Click or Hot Keys?

Playboy

Just wanted to check what peoples playstyles are like? Do you use your mouse pointer to click abilities or do you prefer to use number / hot keys etc to use abilities?

Genrally when I have played previous mmo's which were generally pvp based I could only use numbers, hot keys etc. For some reason I have gotten in the habit of using the mouse to click in WoW and barely use any number keys / hot keys. It was fine for PVE but is completely inadequate for PVP. Unfortunately now I have gotten into bad habits so changing is going to be a pain .. the whole point of leveling is to train you through repitition of how to use your character as efficently as possible. Going to have to retrain myself all over again.

Can people suggest any add-ons or UI's that help with their chars. I'm still using the regular UI. Mainly play on a DPS Warrior and Mage.

Thanks

witless1

If someone had of explained the difference to me when I started it would have been so much easier. So I went from clicking to binds and now sit at a happy medium. All my core rotation spells that I use during a fight are bound, but infrequently used spells are clicked. When I know I need to use one it's a matter of having my mouse hovered over it and ready to click it but these are spells I would use once in a night maybe. I could bind everything but the confusion it would cause to my muscle memory is just not worth it!

To that end though I recently bought a Razer Naga mouse which has 12 side buttons. My thumb can comfortably use half of them and with practice I should unlock more. It has given me greater flexibility in terms of binding. You would get away with 1-5 on the keyboard bound and 2 or 3 side mouse buttons for a standard DPS classes rotation. A lot of people forget about modifier binds so alt or shift or ctrl for binds. What helped me a great deal was Clique so on any hybrid class I can have all my healing spells bound to clique combinations with a unit frame like Grid or the standard Blizzard UI frames. I don't know how useful that is to the classes you play but it removed 5 or 6 spells from my screen.

TheDoc

Hotkey'd from the get go but only a certain amount, I dont like flying around my keyboard but I've got myself in a comfy position of

1-5
Shift 1-5

Q,E,Shift+E,Shift+E,`

Berns

Always used keybinds tbh. Most the abilities would be 1-5 too I think, with alt or cntrl as well. Did have 6-0 mapped out too with not so used butons incase needed to access them. Also a few (5) buttons on mouse with same modifiers. Also the general wasd movement and qe strafe.

However on my healer most things were bound to the mouse & clickover addons. Still using Alt and Ctrl as the modifiers for them.

Bartender was a big help btw as can change bars depending on weather your stealth or not, primary or secondary talent tree, or what form you are in as a druid. Dunno if it was changeable on stance/presence at all though but dunno if that would be so necessary.

Count Duckula

My main used spells (particularly as a healer) are mouseover macros bound to mouse buttons (I have a Logitech G500 so lots of lovely buttons). The ones just below that in importance are mouseover macros bound to the keyboard, and then ones I use very infrequently are clicked.

In terms of my UI, I've played since Classic and up until halfway through Wrath I used the default UI with some minor changes (like a new minimap and xPerl and Titan Panel). It was only about eight months ago (after playing for five years) that I decided to have a major UI overhaul after seeing my girlfriend's. Now I use Bartender for my bars, and a mixture of xPerl and Grid for my unit frames. I use xPerl for mine and my target's unit frames, and for my party unit frames. However, when it becomes a raid the xPerl party frames are disabled and Grid turns on. I could never go back to the regular UI now.

settings

I would definitely recommend hotkeys. I clicked all the way to 60 in vanilla and I was pvping all the time so I got pretty efficient at it. However once I discovered hotkeys there was no turning back, it is hard to unlearn clicking at first but its so worth it.
I think you should write out what buttons are easiest to press and then put your most used hotkeys there to start out. Most people like 1-5 but I find 1-3 slightly awkward as i gotta move my middle finger from w (pressing both mouse buttons works ye). I like x,c,v,f,r,e,4,5 (add in shift, control to get 2x more).
Its good to have your interrupts and critical abilities on accessible keys you almost rest your (idle) fingers on. If you got a mouse with a scroll wheel you can put binds there and any side mouse buttons. For example on my feral, mouse wheel up is kick, down is faerie (since its important for catching ranged stealth/keep in combat etc), I use 'e' as stun, shift+e rejuv etc etc. Its all about what feels comfortable to you.
I think keybinds makes everything soo much easier, tanking is a breeze, you never miss a gcd and you will learn your rotation much easier and your eyes will be constantly on the game - watching everthing thats is happening, not standing in the fire, not trying opening your spell book trying to click the ability you just dragged off the action bar by mistake

Columc

I have the same setup for all my chars addon wise, and all i nthe same location, except some calss dependted(grid for healers ect)

Dominos for the bars, to give more/less and to organise them, I like to keep them as small as possable since I use hotkes for all my spells and know most of them.

