'Clicker' for 15 years and counting...is keybinding really that much better?

[Crimbobbin]

I've clicked since vanilla and don't plan to stop. Until I tell people in the guild I'm a clicker they would never guess, considering I parse in the 90%+ range. It's how I learned, and I'm good at it. Buttons are all set up as a flow chart. I actually make fun of the key binders who give me crap in the guild when they can barely parse above 50% most of the time.

Play how you like to play, whatever is the most comfortable. It is a game after all.

[Dch48]

Ok, just answer one question for me: what is the mouse used for if you're keybinding all abilities? I use scroll to zoom in and out and WASD for movement now. I can't imagine using the mouse to move. With WASD, I can both move and mouse-adjust the camera far more efficiently.

I do a combination of binding and clicks. The most used things are bound on 5 keys , sometimes with simple macros included. Other things, like on use stuff, I still click on. As far as movement goes, I'm a mouse guy, I hate WASD and can't control what I'm doing at all with it. I use the two button mouse method to move and sometimes the S key to move away. Now when I have to travel a longer distance and I'm not fighting anything, I have a key bound to move and steer but still steer with the mouse. Having said that, keybinding is very problematic for me because I have to look at the keyboard almost all the time to find things. I type that way with 2 fingers. Touch typing is totally out of the question. I've tried to learn it for years and never could. My fingers don't work individually enough for me to do it. So, I push wrong keys a lot or more than one key at a time. I even can screw up WASD. Binds using combinations of keys are totally out. No Shift+ or Alt+ or Ctrl+ stuff for me. My bound keys (besides the numbers which I rarely use are X,C,V,B,N for combat abilities with F and G for self heals and 1 for Feign Death. That's it. The movement key is Z. The default stuff on those keys I never used them for. Everything else is done by clicking.
I also use WeakAuras to tell me when things are available for use.

[Sughs]

When I started in TBC I used like 1,2 and 3. Then I leveled a Warrior through PvP in WotLK and I really had to learn how to use binds. It felt so damn good. I had almost 60 binds.

Start small with 1,2 and 3. Then add things like F, X, 4, 5, \. Try shift+1 for a cooldown and then just keep adding it slowly. Like 1 bind every 3 days.

Also, you may like really weird keybinds that most people don't. I changed Warrior stances with ALT+ Mouse wheel.

[TheRevenantHero]

If you're not under-performing, don't tell anyone in your guild. Because people are assholes and will judge you and not let you raid or what have you for it.

[Twdft]

clicking can be proficient if you can click fast and use WSAD

There is one simple fact that proves clicking will always be worse: everytime you click an ability you have to look at your bars, when you could have looked at something more important.

[Dch48]

There is one simple fact that proves clicking will always be worse: everytime you click an ability you have to look at your bars, when you could have looked at something more important.

A lot of times I have to look at the keyboard to use my bindings so that's a moot point to me.

[Alvito]

Oh yeah, that reminds me i use mouse keybinds as well. Still, your argument is not ok. Not i, nor you get to tell some stranger how he should enjoy the game. That is up to them and not our business. We can advise, that is all.

I'm not telling them how to enjoy it. If people aren't having fun playing a game they have missed the point. Far too many people act like this or other games are chores or something they have to do. Now actively deciding to play in a much worse fashion out of stubbornness or fear of change is silly. Somebody might enjoy playing on a see saw made from cactus thorns, that doesn't mean it is a smart thing to do.

[dez1216]

I've played a healing priest from Vanilla to now, and I clicked right up through halfway through MoP. Prior to that I was always pulling my weight or topping heals. Eventually in MoP I started joining guilds with raid teams/players that weren't average/below average players and that's when I started noticing that I was slipping behind the other healers who actually had above average skill. I decided clicking finally had to go, but I couldn't manage to figure out the muscle memory to learn my keybinds without tanking my numbers and I wanted to keep WASD. So I went and bought a razer naga mouse with the 12 buttons on the side, keybound that up, used shift modifiers as well and that covered the vast majority of my main and most important abilities (MoP had A LOT of abilities). I left infrequently used abilities or niche abilities off keybinds. Then I leveled a new toon (a hunter) entirely with keybinds to train the muscle memory. I had everything keybound on my priest as well, and did a mix of clicking/keybinding while I was learning the muscle memory on my hunter until I felt confident in just keybinding on my priest. I can say for me, it was a dramatic improvement in my healing. By using the mouse for keybinds I didn't lose my WASD for movement (and also cuz my teeny tiny hands can't reach many keys on the keyboard). Recently I found myself in a similar situation again, only this time it was mouseover macroing. I didn't have mouseovers or clique from WOD - now, because I dunno, just never occurred to me I guess, but recently grabbed clique cuz again, my numbers were slipping because other skilled healers could just do what I do, but faster, with the mouseovers.

