Clicker or Keyboarder? [New Poll]
April 16, 2008 by Matticus
Filed under Polls and results
I had a quick conservation about play styles with my friends which got me wondering. They were talking about players who used their mouse more often to click on their buttons instead of having their keys bound and using that to control their actions.
I’ve played my shared of real time strategy games and first person shooters in the past. Using only one the mouse to issue commands on your character on what spells to cast and what items to use is a strange and bizarre concept to me. Many of the players in my guild are prone to using the keyboard when they turn their characters. We call them "keyboard turners". I’ve done this myself so call me a hypocrite. But, urgh, keyboard turning is bad!
So call me curious! What device do you use most often when using your spells and abilities?
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I'm Matticus and I play a Dwarf Priest. My home is in Carnage, a raiding Guild. Every week, I log 11 hours raiding on Ner'Zuhl.
Wynthea is the Troll Priest with the best Mohawk on Nazjatar. Currently, I raid 5 nights a week, and PvP occasionally. I started working toward end-game in May 2007, and my guild is currently working through Sunwell. I've tried playing other classes, but Priests are my passion; I've found our racial spells an endless source of fun and frustration. I am extremely fond of Dwarves.... especially with Ketchup. 
My name is Sydera and I like to heal things--think Florence Nightingale with foliage. I play a night elf druid on Vek'nilash-US, and I raid 12 hours a week. As a guild officer for Collateral Damage, I coordinate healing and recruit new raiders. I started playing WoW in Fall 2005, and it was love at first click. Before I discovered the joys of Broccoli-stalk healing, I raided as a holy paladin, and I now have alts in all healing classes. I have to say, though, bark beats poofy dresses and heavy plate in my book.
Clicker
Both? I try and keep my frequently used spells as a mage on the keyboard, but you’re always going to need to click - trinkets, odd spells, targeting (when too many to tab target).
Heh, I bound my trinkets and pots to my keyboard.
Depends! Everything is constantly changing, and I’m constantly binding and unbinding keys. I just recently bound bear form to “t”…but it takes me a while to get used to keybinds so I tend to be slow to make new ones ^^;
It depends!
ALL of my healing spells are keybound, and most of the damage spells as well (like shocks, and stormstrike and smite and stuff). Annorah clicks for shields/totems/pots, Annalira the same. Angoleth… well, I have pet attack keybound, and hunter’s mark, but 90% of the time I click with the hunter. Because… 90% of the time I click one bloody button (no not the macro, I self-time my steady shots).
Nostromo n52′er
Feral druid
Trinkets, quest items, buffs, and rarely used spells (Tranquility/Hearth/Food/Drink) get the click. Everything else is bound to the N52.
I chose keyboarder because I use that for my main spells and rotations, but I do use the mouse a lot too!
Depends what I am doing. soloing or dpsing of pretty much any type I am all about the keyboard, once I am in a group healing it goes to mouseover macros and keybindings so both together in that case i guess.
Keys 1-6 are bound to the spells I use the most and I keep my four fingers on the 2-5 keys. Keys 1 and 6 are easily accessible if needed. My thumb stays on the space bar or M for map depending on what I’m doing. I use my right hand and the mouse for moving and for clicking spells that don’t get used as much. I could never use key bindings to move…way too weird for me.
This setup is the same both for my balance druid and my holy priest. Occasionally if I need something fast for a certain fight I’ll change the key binding quick (Maiden of Virtue with no paladin…I took power word shield off of my 5 key and bound dispel instead).
My entire keyboard is hotkeyed to the point that I’ve run out of room. (I navigate with my mouse) I had to bind multiple spells to the same keys with macros using alt, shift, and ctrl… ((=) is prayer of fort, shift+(=) is a single fort, and alt+(=) forts me, etc.)
Aside from my trust Merc Stealth I also have a X-Keys Pro, which is a little like a POS Keyboard!