DeadlyBoss Mods, the general

Omen in my botom left so I can keep tabs on threat, Recount on bottom left. and then some handy ones such as postal/bagnon.

OmniCC one of the best addons in the game but so simple.

Hotkeys wise I used 1-5 and Q,E,F,Z,X,C and have shift/ctrl modifiers on them as well. so might left hand is always over the keys. I have two buttons on the side of my mouse also for quick click with my thumb.

I keep the same setup for all classes, I changed to this setup a while ago, but It took maybe 2-3 weeks to get used to it.

Playboy

Thanks for all the replies guys. I'm going to install bartender now to see if it helps. Also have logitech GS9 and Razer Keyboard so going to try and setup some quickbinds and macros etc. Hopefully it isnt going to be too painful!

Mr. CooL ICE

I am a severely frantic clicker, but am gradually moving away from it.

My main of 2.5 years has been a healing priest, so clicking is always essential so I never felt much pressure to change that. Until patch 4.1, I used a cumbersome combination of Grid and healing spells mapped to 1-6 and dispel/mass dispel bound to mouse 4 and 5. Everything else was clickable. It was extremely hectic but manageable, even on heavy movement fights. I use pitbull and have a tidy layout of target/target's target/target's target's target and likewise for focus which is extremely useful being a discipline priest.

Since Grid was broken at patch 4.1, I tried Vuhdo and absolutely love it. On many heavy AoE fights, healing is easy when I don't need to constantly focus on tanks (sanctum, atramedes) and have made small improvements with my dispelling and shielding setup.

Tanking on my warrior or DK was insanely inneficient until recently. I had abilities spread across 1-9 and used a weird combination of mouse and these keys to apply moves that overlapped with the GCD (heroic strike/interrupt). I recently bound heroic strike and cleave to mouse 4 and 5 and even though I still click, everything is much simpler now.

I still have a long way to go!

papajimsmooth

I remember when i started playing and i met a hunter who was playing out of his spellbook

2 Espressi

Clicks are for moving, keys for everything else (though Healbot has me clicking more and more)
I know a few Druid healers who click almost exclusively and swear by Grid.

TheDoc

2 Espressi wrote: »

Clicks are for moving, keys for everything else (though Healbot has me clicking more and more)
I know a few Druid healers who click almost exclusively and swear by Grid.

They are probably using "clique" which is basicaly binding heals to your mouseclicks and when you click on a target on grid it casts the relevant heal/dispell.

Or they could jsut bind heals to their mouseclicks and have the same effect.

It would really be the only acceptable method of clicking imo in a raid enviroment

red_ice

TheDoc wrote: »

Hotkey'd from the get go but only a certain amount, I dont like flying around my keyboard but I've got myself in a comfy position of

1-5
Shift 1-5

Q,E,Shift+E,Shift+E,`

Im the same, mines because i played counter-strike. I've also got CTRL+1-5 on the go too

Rhalliord

I used to be an avid clicker and keyboard turner. I always used to wonder why I was always getting that bit slower out of the fire etc than everyone else. MY GM advised me to leave all movement to the mouse and use keybinds for spells etc . So I now move by holding down the two mouse buttons and have backing up bound to one of the side buttons. I left strafing bound to a and d. All my spells are bound to Q W E S shift Q WES and alt. Q W E S depending on the toon. It took a bit of practise to get things right, but now I'm finding I'm much better at reacting to get out of the fire , or cast a self heal etc . I mainly use healbot with mouseover macros for healing though bound to the same keys .

Dustaz

1 2 3 4 5

q e f z x c v

ALT+q e f z x c


Done.

Calhoun

Generally i would agree with your sentement on keybinds over clicking and any of my DPS chars are all keybinds but for me healer as i am new to it programs like healbot is much more effecient if i use a combination of clicks and keybinds.

