So for my third post I’ll do a little technical entry to balance things out a bit, and to give some of you perhaps some cool info that you hadn’t thought about before. Your action bar is that thing along the bottom of your screen where you put all your spells and abilities, of which us rogues have a lot. There are three possible solutions for players to do.
1. Leave the bar as it is, put spells there, hope for the best.
Not really a great idea for a rogue. Maybe if you’re some simple class, like say, oh I don’t know, a hunter? Yeah, a hunter would be fine with that as they do nothing, their pet does. But for rogues, not so good.
2. Download an actionbar application addon and use that.
Very valid, a lot of rogues do this. Most of the top rogues that I know and whose blogs I read do this as well. I don’t do this. Why not? Simply put, I don’t like addon’s on which my game becomes dependent, and by game I mean my game-play. What happens if the addon becomes unavailable in the future? You’ll probably have to relearn all your moves all over again, and I don’t want that hassle. Anyway, why download some addon when you have the perfect solution right at your fingertips ….
3. Keybind your most important abilities to your mouse.
Ta-dah! Brilliant eh? I’d like to take a bow, but alas, I didn’t come up with this idea. Some other very nice rogue pointed it out to me. Which is why I’m pointing it out to you now. Lets look at how it works.
Your mouse has a little scroll wheel on it. That scroll wheel is your friend. Simply put, it can move forward, it can move back, or you can click down on it. So that is 3 abilities/spells that you can bind to your mouse. How you bind them is easy.
Go to the Game Menu button at the bottom of your screen, (or press escape), and the game menu comes up. Select Key Bindings. Scroll down until you come to the Action Bar functions. Select the first key, and press “Unbind Key”, (located at the bottom). The key is now unbound and ready to have a new key selected for it. If for instance you pressed the space bar now, the space bar would bind to that first key on your action bar. We’re not going to do that, we’re going to use the mouse. Simply scroll up on your mouse scroller. Now that key is bound to your mouse scroller. On that first open scroll I have Sinister Strike bound. To do a Sinister Strike, all I have to do is scroll up on my mouse scroller. If I scroll downwards I have Eviscerate bound there. And a simple click on my mouse scroll button will set off my Rupture ability.
Now, I know that some of you are now thinking, “So what. That’s only three abilities, I have plenty more than that. Three abilities is nothing.”
Here’s where we get to the good bit … The Good Bit!!
If when binding your key you Shift+Scroll up on the mouse, then this is a totally seperate binding. So now we have doubled the number of bound keys to the mouse. Lets now use Alt+Scroll up. Now we are up to nine. Getting the drift?
Actually, I only have nine abilities bound to my mouse. That’s all I need. The rest are grouped around my keyboard near my left hand. Here are my commands listed:
On the mouse;
Mouse scroll up; Sinister Strike, Mouse scroll down; Eviscerate, Mouse Scroll button click; Rupture.
Shift+MSU; Kick, Shift+MSD; Kidney Shot, Shift+SBC; Killing Spree
Alt+MSU; Blade Flurry, Alt+MSD; Adrenaline Rush, Alt+SBC; Evasion.
These three combinations give me my ket attacks, my key stuns, and my key top attacks which I use together. To hit Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush and Evasion all at the same time I just hit Alt and then scroll up, down and click. It takes about 1.5 seconds.
The rest of my key abilties are grouped as follows:
Button 1: Trinket
Button 2: Slice and Dice
Button 3: Tricks of the Trade
Button 4: Deadly Throw
Button 5: Feint
Button 6: Disarm
Button V: Sprint
Button C: Potion
Button R: Blind
Button V: Vanish
In this way all my major abilties are grouped around my left hand and my mouse. I never have to lift my hand from these positions, and neither should you. Obviously I am a combat rogue, so if you are specced mutilate your abilities will differ from mine. Use the ones that you need. Oh, and for stealthed mode you get to do it all over again fresh. I hoped this has helped, and remember, you can obviously use this method for any class, not just a rogue.
If you point and click, then you’re dead.
June 22, 2009 at 12:25 am
That’s an interesting way to do it. Personally I use an N52te, which I now find very intuitive after a bit of a learning curve.
Do you have Cloak of Shadows bound there somewhere? And what sort of mouse do you use? Do you think that one of these fancy 37-button mice would improve your setup or make it worse?
June 23, 2009 at 8:04 am
Hey Cat,
I moved Killing Spree to button 4 and put CoS in its place on the mouse. As for deadly throw …
I just use a normal mouse, two buttons and a clickable scroll wheel. Which actually broke the other night in a raid. But I just got my old mouse and threw it on and no problems. Which is why I don’t like the 37 button mice. If it breaks during a raid, and you have everything bound to it, you’re stuffed.
March 27, 2011 at 6:22 pm
Im an 85 rogue and i get along fine with out the shift and alt scroll thing … it’s madness, i just have right and left action bar with 1 to = moves. However i like the simplicity and the kinda ‘Lazy’ aproach will try it though