difference between the way I play and the way someone doing it the "right" way plays.

Now I will concede that based on my own personal experiences, it is easier to use a mouse when playing certain DPS classes (I have obtained an external mouse and keyboard for this). I still keybind everything and do not click, but again that's because I personally find it easier and faster to "type" my actions. I learned a long time ago that I should not play healers and I do not play healers.

But on my tank? Yes. I keyboard turn and wouldn't want to do it any other way.

[Goins2754]

I've made a particularly bad situation for myself. I've trained myself to keyboard turn & have keybound all of my abilities to the number pad. Most fights will go something like this: T - target, Numpad Enter to Judge Light, Num4 to Shield of Righteousness, Shift + NumEnter for Consecration, etc. The only time I use my mouse (most of the time) is to loot bodies.

There are only very specific times where this has caused me issues. The main one is on a fear. When I'm feared, it messes with my camera angles something fierce. Luckily, I have keybound several decent camera angles to 1-4 above WASD. It's a quick tap to reset the camera, but a slow turn to reengage the target.

I've bought a Razer Naga to help fix the situation, but man is it slow going. Learning to click 15 buttons with your thumb & learning to mouse turn all at once is a tall order.

[Scyla]

I understand what you are saying in terms of effectivness and efficiency between keyboard turning, clicking and binding. Now just to repeat again before i go ahead because it seems you didnt read it, I can keybind everything perfectly well and i infact CHOOSE to click, Of course situations occur where i will use complete mouse clicking and keybinds such as PvP, and Core Progression Nights where the small gains i experience by binding add up with everyone in the raid combined.

I have tried numerous times, Clicking and Binding the same fights (i never keyboard turn anywhere except Dalaran), The difference in performance is maybe 2% in total and about a 1% increase in DoT uptime. Now i am NOT in anyway condoning clicking or saying that people shouldnt learn to keybind, But what i am saying is that in my personal experiences it does not effect my performance, my raid awareness and my general ability to raid.
Im a raid leader in my guild and was for a period of time a member of a Top 100 Raiding guild(Yes i know, means nothing). But apparently i must be doing something right..

So troll and/or flame me all you want for willingly being a clicker while having the ability to key bind perfectly fine, But as far as i am concerned if i can fulfill my role as good and even better then my fellow guild mates, If i dont die to fire or blistering cold, if i can maintain great raid awareness i am doing my job.. And there is nothing else i can ask for, or as a matter of fact my guild leader could ask for, Regardless if i do so while clicking or key binding it really shouldn't matter, And as alot of people have found out you would not know i clicked unless i told you.

But anyway long story short, I do my job, I have fun raiding and have fun playing. Nothing will change on me behalf.

Hey I didn't try to be offensive but if you got that impression I'm really sorry.

All I want to say was that I feel much more comfortable now that I can reach every spell with a press of a key (and only my left hand knuckles hurt while I'm playing WoW because I don't have to use the right hand to click) .
Thats what I noticed. But I also did quite well with a combination of both for quite a long time and I noticed I can do better.
I guess it depends also on what class you are playing. With my shadow priest I have a rather easy job to keep up the "rotation" but as a tank playing sounds like someone is torturing a keyboard because I hit the keys maybe 10 times during a GCD and I get the impression that when I don't do that I'm lacking in threat-production.

So if it ok for you that's fine. Oh and I do click my focus macro!


And if you feel offended by my rusty English skills one extra sorry for you!

[VampyrByte]

Perhaps a little explanation of how keyboards are designed and work, and how they compare to mice, are in order.

When you press a key, the key (Say the "a" key) contains a contact, which completes a circuit. A keyboard is designed for typing, so as soon as the contact is a closed, a single "a" is sent as a signal. However, a long time ago, computer designers quickly discovered that you can be in a situation that the computer will CONTINUOUSLY insert "a" for the duration that the contact is closed. The net result is every time somebody touched a key, they got, no joke, hundreds of "a" because the computer is so much faster than the human hand lifting off the key.To counter this, they programmed all computers to "wait" before putting another letter. This is know as a Typematic Delay, Repeat Delay, or Repeat Rate, and is a few miliseconds. So now, when you press a key, it will wait a few miliseconds between "a".

In context of WoW:
When you press the "a" key, the character turns by one pixel. Then the Typematic Delay kicks in before it moves another pixel. You might say a few milliseconds is not much, up until you factor you have to turn a thousand pixels to change directions, then a few milliseconds between a pixel becomes significant. BTW, when Lore comically turns slowly, this is in fact what he is doing, pausing between turns, which corresponds to a delayed key repeat.

Now a mouse, it was designed to track every motion, up, down, left, right, rotational, whatever. And many mice sport 1200 or 2400 DPI or Dots Per Inch, which means that a mouse "presses the key" 1200 or 2400 times PER INCH of travel. That is why characters move so quick with a mouse, especially if you see how fast it takes for your mouse to travel 1 inch (or 25.4 mm, for us international members).

NOTE:
To all you smarty pants who think you can turn fiddle with Typematic Delayto prove you can keyboard turn as good as a mouse turner, (which, in some BIOSes, you can adjust or reduce to comical values). DON'T! While it would be fantastic for WoW, you will never be able to type anything coherent again, breaking your PC. If you do this, I will laugh at your stupidity and won't be held responsible for it.

