What are your keybinding secrets?
Following an interesting chat with a few other WoW players on Twitter, I've been inspired to share my keybinding methods with WoW Insider's readership, and invite you all to do the same. Keybinding is something I've discussed in the past, in relation to PvP and its cousin, clicking, so if you want a guide to getting started, then we've got you covered.
The real key to keybinding, though, is that it's highly personal. While the aforementioned guide may have some use, and assert some basic ideas on what might work well, it's up to you. There is no absolute right or absolute wrong way to keybind, just what works better or worse for an individual. And if you want to click, then that's up to you, too. Personally, I don't, and if asked would advise against it, but who am I to say that it's categorically wrong? It's your setup. But what's the point in discussing or writing if there's not absolute answer? It's always worth looking at or considering others' approaches. You might benefit from a change.
So what are my keybinds, what's my setup? I won't lie to you here, I'm a little nervous about telling you mine. It's rather odd, and while I'm doing it because I'm interested in the surrounding discussion and think that honesty is the best policy, I'm still nervous. How I prefer to bind is definitely different. I'm living proof that the "standard" methods don't work for everyone.
So first up, I have pretty big hands for a girl. That, coupled with a Logitech ultra-flat keyboard and a Logitech G600 mouse, means I can have an awful lot of keybinds. F6-7-U-J-N is about as far as I can reach with speed and modifiers, but that's more than enough. So what's weird?
Well, I don't use WASD. Nor do I use ESDF. Instead my forwards, backwards and strafe buttons are on the side buttons of the G600. All my movement is therefore controlled from my mouse. There's also autorun there, which I use quite a lot for a moment at a time when I need the left-click to place a reticule, for example.
This frees up a lot of space on my keyboard, as well as making my hands a lot more free to hit different combinations of keys without being bound to WASD or ESDF. So, I use modifiers a lot, to make the closest keys even more useful. I'm asked a lot, as a PvP healing main, how I heal in PvP, and that's with modifiers. For example, Riptide is on R. R heals me, ALT+R heals my first team-mate, CTRL+R heals my second, Shift+R my third and Ctrl+Shift+R my fourth. I have deactivated my windows key, and remapped my CapsLock to be a second CTRL, both via the magic of regedits. Use these with caution!
What else, well, I use the scroll wheel to dispel offensive targets, along with the side buttons on the Logitech mouse for larger arena sizes. I also have dispelling binds for three friendly targets there, used less now that we're out of Cata, but a relic from those days. A lot of this is macros, so it can also be used on targets or mouseovers as well as on set enemies and party members. Oh, and in things-I-really-should-change, I rarely have my 3 and 4 binds displayed. I don't know why, it's just habit. I tend to bind things on keys that somehow make sense to me, so for example, again, Riptide on R. Ghost Wolf on W. Earth Shield and Power Word: Shield on S. As a result, I find my binds pretty easy to remember, so often have ones without cooldowns hidden.
So there you go. I'm not necessarily recommending you try it, but it works for me, and maybe if you're looking for ideas you might find something useful in there. What about you, though? How do you keybind? Do you click? What are your deep, dark secrets?
