/agrees

Now I just have to figure out which ability to bind.

Ah, the scroll wheel! The memories of Beast Mastery raiding for all of T6 and Sunwell...

Welcome to tanking if you have to spam a button over and over again. HS/RS/Maul will hopefully be going the way of the dodo in Cataclysm.

Going through a keyboard every 4 months b/c I'm tank is a little stupid >.>

yes, i do the save with rejuv on my druid healing ui :D

I usually bind the heroic strike to scroll up and cleave to scroll down for my prot warrior

I’ve got one of those seventeen buttons mouses, so most abilities are accessed by me hitting with my thumb rather than my index finger. It’s one option if you’re looking to trade out the stress of one digit to another.

Is Alex saying that a certain keyboard's special buttons can be against the ToS?

Logitech has some awesome mice for this, with the M500 being an excellent(and relatively cheap) option. Why is this? There's a button on the M500(and several other Logitech mice) that changes how the scroll wheel works, switching it from line-by-line "clickly" mode, to a nearly frictionless free-spinning mode where one flick will keep it spinning for a good 5-10 seconds or more.

Yes, you can call me a corporate shill and downrate me if you want, but for those who need to spam one ability in succession then this one feature can help out considerably, and currently there's only one company offering it.

@kcirreda:

http://infernix.net/wowban/

Back in my days as a druid tank, I had swipe as mouse down, and a swipe plus maul macro as alt+mouse down, you might consider giving that a try. It worked pretty well for me, as it was a similar movement for unlimited rage as it was for limited on rage, by just adding the alt to add a maul etc. :) It also leave your entire left hand open for better movement whilst still being able to use your mouse for turning.

It's an old Warrior trick, too, for Heroic Strike/Cleave. On my Prot spec, I swap the two out for scroll down, and on my Fury spec, scroll down is HS and scroll up is Cleave. Before I figured that out (a long time ago now), I used to constantly click the HS or Cleave button while I hit keybinds for my other abilities with my left hand. Scrolling is much, much better.

I would miss the loss of the zoom in zoom out.

@Jack Spicer

I was worried about losing the zoom, too, so I made zoom in or zoom out be Alt+Mouse wheel. That leaves me free to do HS for Mouse Up and Cleave for Mouse Down like a few other people have said.


@paul

When tanking (at least on my druid and warrior), I can't have Alt bound for any repetitive action, such as Swipe+Maul. In an attempt to get Maul to hit all the targets, I would be tabbing around, and I would inevitably be holding Alt down still when I hit Tab... bad news when you have a slow computer that takes 2-3 seconds to think before being able to switch back to WoW... =P

I have a Microsoft sidekick keyboard and has 30 programabile buttons that I use for my tanking and the good part is that you can make maccros on every button.

I do the exact same thing as Sleutel (right down to the specific binds), made it so much easier and increased my threat. It increased my threat as arms as well unfortunately, but my dps while I'm alive is awesome.

I play almost exclusively through my mousewheel. I use a microsoft sidewinder mouse, which has a very nice flat scroll wheel. So on my death knight this looks like:

Wheel Up: Icy Touch/Plague Strike castseq macro
Wheel Down: Heart Strike or Blood Strike
Middle Click: Death Strike

Sh-WU: Death Coil or Frost Strike
Sh-WD: Rune Blade, Gargoyle, Unbreakable armor
Sh-MC: Death Grip or Dark Command

Ctrl-WU: Death and Decay
Ctrl-WD: Pestilence
Ctrl-MC: Blood Boil

Alt-WU: Zoom In
Alt-WD: Zoom Out
Alt-MC: Camera Macro (sets me to raid default)

This setup allows me to develop crazy fast muscle memory with my powers; executing the core 9 powers becomes a total twitch reflex. On top of that, by turning off error spam, you can wheel a lot right before it's time to execute the power, giving you very tight rotations.

It's reflexive, when entering battle, to WU, WU, WD, Ctrl-WD, MC, Sh-UP, Sh-Up and with that I've diseased the whole pack, layered on all of my debuffs, and emptied my runic power.

It sounds crazy, but try it. Since my mouse wheel has become the driver of all of my game play, I've become better at every role that I try. Add in mouse over macros and you become a crazy good healer; I can cleanse like a beast on my pally, buff everyone in the party in moments, etc.

On top of that, moving and fighting has never been easier. For a DK DPS, this is invaluable for high-mobility raid bosses.