Monday, March 22, 2010

Kae's Keybinds and Peripherals

I made this pretty keyboard and mouse layout with my keybinds.


Clickie to enlarge (and make the text more readable).
  • The gray-hued buttons are keybinds I typically use the keyboard to access.
  • The brown-hued buttons are keybinds I typically use the mouse to access.
  • Unlisted abilities like tranquility, buffs, and resurrections are just clicked on action bars.
  • Macros are used to enable multiple abilities on each keybind using [form:x], [spec:x], [stealth], and [mod:x] to differentiate among them. You can find links to most of my macros in the dropdown menu at the top of the page.
  • I use Bindpad and Bartender for most of my keybind needs. I like to swap to vehicle/posses keybinds for my main 4 buttons (q, M3, e, and t) and Bartender lets me do that by applying the keybind to the action bar slot, rather than applying the bind straight to the macro as Bindpad does.

KEYBOARD
I use an old-school G15 keyboard from LogiTech with 18 extra keys along its sides. I use 3 of these for most of my characters, though I am branching out to the G11 key with a couple of alts (too many darn totems!). The newer G15s are backlit orange (mine is blue) and have fewer side keys, but they are in easy reach.
  • I have shift-A and shift-D bound to strafe left/right to make up for rebinding q and e.
  • I just am not comfortable reliably pressing z, x, c, and v while moving around in combat.
  • left-CTRL is my Ventrilo push-to-talk, so I don't use it as a key modifier.
  • I use the numpad for quick-swapping gear sets.


MOUSE

I use the WoW MMO gaming mouse from SteelSeries, which is shiny and comfortable and jam-packed with 15 buttons (counting left/right click and scroll wheel). I will probably expand to different binds on the thumb-pad as I grow more comfortable with the mouse.
  • The UI for mapping the mouse's buttons is a complete pain, because it refers to the default actions each key is bound to in-game, rather than the actual keystroke. It was worth the headache to set up, though.
  • The "steel" coating has started to peel off from where my palm rests, after 3 months of use. A bit of an annoyance, but it doesn't impact the mouse's operation. The LogiTech gaming mice had similar problems, but only after a year or more of heavy use.
  • The spines light up and glow. You can choose the color and pulse speed and such... I chose blue to match my keyboard's back-glow, though sometimes I change it up for giggles.

3 comments:

Xbalanque said...

Hey, I realize this is a bit late, but with regards to using BindPad, and letting you use the possess bar stuff with your normal keybinds still, here's an example of one of the BindPad macros I use:
/click [bonusbar:5] ActionButton1
/stopmacro [bonusbar:5]
/use [form:1,nomod,@mouseover,harm][form:1,nomod]Growl;[form:1,nomod:shift,@mouseover,harm][form:1,nomod:shift]Faerie Fire (Feral)();[form:1]Challenging Roar;[form:5,spec:1,nomod]Insect Swarm;[form:5,spec:1]Faerie Fire;[form:3,stealth]Pounce;[form:3]Claw;[nomod,@mouseover,help][nomod]Rejuvenation;[nomod:shift,@mouseover,help][nomod:shift]Lifebloom;[@focus,help,spec:2][@mouseover,help,spec:2][spec:2]Wild Growth;[noform]Faerie Fire

I may have to play with it some more if I start using spec:2 for feral on occasion, as I'm thinking about doing (currently, spec:1 is bal pve, and spec:2 swaps between resto pve, a resto 2s spec, and resto 3s/5s spec) -- as you can see from (one of) my sorely neglected blog(s), I used to be feral main spec, before I joined a guild w/ more than enough ferals, but not enough moonkin. But you get the idea.

Point is, that first bit (pre /stopmacro) lets you use whatever you have bound to "#1" to use the first possess action.

I have similar bits at the front of all my BP macros that correspond to the keybindings I used to use for slots 1-12 on the main bar.

I use Dominos for my bar (singular -- I only show 1 action bar, the pet bar, and the class bar), and obviously BindPad for binding stuff.

I basically use my action bar (when the possess bar isn't active) as a sort of range finder / cooldown display / mod combo reminder (I still tend to use some of my old regular macros w/ the same mod combos for these), but really, I very seldom look at it except when I'm either in a new vehicle, or one I haven't been in for a while, or something along those lines.

But that's just me.

Kae said...

Hmm that is an interesting macro command I hadn't considered. The space limitations in the standard macro interface would limit me too much, though... unless there is a separate mod that allows for macros larger than 255 characters?

Xbalanque said...

Well, BindPad itself allows for *extremely* long macros (as in, I'm pretty sure at least 1023, but I've never actually hit it -- whatever it is, it feels awfully roomy after 255 characters :P ), as long as you make it a "BindPad macro" instead of a regular one. If you have an already existing regular macro, you can right click on it in BindPad to convert.

There's also various standalone addons that allow for this, like SuperDuperMacro.

The disadvantage these approaches have is that you *can't* sync these server side. So if you want to use them on another computer, you'll have to copy your WTF. (I believe BP stores all its info at the account lvl SavedVariables folder).

So if having your macros synced server side is a big plus for you, you'll have to use an alternate approach, more akin to what you already do.