Ummmm… both? Most of the time I use the keyboard to move, unless I’m using the mouse to move, but I like having forward/backward/strafe right there. And sometimes I click, unless I don’t have to do anything but stand there and cast, then I might use keyboard shortcuts if it’s only a few keys I need to keep track of. On my characters where I do a lot of different things, I almost always click. And I keyboard turn when I don’t need instant direction change.
I have every ability that I use in combat bound to a key. Clicking is way too slow.
Nostromo N-52
Movements are bound to Nostromo DPad (though I also use mouse movement).
My UI shows 20 buttons which change depending on the modifier I hold down (Ctrl, alt). Of those, 40 are accessible through the Nostromo and 20 are accessible only by clicking.
I also have a few things that I click (food, water, Divine Intervention, Lay On Hands, pots).
Targeting is through clicking unless I’m playing my warlock and seeding a big group.. then sometimes it’s tab-targeting.
Nibuca
http://chicanery.fibergeek.com/
I use a combination of both. I have a laptop with no mouse, so keyboard turning is actually faster than using the touchpad mouse–which on my computer takes two hands to do. One hand to hold the apple key, the other to use the touchpad to turn (yes, it’s a Mac, so no right click button).
I use keyboard shortcuts for my healing spells, but I use them with mouseover macros to help me target faster.
A typical macro looks like this:
Bound to the “F” key (since when have I ever /assist-ed anyway?)
/target mouseover
/cast Lifebloom
Rejuv is similar, just Shift+F, and Swiftmend is Ctrl + F.
It’s very non-standard, and very individual, but it works!
I just hit 3 a bunch….3:2 shot rotation macro ftw. I click to target and use the keyboard to move
In raids, I target players with my mouse and use the keyboard to cast. Moving is also a combination, I’ll go forward, autorun and turn with the mouse, rest is keyboard. All damage spells I click (I so rarely use them they’re on a bar that fades out when not in use…).
Pretty much damage - keyboard, heals click casting.
I don’t accept that arguement that click casting is slow. Even with a hasted GCD I’ve still got a second to move my mouse to the next frame in grid and click button five to get another renew off, and that’s for the instant casts. With a 2.5s GHeal, that’s plenty of time to find my next healing tgt while waiting for the heal to land.
It just feel like there’s way too much movement involved going from frame, to button, back to frame, to button and so on and so forth.
Heck, I found it irritating to do it with one hand using my mouse to do it with my other hand around a sandwich or something, especially when you have to factor in instant spells and all that fun stuff.
I was told that for healing click-casting was the thing to do. So I recently got Clique + Grid (after several aborted attempts when the Grid set-up scared me off). Though sometimes when I get stressed I forget what I’ve bound to what combo, so I fall back on targeting people by clicking on them in Grid and then pushing button 2 or 3 on my keyboard. So I tend to end up with my mousepointer hovering over Grid and my left hand ready to go for either Shift/Ctrl or 1/2/3/4.
As I struggle to remember what I have bound to Ctrl+click and the middle button (with modifiers), I think trying to remember lots of key-bindings would drive me screaming from the room.
I keep hearing that moving with the mouse is better/quicker than with the keyboard, which is probably correct - but how do you move with the mouse and use it to target as well (if in a situation where you need to do that)?
reading back, I don’t think I was very clear. I actually use grid for targeting my heals and keybound macros to cast without changing target.
I will usually target the MT so I can keep an eye on renew easier, have shadowfiend setup to attack tatget of tatget, and use something like this for my actual heals:
#showtooltip Greater Heal(rank x)
/use 13
/use 14
/cast [target=mouseover] Greater Heal(rank x)
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
so I guess I am a keyboard turner most of the time, since my mouse is busy targeting things for my spells.
Both– there I things I have bound to keys and there are things I just click. And there I times that I turn with the keys and times that I turn with the mouse. Sorta depends on the situation.
i use clique, therefore a clicker, for healing raids
for solo/dps i use keyboard
for pvp a combination of both
Seems to be basically:
offensive = keyboard
defensive/heal = mouse
Other devicer:
Use a nostromo n52 and a logitech mx518 mouse, so have plenty of room to keybind almost everything (typically consumables are the only things not keybound). used to use a g15 keyboard before the n52 and was able to keybind a ridiculous amount of stuff with that hardware.
