Yes, I'm a keyboard turner...

[frejborg]

I use 12345 for my main most commonly used spells, no matter what spec/class I'm playing.

Moving from left to right I organise my spells from more active to more passive.

I also use: R,F,T,G,Z,C,V, mouse3,mouse4, mousescrollup,mousescrolldown

The most frequently used/important keypresses get bound to the easiest to press keybinds -such as "R" being a spell interrupt.

I follow the same or similar patterns for all my classes, which makes it easier to play multiple classes, and always have the paradigms in place, which helps me mentally to feel and know my hotkeys.

Anyway, so you want to set up as many keybinds that you can comfortably press by reaction, without looking at the keyboard, and by memory.

For me setting up hotkey and keybind conventions and paradigms helps me mentally to organise the abilities of my classes.

Examples: my "r" is always a spell interrupt (if the spec has one -such as kick/windshear),
"f" is always a fast heal or defensive ability that I most frequently cast -such as Flash of Light in my Ret spec, or PW:Shield in my Shadow spec, and Frost Barrier in my Frost Mage setup.

So you see, no matter what class I'm playing my setup makes sense and is organised across the board of classes/specs. I feel this gives me a fluidity of gameplay and control, and the ability to play numerous classes/specs with less relearning time and increases my reaction times.

I can't say my systems are best for anyone, but I have yet for find better ways for myself, and I know I'm a very good player and I have spent much time organising and planning my hotkey setups.

Another example: mousescrolldown(not sure the actual name of this, I mean the mousewheel), I always use for abilities that are placeable aoes, such as Shadowfury, Death and Decay, Freeze, Mass Dispel, etc.

Anyway, hope that can help someone, and if anyone has questions for me, don't be afraid to ask.

[Deleted]

Wow.. I cant believe people are actually taking this serious? The OP is obviously a troll, I mean, what player actually CLICKS his spells? Really? No one, thats who.

And certainly not after 2 years (!) of playing, and still turning keys and clicking the 30 abilities you have. It just cannot be true. How can a person enjoy this game if you have to manually do everything? I'd get aids in my mouse hand..

OT: The first thing you do is bind your numbers, usually up to 5 because 6 and further are a stretch. Second, you use alt/shift/control modifiers combined with the numbers. After that, you start using your F-keys, F1 is for very important spells (like pala bubble) and the rest is of less importance (like Blessings or other long-term buffs). After that, start using Alt+q,w,e,r,a,s,d,z,x,c etc, they are very close to the rest of the keys and should feel somewhat natural to you.

Anyway, troll or not, good luck with keybinding.

[elcher]

Unbind turn left and turn right (A and D or left arrow/right arrow). Replace them with strafe left and strafe right.

This will force you to turn with your mouse because you have no other option.

It also frees up two nearby keys (Q and E) for keybinding typically used abilities. Keybind any other typically used abilities to other nearby keys (NOT 6 through 0). Don't be afraid to bind over R, F, V, C, X, and Z with your typically used abilities. You can always move the Open Character Sheet bind to another key (I use G), as well as any other things that get unbound.

You gotta force yourself off the habit, and the only way to do that is to go cold-turkey!

This is the best advice i can give you - and add onto:

When you are done with these you will notice that all the "less important skills" also require binds, for that you will have to use Shift, Alt and Ctrl as modifiers.
Examples would be 1, Shift 1, Alt 1, Ctrl 1 (if you can do that, I cant/couldnt for a long time). This procedure will pretty muh triple or quadruple your binds, while still leavingmost of your keyboard unbound - also, dont forget to bind modifiers to your mouse buttons!

[Deleted]

I was a clicker for a long time , I found it soo hard to move to keybinds I only used 1 to 3 lol moved on from there.
the diffrence is alot I noticed b4 I just couldnt click a spell and move out of bad stuff as easy.. also bosses that require to not be facing them u can so easily 180. I recoment practicing keybinds was hard for me but did it .