While what you say about Typematic Delay is 100% correct when typing, and indeed when typing in chat in WoW. It has sod all to do with character movement. Not a jot. You see, Keyboards report when a key is pressed, and again when it is released. Your keyboard does not continuously spam your computer. You know this because if it did, and presuming you have a USB keyboard, you would not be able to do anything else as the transmission would quickly saturate the USB controller and possibly even the PCI bus with it.

Typematic delay obviously comes in when typing, anyone of us can open notepad, hold down a button and voila we can see that slight pause between the first character coming up and the subsequent 20. However back to WoW. If you tap your "a" key an animation is started that shifts your character slightly to the left and stops. When you hold down the "a" key, the character turns on the spot smoothly. If you were to take typematic delay into account there would be a small pause at the start of this movement like the noticealbe pause when spamming notepad.

More evidence of this can be seen with your action bars. I tap "2" to Shield Slam, if I hold "2" the game waits until I release before activating Shield Slam (it doesnt because I have speedy actions installed, which is a mod which wouldnt function if keyboards didnt work in a "Key Pushed" "Key Released" way, but it would if I deactivated this addon). If Holding "2" spammed the game with such message It would function the same as holding it down. Indeed it would even reactivate 6 seconds later after the cooldown.

Mice are also 2 axis devices. I'm not going to say too much about them because I'm not really familar with quite how they report movement to the computer. But most mice are 2 axis, they dont track rotation! Indeed if you were to turn it around on the spot, the changes reported to the computer will be change in the x and y movement values and not the fact the mouse is rotating.

Also, feel free to mess with Typematic Delay, you can do it in the windows control panel, under keyboard settings. I imagine Mac guys will be able to find it aswell. Setting it to the minimum avaliable to Windows doesnt break your PC, I just did it and typed this responce to you. I guess you could go edit the value itself in the registry or wherever and setting it to 0 would certainly make things interesting. But you could always put it back. This also wont do much for turning around in WoW, but might make it a bit more of a pain to type to your guildies.

Back to WoW again, the reason keyboard turning is slower is because of the time it takes to actually turn when pressing the keybaord. Since Blizz does not allow this value to be modified (Addons anyone?) it takes a definite ammount of time to do a 360 degree turn by holding down "a". I timed it to be between 1.5 and 2 seconds. With my mouse, I can do probably a hundred 360 degree turns in that time if I use maximum sensitivity values for my mouse and ingame.

[Synistah]

Hey I didn't try to be offensive but if you got that impression I'm really sorry.

All I want to say was that I feel much more comfortable now that I can reach every spell with a press of a key (and only my left hand knuckles hurt while I'm playing WoW because I don't have to use the right hand to click) .
Thats what I noticed. But I also did quite well with a combination of both for quite a long time and I noticed I can do better.
I guess it depends also on what class you are playing. With my shadow priest I have a rather easy job to keep up the "rotation" but as a tank playing sounds like someone is torturing a keyboard because I hit the keys maybe 10 times during a GCD and I get the impression that when I don't do that I'm lacking in threat-production.

So if it ok for you that's fine. Oh and I do click my focus macro!


And if you feel offended by my rusty English skills one extra sorry for you!

haha actually nah i didnt take it offensively at all =P Im the one who is sorry that it came out that way haha.. Lets both agree that none of us are on the offensive =P

I PLAY A SHADOW PRIEST TOO! *gasp*

I know what you mean, At first key binding felt a lot more comfortable and it took a while to be able to feel comfortable with both and not run the risk of accidentally trying to click while im supposed to be key binding and vice versa =P

I think in general my point more or less is that as long as i am doing my job in raids by providing consistently high DPS, Good raid awareness, avoiding silly mistakes and no unnecessary or unforced deaths then it really shouldn't matter to people if i key bind or click.

Even more so after the fact such as cases where i have been removed from a guild after being praised by members once i told them i clicked, and cases where i have been denied loot because someone felt the need to yell "HE CLICKS" over vent..

[penpen002]

I lol @ people thinking that you two are married. Oh...gotta love the interwebs!

[Scyla]

haha actually nah i didnt take it offensively at all =P Im the one who is sorry that it came out that way haha.. Lets both agree that none of us are on the offensive =P

Well I'm tending to agree with you but on the other hand it might be time for an good old Internet flamewar!
Get the missile-launchers ready .

Oh... I ought to say something on the topic and it must be really really meaningful...
Hm... what about.... na won't work...

...well, I thought about it for one hour at least and couldn't come up with something useful.
I'm so sorry *sad panda*

[Bashal]

There are a lot of people that run around with poorly placed talents and mis-matched gear. They've probably been doing it for years, just like a lot of people have been keyboard turning for years. Just because you've been doing something and have been "getting by" with it "OK" for years just like they've been "getting by" with their wonky talent choices "OK" doesn't mean it's right.

Well, this is the way I look at it. If you want to raid with folks who care about your spec and whether or not you keyboard turn, expect that you'll have to respec/learn to mouse turn or badness will ensue.

If you want to be left alone to do your own thing while you raid, raid with folks who don't care. That might be a bit of a tall order, but there it is.