That's really the main difference I think between clicking, keybinding and mouseovers. If you play with people who are equal to your skill (or better), they will just beat you to the punch most of the time because they don't need to click frame, move mouse to ability, click ability and so on. Even if you think ahead a few clicks like I did, eventually you'll come up against players who can just anticipate and then react faster than you because of it and that's where you'll see yourself falling behind. I just didn't notice how I was holding myself back until WoD because the people I played with were lower skilled than I was, once I started playing with equal/higher skilled players, I could see how I was holding myself back.

[Willias]

Using keys will always be better than clicking buttons on your hotbar.

It's a matter of reaction time. The shorter the amount of reaction time you have, the more important using keybinds vs clicking becomes.

Arena PvP would be hellish without using keybinds, for example.

PvE is a little different, as you often have a good idea of what's coming up next and can plan your next button clicks accordingly.

Basically it comes down to:

Keybinds:
1. Know what skill button is assigned to keybind-wise.
2. Click button on keyboard.

Mouse click:
1. Know where skill button is located on hotbar.
2. Find mouse cursor and move it to button on hotbar.
3. Click button.

You have to always know the location of your mouse cursor as a clicker, and while moving your mouse cursor to buttons on the hotbar, you can't use it for other things like turning your character.

I guess another easy comparison would be: As a mouse clicker, what do you do if you need to move forward, strafe, turn, and use an ability at the same time? I know when I used to mouse click, the answer to that scenario is that I wouldn't. I'd turn with a keypress. Move forward with a keypress. And click a button. Turning, strafing, and moving forward all at the same time, PRECISELY, with keyboard alone would be a mess. Using keybinds now, I'd use ability, strafe, and move forward all at the same time with key presses, and control precision of how my character turns with the mouse.

[Heathy]

playing a healer I feel like you naturally sort of grow into a combination maybe, I clicked for a good while in classic, upto maybe t2 then I started binding keys, in TBC most classes got more abilities and that is probably where I realised that you can bind most of the keys around WASD, doing this in combination with a click healing frame. it does substantially up your performance. esspecially if you can bind your 'oh shit' cooldowns, then muscle memory is the limiting factor.

I still find myself clicking the occasional button because its just hard coded into me, you could go to the trouble to bind every single action but really a lot of the time the mouse is free, just sitting there doing nothing anyway. playing as disc for example, you have to learn to mix clicking the healing frame and tab attacking with hotkeyed attacks. every so often ill see myself click a cooldown i could have pressed a key for.

for healing, it took a long time to ditch target frames, just raid frames used for targets, these days if i play holy, I have healbot setup so that left click is auto target AND it auto casts flash heal, I tend to stop cast a lot, but I don't need frames just to target a specific person without healing them. it sounds confusing but its really not when most healing addons are setup so that left click by default just casts a heal like flash heal without targeting that person. (healbot does it this way if you don't have auto target)

then you can just setup Ctrl+lmb ctrl+rmb alt/shift combinations for your main heals and dispell a lot of my healing is done through clicking healbot. so even though most of my heals are bound for targeting someone and healing them with 1 2 3 etc or q e, I still click a lot on the healing frame to cast things on ppl without targeting them. I could never do mouse over seeing as the way my frames are setup in a grid pattern, i feel like i'd constantly be mousing over the wrong person. apparently it works for a lot of ppl, I think i perfer the tactile click. interestingly enough when i first got healbot I didn't think it was a legal addon, I remember legitimately wondering if i would get banned for using it because it made healing so much easier.

