Get a mmo mouse, and you won’t have that problem since your thumb should cover all your keys. And it’s more convinient. But normally you shouldn’t ever have to look at your
keys no matter what you use. Do you have the same problem with your skills too?
Hmm, it seems that “distant keybind” you mean keyboard 6,7,8,9, right? You can reselect your hotkeys in the option menu to fit your style. It’s up to your, but I like to use:
6 = C (next to dodge V)
7 = R
8 = T
9 = Shift (For stunbreaks. Pretty straight forward, if you had played a FPS,where shift is run or crouch)
Elite = mouse side button (if you don’t have one, I recomend middle button)
I have small hands, I guess. I have trouble reaching the F1 and the T.
As you know rebinding can really throw you off for a while. I have done it in the past and your fingers just want to hit the old keys instinctively in the heat of battle.
The Alien (condi necro),That Wreckin Crew (Mesmer)
Silentshoes (Thief), Wind of the Woods (condi ranger)
If you don’t establish a starting point of change you’ll never adapt though…
I bind my keys with influence from Taugrim, when I followed his posts back in beta.
WER to move,
D to dodge
Q to heal,
T to stomp/interact
ASF utilities
G elite
ZXCV and F1-4 Class Mechanic
1-5 skills
I found it incredibly awkward at first but now my hands need barely move to hit the desired ability.
I’d say you need a few weeks to develop the muscle memory, modestly.
If you game hardcore a few days is all you need.
5 useless class titles
Carrying enemy team since 2012
“Multiclass implies you can actually play the class” – a certain royalty
Everyone knows that you have to use keybinds in a fast-moving, quick reaction game like GW2.
But how often do you have to look at your keys to make sure you hit a distant keybind properly?
I suspect that the best players “touch type” in a superior manner, hardly EVER having to look at the keyboard.
I know that I have to look too much, and I really should be keeping my eyes on my opponent and the overall battle situation.
Never look at keyboard unless i have to write something like most of players here i guess…i really can’t figure out how someone can possibly play looking at keys before..in reaction time based situations (Evading a burst, interrupting and so on…) would be a pretty sure fail…real problem is when you change you keyboard, took something like 4-5 days to get used to the new one and went hotjoin only cuz i didn’t want to play tpvp while i was still hitting wrong keys. If you have an old keyboard that you wanna change just get a good new one, bind your skills and start playing without looking at it…you’ll make a mess at the beginning but you’ll eventually get used to it after playing for some time..just go hotjoin until you’re ready to go, noone cares if you miss a key in hotjoin..
I remeber when I bound my first key as a young gamer. It was vannilla wow, as a ench/resto sham. It was a rank 1 earth shock for a low mana cost spell interrupt. I had point and clicked all abilities before that. When I saw how much I improved with doing that one skill, out of the dozens of skills I quickly realized that up untill I bound all my skills I was a scrub.
Late train home rammble
Today on the pig n fatback show we got b*tch*s hopping out of pots and babies poppin out of socks
Get a mmo mouse, and you won’t have that problem since your thumb should cover all your keys. And it’s more convinient. But normally you shouldn’t ever have to look at your
keys no matter what you use. Do you have the same problem with your skills too?
Hehe I have to agree! I had my left hand in cast this summer and I played only with MMO mouse and 1 finger from left hand =D I had walking + dodge + basic skills on my mouse =D Ofc I was not playing PvP, but it was enough for LW and some dungs
Yeah I don’t look anymore. I have a 5 button mouse and I’m only really lacking a key for dodge. I have to double tap directional keys to dodge but it’s worked fine so far. I don’t hit any of the F1-4 keys, they’re all remapped closer to home.
Tualek & F I Monk / Thief —-- Tk E / Engineer
Highest Solo Queue Rank Achieved: 40
Highest solo-join Team Queue Rank Achieved: 198
Touch-typing comes really naturally to me, but for some reason I’ve almost always used a combination of key-binds and mouse clicks for skill activations, and nobody’s ever called me out on it.
One of my high school classes had a section about typing, and you had to type X amount of words in a minute to pass. It’s sadly helped me more for gaming than it has other IRL situations.
Never. It simply isn’t viable imho. My advice: IF you have to do it now, unlearn it asap. Force yourself to not look, whatever the cost may be.
I use keys very close to my movement-keys, and then I use some modifiers; I prefer modifiers over having to use keys a bit further from “where the action is”. But that is just me; most of my friends use some keys a bit further away and prefer that over having such a compact layout as I have.
Yeah I don’t look anymore. I have a 5 button mouse and I’m only really lacking a key for dodge. I have to double tap directional keys to dodge but it’s worked fine so far. I don’t hit any of the F1-4 keys, they’re all remapped closer to home.
Really? 5 button mouse and you need a key for dodge. That would be one of the first to put on your mouse.
Dodge, interrupt, heal, stunbreak. The other (gcd) abilities i just use keys for. Also rebinded F-keys to Z X C and V, those are just kitten binds.
If you don’t establish a starting point of change you’ll never adapt though…
I bind my keys with influence from Taugrim, when I followed his posts back in beta.
WER to move,
D to dodge
Q to heal,
T to stomp/interact
ASF utilities
G elite
ZXCV and F1-4 Class Mechanic
1-5 skills
I found it incredibly awkward at first but now my hands need barely move to hit the desired ability.
I’d say you need a few weeks to develop the muscle memory, modestly.
If you game hardcore a few days is all you need.
I use his setup too, and it is amazing. I changed from tab to shift though, to cycle through targets, and it is awesome.
^ I don’t think there is a better setup. It is poifect.
what you might also like is a Razer Naga or Hex.
I do strongly suggest not putting any skill on the naga or hex that you use very often or in moving situations since your thump is steering your mouse for most people It will slow your movement and reaction time down if you have to use that finger for clicking all the time. ofc I assume your not a keyboard turner.
If you have 0 budget and you just wish for a quick fix then move your movement keys on your keyboard to the right, example:
on azerty, zqsd for moving becomes esdf
you will have an extra row of keys at your pink and ring finger while at the same time being able to reach further on the right side.
check out this video if my explanation confuses you(I know it’s a wow guide but the same applies here and it’s a good guide)
buy a nostromo / mouse with lots of button
spend a lot of time (at least weeks) adapting and re-learning the keys in some more ergonomic way
???
profit
My hands are tiiiiny, but it’s okay, because I really like to rebind keys and options and crap.
All of my skills are on the numpad. 78945 are weapon skills, 6 is healing, 123 are utilities, 0/*- are profession-things, and . is Elite
“But Chompie,” you say, “Keyboard turning is terrible!” and yes it’s very slow and dumb. But plenty of skills have an animation time where you can’t do anything else, and there’s plenty of time during that to aim yourself with the mouse!
… But yeah I am never ever going to use the Grenade Kit on land.
EDIT: Come to think of it, if I had a self-heal in Guild Wars 1, I always put it on 6. Weird how that worked out.
