Barnold's Guide to optimising your hot keys!

[Barnold]

Hello and welcome to a guide on making the most out of key bindings, written by myself.


Some of you will probably be thinking "Why do we need a guide on key bindings? It's easy enough." Well the guide will be going through what I personally feel are your best keys to bind. It's what I use when I play WoW and I feel it optimises my game play on the different classes I play. Not only will I be naming the key bindings I use, but I will also be outlining why I think they are excellent choices. I hope you enjoy this guide.


I'll go through the key bindings I use when I play WoW, I don't have a gaming mouse with macro buttons, just a standard mouse and keyboard.


I also apologise for the lack of screenshots, I don't have access to WoW whilst I'm writing this guide. (Yeah, that's right, I'm cool enough to write this guide on my lunch break at work.)


Firstly, the default key bindings for your action bars are:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =

My first problem with these default bindings is pretty much anything after 6. Assuming you use the default WASD to move about on WoW, trying to press anything above 6 whilst moving is incredibly hard, I personally can just about reach 7 by moving my hand awkwardly, which isn't ideal.

So to correct this, I simply changed 7 8 9 0 - = to Shift+1 Shift+2 Shift+3 Shift+4 Shift+5 Shift+6

Meaning my "main" action bar is: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Shift+1 S+2 S+3 S+4 S+5 S+6 (S meaning Shift), on your action bars, it will appear as S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6.

With these key bindings alone, I can access 12 abilities with incredible ease without changing much.

I usually put my main rotation abilities on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and usually put "useful" abilities for my shift bindings. I consider useful abilities things like Flare (Hunter Ability), Sprint (Rogue) and other sorts of spells that I need to access regularly, but don't play a crucial role in combat.


For my other bindings, I stick with the Shift theme.
I personally love the shift modifier as I can my little finger to press down on it, as I don't use this finger for anything else. Also it really helps if you are a touch-typer like myself, meaning you can type without having to look at the keyboard.

So my other bindings are:
Q, E, R, F, V, T, S+Q, S+E, S+R, S+F, S+V, S+T

I chose these letters because of their close proximity to the WASD. Here, I can access 12 abilities, again without barely moving my hands position. I'm also still able to navigate around with my character by holding down W to go forward, and holding in the right click on the mouse so I can aim the direction I am going.



I can usually cover most of my abilities with these bindings. Some are easier to hit than others. For example you will find pressing R, E and S+R and S+E a lot easier than V and S+V (Particularly whilst moving) so I priorities which abilities go where. For example, on my hunter, I have R as Kill Shot as I will need to react and press the key faster as there is a small time frame in which it can be used, not to mention it's my finisher so I need to make sure I get it.

I also bind my Middle Mouse button. I usually set this to something like the PvP trinket or for PvE I'll generally make a macro with cooldowns and assign it to the Middle Mouse Button.



I can't think of much else that needs to be said right now, but I'm more than happy to answer any questions.

Again I apologise for the poor layout/lack of screenshots, it's quite a rushed guide and I'm at work.

Thanks for reading!