TheAmateur

I have some pretty random keybinds; what I've done is re-mapped strafe left/right to C/V and I hold these down with my thumb. This gives my other 4 fingers access to 1-7, Q-U, A-H and Z-C, as well as the shift and ctrl modifiers. I use TAB to target and I have focus arena1, 2 and 3 on F1, F2 and F3 too. At the end of the day, there isn't a "best" set of keybinds, it really is down to whatever is most comfortable for you. But clicking and keyboard-turning really makes me a sad panda :P

Fenster

If you start running serious arena you need keybinds and macros.

TheDoc

Calhoun wrote: »

Generally i would agree with your sentement on keybinds over clicking and any of my DPS chars are all keybinds but for me healer as i am new to it programs like healbot is much more effecient if i use a combination of clicks and keybinds.

Healers are the one exemption, clicking is alot more efficent for them since its one fluid movement.

The alternative is clicking the raid frame then pressing a button, now you can click a raidframe and have the spell cast in one movement.

But for anyone out there clicking, I'd undoubtly recommend taking the day or so it takes to get comfy and fluid with pressing hotkeys.

Sonics2k

Simply put, Keybinding is faster and more efficient than clicking.

Healers can be an exception to this, but even then a good PvP healer will have a number of binds aswell.

Flojo

I use mouse over target macros with just 6 keybinds. I have dyspraxia so it is quite difficult for me to be able to manage more than that. I used to raid hardcore so you need to be fast, just clicking everything is rather slow and your reaction time is going to be fairly rubbish in comparison.

toxsic

I use a mixture of mouse and some hotkeys when im in pvp and mainly use macro's for pve and grinding. i prefer using macro's as they save so much time for my main char (warlock) for dot's and after that is just spamming the same spell until one of my buffs proc. my opinion on it would have to be use what feels comfortable for your char and play style.

judosean2005

Funnily enough, i also have a DPS warrior and a mage.
Some add ons id recommend for warrior.

• Power Auras.yes blizzard have a make shift one but this one makes it much better
• Slam Alert. So u never miss an instant slam.
• obvious raid add ons like Omen,DBM and recount(optional)

For your Mage

• Mage Nuggets- is the business,
• Combustionhelper if ur fire mage
• obvious raid add ons like Omen,DBM and recount(optional)

In regards to keybinding vs clicker,
Key binding is the way to go.
i have a multi button mouse which i use,and it saves so much time.
1-6 RFC
thats all key binds i use

But many of ur keybinds and add ons are dependant on YOUR game type and character spec.

And no matter what people say
If ur a clicker and u still do the job,and still enjoy the game,

THATS ALL THAT MATTERS!!!

Enjoy
Bellick/Bellage

P/S. If ur interested in my own Keybinds for both toons feel free to pm me.

-Vega-

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/razer_nostromo.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.slipperybrick.com/tag/razer/&usg=__tcJACCgTKEQXme-_YsPUI9OJ9AM=&h=340&w=450&sz=88&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=9sC2GAc8tYDzZM:&tbnh=147&tbnw=195&ei=0ZzrTee7OcjpOZrUiJMB&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpc%2Bgamer%2Bsingle%2Bkey%2Bpad%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1259%26bih%3D819%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=975&vpy=130&dur=47&hovh=195&hovw=258&tx=124&ty=101&page=1&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0&biw=1259&bih=819

Sonics2k

-Vega- wrote: »

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/razer_nostromo.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.slipperybrick.com/tag/razer/&usg=__tcJACCgTKEQXme-_YsPUI9OJ9AM=&h=340&w=450&sz=88&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=9sC2GAc8tYDzZM:&tbnh=147&tbnw=195&ei=0ZzrTee7OcjpOZrUiJMB&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpc%2Bgamer%2Bsingle%2Bkey%2Bpad%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1259%26bih%3D819%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=975&vpy=130&dur=47&hovh=195&hovw=258&tx=124&ty=101&page=1&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0&biw=1259&bih=819

Extremely tempted to purchase one of these (especially for playing on my laptop from time to time), the reviews have been fantastic and I've used Razer gear for a long time. Using the Naga and Lycosa at the moment and they are worth every penny, especially the Naga.

Overheal

We sell the Nostromo, and I get a sick discount on them, but I already have a G15 Keyboard, which has plenty of side-button.

G700 makes light work of healing though, thinks to on-click scripts and binds.