UI post: WoW Insider

I love looking at other people's UIs to get ideas and inspiration for my own.  I decided to submit mine to WoW Insider's Reader UI showcase, and they used it. Check it out here.

UI post: On my wacky way of key binding

I've pretty much accepted that, despite what I've tried to force myself to commit to in previous posts, I'm going to be a very sporadic poster. For the time being, putting out a constant stream of posts is not a priority. I'd rather just put up what I think is interesting and/or important to post when I have a fully constructed idea in my head. In that vein, I'm going to continue talking about my UI set up. Today, the topic is key bindings.

Key binding is broadly considered to by the most effective way of casting. While there are great players who are clickers and there are alternatives for healing, I've always found key binding to be the most logical. It allows you to separate your actions into two realms of input: your cursor is for moving and/or looking around, and your keyboard is for casting and/or moving. In any case, an effective key bind setup can make a huge difference. That being said, the default "WASD + 1 through 0" configuration that most people seem to stick with always seemed clunky to me. Because of this, when I made the migration from clicker to key binder, I came up with my own configuration. Hold on, because this is where it gets weird.

My Arrangement 

The colored keys are the ones I use most often in combat:

• At the core of what I've done was shifted my movement (green) keys over from WASD to TFGH. R and Y are my strafe keys. This was actually an iterative process, with me moving one key set to the right at a time until I found myself here, essentially at the center. 
• The red keys are the easiest for me to reach and therefore are my core abilities. For Balance, that means my core nukes and DoTs. For healing, that means my five most used heals.
• The yellow keys are still easily in reach, but take a little effort. The abilities I put there a little more situational. Cooldowns, interrupts, AoE spells, potions and the like. I actually don't even use all of these for combat; my mount and autorun keys can be found in here.

The idea was to give myself an abundance of easy to reach keys, and bind the easiest to reach with my most oft used spells. The result is a configuration that allows my to bind all the abilities I'll ever need, while keeping them comfortable. However, even with all of this I couldn't fit all my DPS, healing and utility abilities on at once.

So I kicked it up a notch.

The Next Level...


...consisted of buying a mouse with more than your basic three buttons and binding ALT to an easy to reach one. Throw in a few modifier macros, and you've doubled the number of abilities you have access to. What I chose to do was invert my bindings, in a sense. By that I mean that if I'm DPSing and need to toss out a heal, I hold down that convenient modifier key on my mouse, and my spells flip over into my healing setup, or vice-versa. But that's just what worked for me, the details are up to you. The point is that this setup gives you about 38 spells without requiring the finger agility of a pianist. Not something to scoff at. However, being me, it wasn't enough.

Too... Many... Buttons...


I bought a Razer Naga. I'm still getting used to it, especially on all my alts, but let's just say I have enough buttons to legitimately bind Aquatic Form to something convenient. And I still have a few spots left over. It's probably too much, but I enjoy a little excess.

So there you have it. My weird way of setting up my key bindings. Crazy 20 button mouse aside, it's a simple way to give yourself a lot more flexibility and comfort while you tear through Cataclysm.