[kaminaris]

There is one simple fact that proves clicking will always be worse: everytime you click an ability you have to look at your bars, when you could have looked at something more important.

Its not a fact, its your opinion, all you gotta do is to move action bars closer to middle of screen, put auras close to that and voila. And then you still have time to look what is happening around you.

There is a reason people in method have all auras and bars close to middle of screen.

[benting]

The confession is in the subject. I have (for the most part), just clicked my way through the game since Vanilla, using various mods and such of course. No matter how often someone tries to convert me, I just can't shake my clicking play style. That said, it has never caused me to under-perform in healing or dps. Ever. In fact, I usually perform better than people who swear by keybinds. So is it REALLY that much better, easier and efficient?

It could be that I'm working twice as hard as everyone else for the same result, I don't know. Every time I've tried to bind, I can't adapt. It just doesn't work. I either need professional help or validation that clicking is actually 'ok' as long as I'm not screwing other people over or limiting my own play experience. Thoughts? Advice? Anything?

Wildly so.

[elurin]

The confession is in the subject. I have (for the most part), just clicked my way through the game since Vanilla, using various mods and such of course. No matter how often someone tries to convert me, I just can't shake my clicking play style. That said, it has never caused me to under-perform in healing or dps. Ever. In fact, I usually perform better than people who swear by keybinds. So is it REALLY that much better, easier and efficient?

It could be that I'm working twice as hard as everyone else for the same result, I don't know. Every time I've tried to bind, I can't adapt. It just doesn't work. I either need professional help or validation that clicking is actually 'ok' as long as I'm not screwing other people over or limiting my own play experience. Thoughts? Advice? Anything?

I keybind some and I click some, I think its okay. As long as you're not keyboard turning, I think you're fine.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

buy a mouse with keys on it

[SkagenRora]

I use 1-6 QEF (Keyboard)+23456 (on mouse) Everything else i click. I click mount, I click drink/eat/Conjure Water& food, i click buffs, I click cooldowns. But basic rotation and a few spells like Blink, Frost nova, Arcane explosion and such i have bind on.

So i'm in the middle i guess between binding and clicking

[MakeMeLaugh]

Did you click that whole text with a virtual keyboard or did you actually typed?

[Mackeyser]

Empirically, it's better. You're pushing a button rather than moving a mouse, then pushing a button. It's also less taxing, muscle wise as you aren't using bigger muscles to do fine motor work.

Unfortunately, I can't key bind as I have hand tremors... so for me, playing with keybinds is like trying to drive one of those student driver cars with an angry toddler in the other seat fighting for control. Sometimes, my fingers twitch whenever they want. Oh, did I just blow a major CD during phase change in the fight? Oh well.

I mean, as a clicker when I was playing Ele shaman in Firelands, I logged an 8th in the world on Warcraftlogs on Lord Rhyolith right after Heroic came out and guilds were pushing for that server first heroic and kept doing normal Rhyolith because his Heroic version was a PITA and wasn't worth the time for the most part.

So you can play at a pretty high level as a clicker and especially in BfA with all the pruning, there's really not much to click.

That said, if you can keybind, you should if you want to see an increase in performance.

[Kanegasi]

For healing, clicking is normal. Most healers just mouseover frames or click addon frames anyways. I haven't healed in a while, but I had HealBot set up and was modified clicking everything. Just to make it clear, click to heal is fine, click to target then click a button to heal is not.

For dps, I doubt you are performing anywhere near a seasoned keybinder.

[ssjgohan4life]

Its not a fact, its your opinion, all you gotta do is to move action bars closer to middle of screen, put auras close to that and voila. And then you still have time to look what is happening around you.

There is a reason people in method have all auras and bars close to middle of screen.

I assure you its not so they can be a clicker, your point is invalid.

[Kuja]

I too was a clicker for a very long time. When I got my first "MMO mouse" with lots of buttons and finally tried what it's like to keybind, I couldn't live without it anylonger. And my performance also received a small improvement, at the cost of making me feel "elitist". So much simpler, not having to move your mouse, but just to click something instantly. 14 ish keys were not enough, so keys next to A, W,S and D were also then put to better use.