Fyi, I’m a healer (priest) and use mouseover macros for almost everything
For a mage in PvE, usually doesn’t matter what you do, although keyboard turners have a harder time getting out of aoe effects it seems. In PvP you have to be binded or you’ll have no chance.
Like most people here, I use both. I hotkey all my healing spells, cleanse, and my trinkets. I use the keyboard to move, but the mouse to strafe. I use the mouse to target too. For whatever reason, I haven’t gotten used to using the keyboard to do that. I’m told it’s much easier for healers that way, but I still use a raid ui and click on those.
@ Tufva
For targeting with your mouse, as well as needing to move:
Auto run. Mine is bound to my 4th mouse button (flip camera is on my click wheel-button, although you could certainly put auto-run there). You don’t have to have your mouse anywhere near your character to turn, just use your right mouse button, and stick it back on auto-run while you target.
As far as remembering key-bindings… If you’ve learned how to touch-type, keybindings are much the same. I don’t have to look to know that when I move my left index finger up and to the right, the key I’ll hit is “T”. Similarly, I don’t have to look to know that the key I’ll hit will be my Greater Heal stop-cast macro. Just don’t reorganize it too often - that does get confusing.
Ooh, Matt!!! Could you do an article on macros that have made your life easier?
(Like, it was an epiphany when I realized I could macro /use 13 and /use 14 with the “?” icon for my trinkets, and always know and be able to use whatever ones I had equipped without re-binding all the time.)
Wynthea: “Ooh, Matt!!! Could you do an article on macros that have made your life easier?”
Hate to disappoint. I hardly use macros. Everything’s done manually. Actually, I do use a few macros but not all that much.
Well, fiddlesticks.
Even instant spells have a GCD of 1.5 seconds,haste not withstanding.
Click casting does not mean going to the unit frame, targeting the unit, going to the spell, clicking the spell.
It means binding specific mouse/modifier combinations to spells so that when your mouse is over a unit frame clicking that mouse/modifier combo activates the spell without targetting the unit.
A screenie of (most) of my clique binds:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2420/2418849530_df3d8922ee_o.jpg
A screenie of my rading UI:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2047/2418842098_4757a2d20d_o.jpg
My mouse rarely leaves the middle left side of the screen. If I need to turn quickly (rare in PvE I right click on an empty bit of space in taht general area.
Sure, click casting takes a bit of practice before it’s second nature. It’s basically muscle memory, very easy to train if you do it enough.
And yeah Grid is a pain to set up, it’s also extremely powerful.
Unless I’m learning things on a new character, everything is binded. Most of it is even memorized so most of the time the only buttons I have showing are the ones with cooldowns that I need to see. Shoot, my raid will call out people they see backpeddling out of fire/blizzard/death and decay/etc.
75% Clicker and 25% Keyboarder. If i could move around and turn at the same time (and accurately) using only one method, i would probably be 90% clicker
Really depends on what we are talking about.
I am a macro junkie. I have a macro for everything. I bind everything to different keys.
I keyboard turn while mouse strafing. My left hand stays on the keyboard for quick macros and my mouse is clicking at the same time on whatever my left hand can’t do fast enough.
Keyboard. I move with QWEASD and the whole right side is bound with spells/abilities for my warrior or my mage. I try to keep logically the same spells, like spell rotation/tank rotation or counterspell/bash on the same key for all specs (which with the addition of three warrior stances that change the main toolbar makes for some interesting key bindings). I only use the mouse to loot, trade, etc. never in combat.
This works great for PvE except in very few places, like the gimmicky Kael and Vashj encounters where you have to click on items. It wouldn’t work for serious PvE, or for raid healing of course.
* wouldn’t work for serious PvP, I mean.