Introducing Readleader Weekly: Keyboard turning and Clicking

Now that we've gotten our very own blog site in Nordlys, I though I'd put it to good use by starting a - mostly - weekly coloumn about my perspective as a Raider and Raidleader on  topics related to our guild, our raiding activities and World of Warcraft in general.

I'd like to kick-off this coloumn by discussing Clicking and Keyboard turning, why they are sub-optimal and how to move on to mouse turning and keybindings. First a clarification: If you are a Clicker and/or Keyboard turner, this post is in no way meant to berate you or your skills as a player. I can fully appriciate where you are coming from, as I too was both clicker and keyboard turner once. Instead it is meant as an inspiration to you and show you how you can become even better.

That keyboard turning and clicking is sub-optimal is really not to be contested, is seems logical enough: It taskes longer to turn with the keyboard than it does with the mouse, and so it takes longer to eg. dodge a GTFO-mechanic and get back into proper position. Likewise, clicking requires more attention on the actionbar when moving the mouse to the right ability which diverts attention from what goes on at the game screen.

User Interface and it's faults in Clicking and Keyboard turning

I'm not surpriced that a great many players become Clickers and Keyboard turners. In fact I think it is inevitable given the default WoW UI and keybindings: WASD are bound to forward/backward/turnleft/turnright and your very first action bar are bound to 1 through 0. This is an absolutely horrid layout, because as soon as you get your fifth new ability, you can't reach the keybind without moving your hand off WASD. As a result, many players either start to click the action bar or take the right hand off the mouse and use that to press keybinds. In either case, keyboard turning is now the norm.

To make effective use of keybinds takes a radically different approach to UI. I had that epiphany in 2009 while killing trolls in Grizzly Hills as a level 73 mage. Yes, I was a clicker and keyboard turner until mid-Wrath, at which point I had already done raiding in Naxxramas and Ulduar.

Before we move on, let me show you how I design my action bars with keybindings in mind. I have both a Razer Naga MMO mouse and a Logitch G13 game pad, so I may have more buttons avaible than most, but the point I want to illustrate remains the same.

These are my action bars and the colored lines show which keys are bound where. Notice how the action bars mimic the relative position of the buttons on my periphirals. This is a great help because you can then find the corret button from visual reference on your game screen alone, which makes keybindings much easier to adapt to.

The basics of bindings

To get started with keybinds, place your hands on your desired movement keys (which need not necessarely be WASD - ESDF work fine too) and your mouse, respectively (we refer to this as the default position). How many keys can you reach without moving your hands from these postions? Remember any extra buttons on your mouse, which most mice have nowadays. This will be your pool of potential keybinds. Now make a list of your combat essential abilities, in order of most frequent usage.

You may or may not invest some time in setting up your actionbars with position mimicing like I've done. I strongly recommend it,  but if you are confident that you can keep track of your binds without it, feel free. Now start to bind your abilities, starting with those you use the most closest to your default position and working your way outwards.

Once you've got all your binds filled, you're ready to start using them. At this point you can still keyboard turn and click if you wish, and it may be beneficial to take a few days to let your new UI sink in if you've made any major changes. Once you feel you are ready for the final plunge, read on.

How to get veaned from Clicking and Keyboard turning

Old habbits die hard and if you has been a clicker/keyboard turner for any extended period of time, chances are you'll find it tough to not do it. There is a very effective way however, but it will take hours or even days, and during this time, your game performance will be very sub-par, so you should not do it if you have any major ingame events like raids, dungeons or battlegrounds planned in any immidiate future; Set aside some free in-game time, promise yourself: "I'm gonna do this now", and type /dnd.

The idea is to deprive yourself of the means to click and keyboard turn. In case of turning this is easy: Go to the keybindings menu and unbind all keys from turning. All of them. Only have strafe bound. Clicking is a little tricky, but most action bar addons provide a "click-through" option. Here, Bartender4

This option basically make the entire actionbar unclickable. Enable this to make sure clicking on actionbar buttons will have no effect.


What happens now will feel extremely akward and even fustrating at times and you'll be tempted promtly go and re-bind your old turning keys and disable click-through. It's important that you stick to it: Run around in Elwynn Forest until you feel comfortable with consistently turning with your mouse. Try and kill a few spiders and Defias goons. Then up the stress level a bit and go do your dailies. Again you will find it akward and fustrating, but still stick to it. After a while it will begin to sink in. You may also find that your keybinds are not axactly optimal in regards to which abilities you use when. This is also to be expected, setting up keybindings is often an iterative process.

Advanced tricks: Macros and Modifiers

There are several tricks one can use to get even more binds out of a limited number of keys. The most important of these are macros with modifiers. I'll probably do a more in-depth post on macros at a later time, but for now, let me just show you a basic but very useful template:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod] <spell1>; <spell2>

This will cast spell1 if any of the modifer keys (crtl, shift or alt) is held down while the bind is pressed, and cast spell2 otherwise. Now you in principle have doubled the number of binds you have available. You can also specify the modifier, eg.

/cast [mod:shift]

Now the modifier will only test true if shift is held, but not if crtl or alt is held. This means you can have up to 4 spells on a single bind if needed:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] <spell1>; [mod:ctrl] <spell2>; [mod:alt] <spell3>; <spell4>

Bar-addons like bartender also have a feature called Paging; this allows you to change an entire action bar when holding down a modifier key, eliminating the need to create macros for all abilities. 


This should get you started on your path to become a keybinder should you wish to undertake it. I'd once again like to emphasise that it is a process that takes time. Do not be discouraged if you find your game completely unplayable for the first couple of days after you've made the change. I surely did.  Have patience and you'll get there, and once you do, you'll never look back.