[bakil]

just start with keybinding 1 or 2 spells and go to a trainingdummy and use your keybinds and fill in the rest of your rotation with clicking until ur fingers know the keybinds, at that point start adding more and more spells until you are happy with the keybinds

[Cowsftl]

But after 2 years of playing I'm getting more and more ready to finally do binds (courtesy of SC2 forcing me to use binds). I'm looking for suggestions on how to get a good initial setup for ret, and interface mod suggestions.

Note:I don't need L2P posts. I'm sitting top in my guild atm, top 3 server. Clicked my way to Light of Dawn, and rockin thru T11.

I started out just like you. I wanted to learn how to keybind.

I heard that the first thing you should do was to bind A and D to strafe, so I did that.
I still had the abilities in rotation on 1-6 and I clicked everything else.

Then I moved "down" 1-6 to Q-T (except W ofc), and F-G for my lesser used abilities. Now I reached my most used abilities much easier, I also bound 1-4 for stuns, silence and stuff like that.

The next thing I did was to use shift. I bound my taunts (I'm a tank) to S-Q and S-W, so I could reach those spells easily, I bound spells that I would only use 2-3 times a fight to S-1-5.

The last thing I did was to bind F1 - F4 to cooldowns.

This is how I started to use keybinds, I still click stuff that's not used in combat because my head would just blow up if I had to many keybinds.

I find this to be a great way to keybind, but it's all about personal flavour.

Good luck and I hope I helped you .

[Arcangnom]

I still have qweasd bound for normal movement, in case I need to precision target something while moving (i.e. tabbing would be near impossible due to too many mobs etc), or have to use my ground-target spells. Or if I'm eating cookies while playing, but that's a whole other story. The binds I use are 1-5, shift+1-5, mouse button X(4 or 5, unsure) + 1-5. The last I use the program AutoHotkey for, so pressing that mousebutton is the same as pushing Alt. I also use r, t, f, ,g v, < (next to Z on my keyboard), | for abilities, mouse button X + < for mount, and mouse button X2 for auto-run (I'm lazy and I farm archeology).
My buttons 6-0 are bound to things I very rarely use in the particular spec, like wand (all specs), arcane explosion (good for killing critters!) in pve fire etc.
I've done keybinding overhauls a few times throughout my wow career, and all I can say is that it will feel really clunky at first, but it should sink in within maximum 12 hours of playing.

[thewallofsleep]

I'm a keybinder, but posts like this are uncalled for. 1st off, with a 1.5 sec GCD on most classes, there is no increased efficiency using keybinds. Sorry, if you can't get your mouse over the next ability before it's off cooldown then no way you'll be able to handle keybinds. Second, unless it's PvP, keyboard turning/movement is more than enough to get the job done. Name one encounter where you die because you "just can't turn fast enough!" Third, many MANY people use mouseover macros, especially tanks. They won't be able to correctly use their mouseover macros (which are highly efficient) if they are using their mouse to move. Keybinding only sees dramatic results if you PvP. I keybind because that's how I do every game, it's just how I play. But there's nothing wrong with using the keyboard.

thank you. It's nice to see someone not jumping on the "you dumb nub keyboard turning mouth breather!!!1" bandwagon.

I personally fully plan on adapting to mouse turning, as I tried it the other night and can tell it will be a lot more smooth once I perfect it.

On both of the toons I play (mage and druid) I have my most used abilities on 1-5, but find myself clicking randomly sometimes, it's a REALLY hard habit to break. Especially for things like cooldowns and dispels having those on a keybind is going to be so much easier than trying to remember where I put my not often used "decurse" button.

In my opinion, being a keyboard turner and/or clicker has nothing to do with being a bad player, but it has everything to do with getting used to a certain way of doing things and initially getting frustrated with learning how to manipulate your toon all over again.

