Mouse versus Key Movement?

[Talibear 3]

Quick catch-up can be found here: https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/2685-resto-shaman/#entry29510 .

TL;DR version: 1 - i'm a resto shaman. 2 - i'm as n00b as n00b gets.

There was great advice to go over. One thing that came up seemed to be a battle of mouse movement vs awsd movement.

Which do you prefer? What class are you?

Most importantly, WHY do you prefer that?

TL;DR the TL;DR version: Argue your preference! Go!

[Tarazet 144]

Keyboard turning is a no-no in PC gaming. At first I did the keyboard turn and click buttons thing, since I had been a console gamer all my life and that was what I thought you did. But whenever I watched how my friend played, it was obvious how much smoother and more proficient he was able to be and that he couldn't have done as well keyboard turning. He taught me the way he does it: bind strafe left to A, strafe right to D. Do all running and turning with the mouse buttons, and reposition with the strafe keys.

There's also the question of tab targeting. I don't think it works very well in WoW, and I never use it. I always click to target. As a healer, mouseover macros are the norm.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Tarazet

[Stoove 347]

As a healer using a Clique-like setup, I find that I swap movement control schemes an awful lot. Consider the case where there's heavy unavoidable raid damage and a small amount of movement. I can;

1) Use my mouse to move.

2) Use my mouse to heal.

3) Use my mouse to heal and my keyboard to move.

So I do (3) in that situation because it's more optimal. On the other hand, consider the opposite case where a voidzone's just spawned on me. I can;

1) Use my keyboard to move.

2) Use my mouse to move.

3) Not move.

In this situation (2) is more optimal because the reaction time is faster! I get out of the voidzone within one tick and don't die. This is unlikely to happen if I use my keyboard.

So what I'm saying is that the whole thing is situational. I tend to do both, switching between keyboard and mouse based movement situationally. I think that this is a very good way to do it.

[Ceraius 34]

1. Never keyboard-turn.

2. Never walk backwards.

Those two are a good place to get started regarding movement in my opinion. You might aswell unbind turning and backwards walking, since those are the most inefficient ways to move. (Excluding rare cases f.e. a monk who'd want to quickly roll backwards would be acceptable.)

[Stoove 347]

I think that "never" is a strong word, especially when you're a healer. It's all about understanding the situation that you're in and what's most important. If you're in life-threatening danger then those rules apply, but if you're not and you need to maintain throughput then keyboard movement is fine provided you don't do it for too long.

[Moozedude 47]

First of all, I'm weird. I gotta do things my own way. Second, I've been playing since 4.0.3, so i still consider myself mostly noobish.

I have a 90 Pally (Ret/Prot) and a 90 Warlock (Destro). I'm also leveling a shaman (86 ele/resto).

I went and did something crazy. I remapped all of my keybinds to the left-hand side of my keyboard, and all my movement to the mouse. Backpedal is button 3, strafe buttons 4 and 5. I place my left middle finger on the F key (with the little bump for a roadmap), and use 1-6, q-y, a-h, z-n, shift a-h, and shift z-n as keybound abilities.

Where did my other binds go, like my character sheet? To the numberpad, the little gamer's no-man's-land that only gets touched in downtime anyway.

This setup (for me, the noob) appears to perform very well both in dps and tank modes. However, because of the lack of mouseover macros and raid-frame management, my heals are less than stellar. If I decided to actually put forth the effort into possibly the most difficult facet of the game, I would need to redo all the binds and addons for that toon.

Don't get me wrong, it took me a long time to get this all set up and okie-dokie. But based on my play style, it was worth the effort, and I feel it serves me well.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Moozedruul

[Vladamyr 169]

I would recommend awsd and changing a & d to strafe (not turn). Stick with mouse turning. One reason I would recommend against placing movement keys on the mouse is it (typically) slows down targeting. Also you will probably want mouse button binds to work with a raid frame (Vuhdo, Grid+Clique, Healbot). This setup is pretty much the standard for most gamers and translates well to most other types of games.

[Nemo 27]

I very much agree with Vladamyr.

I find doing as he suggest is natural and very efficient when it comes to both precision and reaction time.

Moreover I can think of absolutly no situation where this setup is inconvenient. Never and always are strong words, but I think it's fair to use them here :)

[Drafty53 17]

I would recommend awsd and changing a & d to strafe (not turn). Stick with mouse turning. One reason I would recommend against placing movement keys on the mouse is it (typically) slows down targeting. Also you will probably want mouse button binds to work with a raid frame (Vuhdo, Grid+Clique, Healbot). This setup is pretty much the standard for most gamers and translates well to most other types of games.

Have to agree with these basic principles. You will survive most stuff by key-turning while you level and even at some lvl 90 stuff but if you want to be an efficient player and have any chance at being successful at end-game raiding, learning to play/move with the mouse and strafe keys A and D, is a must. There are some outliers who will say "I do just fine and raid normal modes while being a key-turner/clicker" which might be true, however, it's also true that their method is inefficient and I bet those players could be even better/more efficient if they spent the time to re-learn there movement/binding strategies.

I struggled at this when I first started as I leveled my first character ever as a key-turner/clicker. Thankfully I made the switch awhile ago and now wonder how I ever played without using my mouse, WSAD keys, and keybind/mouseovers. The easiest way in my opinion to "-re-learn" your movement style is to start with a new character. I know you love your shaman, but surely there is another character you have though you might like as well. Starting from level 1 just seems to be the way to go to retrain your muscles and thinking. You will feel more comfortable making the switch on your shaman after some practice on the new toon. Also, a little advanced trick for helping this transition, especially once you have more than one character is placing abilities of the same ilk to the same binds. For example, my interrupt for any class I play is my mouse 3 button for a quick reaction. Every class I play has mouse 3 = interrupt or the class equivalent...stuff like that helps.

Also, Blizz just posted this: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/10455963/Welcome_to_World_of_Warcraft%E2%80%94Basic_Movement_and_Combat-7_25_2013

The also recommend using the WASD keys + mouse and changing A and D to strafe not turn.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Drafty53