We've covered the topic of keyboard turners before, but Paul over on LJ has a similar distinction between control schemes -- he set up a spectrum that has clickers (or those who click all their icons with the mouse) on one end, and pressers (what he called "experts," though that's a little too biased for our tastes) on the other -- those who use the mouse to control movement only, and hit keyboard buttons to use abilities.
Personally, I do a mixture of both -- some icons, especially on the top rows, are easier to reach with the mouse than on the keyboard, so I click them. But most of the lower icons are easier to just reach up and click the number buttons on the keyboard, so that's what I do with those. Still Paul isn't really interested in the ways people do it -- he's interested in what's best. In Arena, getting abilities cast and out as fast as possible is often more important than anything else, so it definitely seems like relying on the mouse for movement (and maybe even binding oft-used abilities to mouse keys) would be much faster than clicking on icons periodically. Of course, there's always the option to do both at the same time.
It would be interesting for sure to see what kind of schemes and setups winning Arena teams use -- I'd imagine that they'd have to play with default interfaces, so while keybindings and macros would probably work best, they wouldn't be able to go too overboard with customization. At the highest levels, is it faster to click and press or just use the mouse for movement?
Avast! anti-virus, which is used by millions of people around the world, recently upgraded to version 4.8. Unfortunately, it seems that this upgrade has caused many WoW players to have a drastically lower play experience.
The most common symptom is severe keystroke lag while playing the World of Warcraft. Mouse actions also seem to be affected by this. Delays as low as a second and as high as five seconds between keystroke and the game receiving that action have been reported. Supposedly, running WoW in windowed mode fixes this, but your mileage may vary.
There has been a lot of talk about keyboards and mice as of late, leading many of you to look at your play style under a different light. There has also been a bit of buzz over at Macro Anatomy about binding keys to different actions and macros. Well, my friends, it's spring, love is in the air and these two fascinating subjects have found romance.
The developer of Its G15 Binder addon tipped us off to the updated version of this simple, but useful mod. It has one very simple requirement, you should probably be using Logitech's G15 Keyboard to get the most use out of this addon. I should also mention that the developer made special mention of our own Adam Holisky as a potential fan of this addon, so consider the hat tipped in your direction, Adam.
Last week I covered playing with your mouse, and playing with your keyboard. In my keyboard post I mentioned that I would share with you all my Logitech G15 keyboard map. For those of you who don't have a G15, the keyboard is unique in that there are 18 programmable keys located on the left side of the keyboard. The keys looks like those pictured to the right.
Each of these 18 keys can be assigned three independent functions – based on selecting "M1", "M2", or "M3" at the top of the keyboard. This gives a whooping 54 possible key combinations and functions. I don't use all these though, only the first 18 for most everything, and then the second for some random addon and programming things. So without further ado, here's what my G15 keyboard map looks like:
Yesterday I talked about how to increase your game play by using all those buttons on your mouse. Today, we'll take a quick look at some theories on how to use your keyboard more effectively. Next week I'll present my complete keyboard map for tanking, and give lots of examples of why I have things where I have them. But for now, let's look at some basics.
I use a Logitech G15 gaming keyboard for main World of Warcraft computer. The keyboard is nice for a lot of reasons:
The keys are hard plastic and clean easily. I can often be found eating hot pockets (Mom! Hot pockets!) or pizza roles during raids, and it's nice to be able to easily clean the keyboard if I make a mess.
The keys light up. This is very useful late at night when I turn the lights off.
The LCD screen is very adaptable. I use the LCD screen to display who is talking over Vent. No more asking "Who just said they need a mob taunted off them?" (of course, if they wouldn't pull agro in the first place or DPS the right target, we wouldn't have that problem now... but that's another article.)
There are 18 additional programmable keys on the left side of the keyboard.
So the G15 is a nice choice for a gaming keyboard. We all know this, of course. Most of us play with one, or something similar. There are a few good and basic strategies for making the most of your G15 or other keyboard.
If you didn't look closely, you could mistake Ideazon's Zboard for a standard keyboard. It's about the same size and shape as your average keyboard, with 108 keys and a row of hotkeys and multimedia buttons along the upper edge of the keyboard. A glance at the box shows us a left-handed key configuration designed for gaming and a pair of USB ports. So is this a gaming keyboard with a few extras? Hardly! This is only scratching the surface of the Zboard's abilities -- the real magic of a Zboard lies in its customized keysets.
Flipping through the forums I came across a post by Taithleech where he was asking why everyone seems to think clicking is bad.It's only been recently that I knew about this debate, but I can't really call it a debate if it's one sided, can I?A lot of players seem to believe that using keybindings is the only way to play.When I started playing World of Warcraft I was actually taught by a friend to use the mouse to click on my spells as a way of improving my speed in the game.Since hearing about the keybinding argument I have recently tried using them more than my mouse in instances, and I do find that my speed has greatly improved.Now, being the frost mage I find I spend a lot of time spamming Frostbolt, so that's a situation where I don't think clicking the spell with my mouse hinders me in any way.There are even fights, such as Warlord Kalithresh, where I use a combination of keyboard and mouse to maximize my speed.
Many of the posts on the forum thread made reference to something I hadn't considered.They say that in order to play WoW properly, you need to approach it like an FPS.I guess this argument is particularly valid if you spend a lot of time in the arenas.I personally have little FPS experience, and so this viewpoint makes me a bit uneasy.I see the advantage of working your keyboard to its full advantage, but I'm just not sure I've got the reflexes to play like that.In the end I will have to agree with one poster who said that clicking isn't wrong, it's just slower.Where do you side on the keybindings/clicking debate?
The Nostromo n52 Speedpad was
listed by several readers as an essential WoW tool, so we're putting it
to the test. I'll be using the n52 for the next week's play, and will return with an updated take on the peripheral;
here's a quick first look at it. For some reason the n52 Speedpad seems popular with rogues; to get a feel for its functionality, in the
first day of play I've tested it with a druid performing every role from tanking to group healer as well as soloing.
Setting up the n52 was easy, although substantial changes were made to its default WASD-style setup. With
fifteen buttons as well as a directional pad, scroll wheel and orange thumb button, the most obvious mapping seemed to
be to assign the numbers 0-9 to buttons 1-10, with the other keys reserved for shift, information panes such as map and
bags, and jump.
By spending some time tinkering with both the n52 Profile Editor and WoW's keybindings, the
pad was ready to prove its worth in real combat.
We've covered the topic of keyboard turners before, but Paul over on LJ has a similar distinction between control schemes -- he set up a spectrum that has clickers (or those who click all their icons with the mouse) on one end, and pressers (what he called "experts," though that's a little too biased for our tastes) on the other -- those who use the mouse to control movement only, and hit keyboard buttons to use abilities.
Avast! anti-virus
Last week I covered 
Flipping through the forums I came across a post by 
The 
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