[Isaba]

I do both, click and keybind that is, and I get along just fine, though that may be because I have a shot priority macro keybound to a button on my mouse that uses modifiers to change to special shots out of my normal shot rotation along with my petattack macrod into that as well for quick target changeing

yha I'm a hunter >_> MM spec... my basic rot is steadyx2 arcanex1 rinse and repeat, I can get away with it cus I use modifiers for serpent, chimera and killshot, also have MD macros and distractionshot +freezing trap macro for CCing, I'm not saying I'm the best hunter by any means, but I've pulled off some badass skills when tank goes down cus some mage blinks into the nearby pats after taking agro or the other hunter MULTISHOTS at the start of the fight and breaks my trap and the shammys hex then disengages into the group nearby -facepalms-

[Poodles]

strafing is important because with the mouse, you can be moving in any direction as fast as you can spin the camera. with keyboard turning, you turn like molasses. What also hasnt been mentioned is unbinding your "S" key, as even keyboard turning is faster than backpedaling.

Tank turning their back to a mob is bad, mkay? You backpaddle to pull a mob away.

[Audemed]

Holy crap this thread exploded. Thanks for the input guys.

[Lansow]

Unbind turn left and turn right (A and D or left arrow/right arrow). Replace them with strafe left and strafe right.

This will force you to turn with your mouse because you have no other option.

It also frees up two nearby keys (Q and E) for keybinding typically used abilities. Keybind any other typically used abilities to other nearby keys (NOT 6 through 0). Don't be afraid to bind over R, F, V, C, X, and Z with your typically used abilities. You can always move the Open Character Sheet bind to another key (I use G), as well as any other things that get unbound.

You gotta force yourself off the habit, and the only way to do that is to go cold-turkey!

This, and buy a mouse with lots of buttons. The more the better, to a point(I shudder at the thought of dreamcast controller-esque mice). Bind commonly used abilities to that as well since your hand is always on your mouse.

---------- Post added 2010-12-23 at 02:21 PM ----------

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Second, unless it's PvP, keyboard turning/movement is more than enough to get the job done. Name one encounter where you die because you "just can't turn fast enough!"
-- snip --

Sindragosa hardmode, icy grip -> blistering cold. That's one. Do I win a prize?

---------- Post added 2010-12-23 at 02:28 PM ----------

-- snip --
The next thing I did was to use shift. I bound my taunts (I'm a tank) to S-Q and S-W, so I could reach those spells easily, I bound spells that I would only use 2-3 times a fight to S-1-5.
-- snip --

I don't have shift anything bound. I instead wrote macros for similar abilities on my Warrior tank:

Example 1 - Taunt/Fixate:

#showtooltip [nomodifier] Taunt; [modifier:shift] Challenging Shout
/cast [nomodifier] Taunt; [modifier:shift] Challenging Shout

Example 2 - Gap closers:

#showtooltip [nomodifier] Charge; [modifier:shift] Intervene
/castsequence [harm, nodead] reset=15 Charge, Intercept; [modifier:shift][raid, party] Intervene

Example 3 - Stance based cooldowns:

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] Retaliation; [stance:2] Shield Wall; [stance:3] Recklessness

You get the idea. There are probably better ways to approach it, but I am yet weak in the ways of the force. I also don't know if these still work since I've been playing on my pally since late 3.3.5.

[Pythagoreant]

I use ESDF instead of WASD, because you can reach the higher numbers better and you have 2 more Buttons to the left of movement keys. And my small finger sits on Z which I use for flying downwards.

I think I touched on this earlier, but I actually use WASD with my hands in ESDF position. I use my ring finger for W. I would have to completely remap my brain to use my middle finger to move forward and ring/index for strafe. The benefit, as others have mentioned, is that I can hit up to 6 comfortably, but the only downside is that my pinky is used for both shift and 1, so shift+1 is hard to hit. I have to move my ring finger over there to hit 1.

I've tried to move my hands so my index finger doesn't rest on F, but I haven't been able to do so. Typing is too hard without having my left hand in typing position.