Posts with tag clicking

Xella has a great post over at WoW LJ about keybindings, and it got me thinking. I play with what I thought was the "standard" way -- with the left hand sitting on the home fingers of Shift, A, W, D, and the spacebar, and then jumping up to the 1-6 (or further down the number line if necessary, though truth be told, I usually mouse-click those when I have the time to do so) to hit various abilities. But xella does it very differently -- she maps her fingers to the top abilities keys, using only her ring finger for movement. I would probably never have come up with that on my own (my habits come directly from FPS games, where the 1-6 keys are mostly for weapon switching, something you don't do quite as often as casting abilities), but it does make a lot of sense, even if xella says her ring finger, with all of those movement motions, is getting somewhat worn out.

And then she hits on something else I've been dealing with lately, too: changing what you've got. Setting up your keybinds is one thing, but actually changing them can be tougher.

I'm not a keyboard turner -- my steady diet of FPS games growing up made sure of that. And while I do occasionally point-and-click abilities, for the most part, I do use hotkeys. But, just like Tank Like a Girl, there is one control-scheme sin that I'm definitely guilty of: I am definitely a Tab-targeter. I guess the issue is that sometimes you do have to use Tab to choose your different targets -- sometimes, you can't quite click on the thing you need to target, so instead you hit Tab to flip through all the available targets until you get to the one you need. But that's a no-no. Flipping through the targets takes more time than you should (if you happen to miss your target, you need to flip through all of them yet again), and, as I know from personal experience, Tab targeting often ends you up on the wrong target. Not that CC is so much of an issue anymore, but let me tell you: the first time you happen to pull that one dragon your group has cast sleep on, it'll be embarassing.

So how to get it right? TLaG suggests this post from TankingTips, which hints at using the mouse instead of the keyboard to target (you can choose friendly targets easier that way), but doesn't offer any real suggestions of how to make the switch. Moving the camera back is one, getting your positioning right is probably another. And learning to use focus and macro targets is probably the best tip you can have: anything that's more specific or direct than either Tab or click targeting is probably better. Addons like Promixo will help in the Arenas as well.

No one's perfect, and no one way to do things is perfect either -- depending on your situation, Tab targeting might be better. But it's important to have as many tools as possible, so if you, like me, find yourself depending on the Tab key more often than not, it might be time to mix up your toolbag a bit.

Relyndrel sets us off on a hilarious ride through Blizzard's real genius: turning something as straightforward as playing a videogame into a rich, entertaining, and sometimes even meta experience. He starts off a collection of the best quest text in the game, including the various letters, yells, and whispers that float around while doing said quests. All the best stuff is here:

• Fruit vendor, do you not value your life?!
• Rend Blackhand's note to a stupid orc: "Destroy this letter, idiot!"
• Blizzard's sly reply to AV whiners
• And the terrific Digging Through Bones dialogue

I don't see my favorite mentioned in the first few pages-- as I've said before, my favorite quest in the whole game is probably the Absent Minded Prospector, in which a dwarf leisurely browses through a dig while you're left to fight off all kinds of huge golems.

Really, this game is just all about clicking buttons-- you click a button to start a quest, you click some buttons to kill things (or do some thing), and then you click another button to end a quest. But it's the flavor that Blizzard adds-- all of these weird characters, strange stories, and references to everything else we know-- that really make the experience what it is, and show off just how good Blizzard is at making clicking buttons interesting and fun.

Flipping through the forums I came across a post by Taithleech where he was asking why everyone seems to think clicking is bad. It's only been recently that I knew about this debate, but I can't really call it a debate if it's one sided, can I? A lot of players seem to believe that using keybindings is the only way to play. When I started playing World of Warcraft I was actually taught by a friend to use the mouse to click on my spells as a way of improving my speed in the game. Since hearing about the keybinding argument I have recently tried using them more than my mouse in instances, and I do find that my speed has greatly improved. Now, being the frost mage I find I spend a lot of time spamming Frostbolt, so that's a situation where I don't think clicking the spell with my mouse hinders me in any way. There are even fights, such as Warlord Kalithresh, where I use a combination of keyboard and mouse to maximize my speed.

Many of the posts on the forum thread made reference to something I hadn't considered. They say that in order to play WoW properly, you need to approach it like an FPS. I guess this argument is particularly valid if you spend a lot of time in the arenas. I personally have little FPS experience, and so this viewpoint makes me a bit uneasy. I see the advantage of working your keyboard to its full advantage, but I'm just not sure I've got the reflexes to play like that. In the end I will have to agree with one poster who said that clicking isn't wrong, it's just slower. Where do you side on the keybindings/clicking debate?