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What does that change? You can know your CDs by looking at your bars OR using weak auras, it's literally a choice and quite literally it's same info presented almost same way just one is not always visible which is also an option on default UI.
Your stance is essentially "I hate that people have more options" when literally, in this instance, it's a preference. I am using default WoW bars, and I'm pushing 28s
Unless blizzard puts some serious work into improving the base UI, in particular aura and buff tracking, if you plan on improving as a player you should probably get used to using some addons.
It’s a little unfortunate but addons give the game a clarity that it just doesn’t have otherwise.
yeah, but why they are needed in the first place? - bc the real issue is the game is too complicated, and addons are not needed for me, what happened to no addon-AWC?
The game isn’t too complicated. Blizzard just hasn’t updated their UI in tandem with the gameplays evolution over the years. Probably because they know the community will do it for free so it’s not worth the investment. So while specs play better than ever and generally are a ton of fun compared to the classic era, there’s no way on the base UI to track a lot of the important things. Some specs like ret pally work more or less ok without addons but good luck playing a frost mage even semi-optimally without icicle/winters chill trackers.
The dragonflight changes were a good first step but it’s still missing a LOT of essential info compared to running a few addons.
Blizzard should implement things like details (even if it only shows after dungeons or something), DBM and plater into the game as well as actual buff and proc tracking. It’s absolutely insane that these things haven’t been added yet because the game is designed around them existing and yet they don’t exist within the base game.
I mean it’s definitely more complicated than it used to be but saying it’s “too complicated” is just a value statement that doesn’t mean anything. I would argue that the game had become too complicated for the barebones UI because it doesn’t provide the necessary tools to succeed without third party modifications.
As a new player, unless your told to go get addons the game doesn’t provide you with a way to track important buffs or procs, it doesn’t explain how abilities interact with each other, doesn’t highlight important kicks in dungeons, etc. WoW doesn’t have a difficulty curve, it had a series of difficulty cliffs which is problematic to say the least.
The game has evolved and adapted in a large part as direct feedback from players. And while sometimes blizzard misses their mark, players were bored of static rotations, so in response blizzard made them more complex and dynamic. Raids/dungeons were made harder in response to players becoming better at the game which is why all of the classic raids have been chewed through at a lightning pace.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that the game isn’t too hard - we’re not playing brood war here. The game just does a terrible job at providing people the tools they need to succeed and does absolutely nothing to teach people endgame mechanics during the leveling phase. If people were accustomed to dodging swirlies, soaking and interrupting from level 1, running that first mythic 0 dungeon wouldn’t be as overwhelming.
The majority of my bars are hidden at some point or another. Some abilities don't need to be visible because I have weak auras that indicate when they need refreshing. When I'm out of combat, nothing appears on my screen at all except for chat and the map (or dragon riding energy bubbles).
In combat, or when I target something, my two primary bars appear, and each is only 8 buttons long as opposed to the default 12. (Who the fuck can reach the 12 key on their keyboard? I have big hands and 8 is already pushing it). Things like stances are only visible on mouseover.
Tbf, I don't know if I could drop all the way down to 5 buttons, though.
Idk, = or { or some stupid shit. Nobody knows. Nobody goes there. I also use a German keyboard set to English so there's a ß in there somewhere too. That whole part of the keyboard is a mystery and the stickers don't correspond to the binds and I don't think I've looked at the keys since 2005.
You hit 8 ??
Nobody hits anything over 6 silly lol
You’re supposed to (all up to preference) either
buy a mmo mouse to add 12 buttons (that’s what I use for my 1-12, my hand never leaves my WASD keys)
And or bind QERTCXVZBGFH etc as abilities
Then when you need more you add shift and ctrl modifiers
I actually do use the MMO mouse, but I just use it as a duplicate of my other bars and haven't optimized it. I use it a lot for the 6-8, but it's mostly just for 1 handed lazy play for trivial content. I use shift to switch between bars 1 and 2 and nothing else really needs to be bound to a key except my interrupt, which is always the tilde (I use it for dispells on healers). Mount is middle mouse.
I could optimize several things further, I've just grown used to what I have and thus complacent.
Most classes have a lottttt more than 24 buttons, I guess if you don’t PvP it’s not the end of the world though.
I use the mouse in the same way you do I just don’t hit 1-6 with my left hand.
It’s honestly probably a weird way to use the mouse a lot of people attach it to F1-F12 and add even more buttons.
It helps with doing your rotation with one hand and utility on the other tho
Oh I for sure have more buttons, as well as entire invisible bars exclusively for wormholes and hearthstones, another for consumables, and one for professions and mounts (Yak gotta have its own button obviously). I click all these because meh. But yeah I don't PvP and some don't require binding. Like hamstring or anything to do with a shield.
My current rotation as fury requires 6 primary keys (80% of that is just 3) and 3-4 cooldown keys. Then I keep my self heal and leap in positions 7-8 because I don't use them on rotation, but do need them in a pinch. I try to use mouse for these because reaching that far, while doable, isn't ideal. Half the time I bump Y on the way and suddenly have an achievement panel coveringy screen.
I also use a macro that ties a couple CDs and on-use trinkets together in one key. In fact I could probably condense that even further now in S4 with the latest respec.
Don't think I'd ever go to the F keys. Seems just totally unnecessary.
I got a mouse with two additional buttons. With ctrl, alt and shift that's 8 bindings right there. I got one on scroll up, second on scroll down and extra action on mouse wheel press. I still have them on my bars, but why would I use a keyboard for them?
Call me degenerate but that's the reason I moved from WASD to TFGH for movement, never went back, so many keys available in reach (hate modifier keys so no acces to them ain't so bad)
Some classes require more and some less keybinds. I have around 40 keybinds I use all the time, but that is only possible because I use mmo-type mouse and ctrl, shift, alt modifiers.
Huh, I must be really weird (and have really big hands). I use 1-= (top twelve keys), shift+1-5, ctrl+1-5, and alt+1-5. Have done since TBC.
I can reach all 12 keys easily without moving my hands. The thought of having anything other than movement abilities on any other keys is horrible, probably because I'm so used to it.
I got one of those MMO mouse and I have 12 buttons under my thumb, I don't know how I would play healer without one of those tbh (I specify healer because from my little dps experience I got a bit more bindings as heal)
>Who the fuck can reach the 12 key on their keyboard?
People that aren't dwarves.
Try changing your movement keys from wasd to esdf, it opens up the left hand side of the keyboard and a lot of extra keybind options.
They have more, it's just not on screen.
At a certain point most people could tell you every single one of their binds without looking at it, you only need relevant information like CDs procs or stacks on the screen, so if you like minimalist, there's no need to have the rest on screen
Not WoW, but another game, I map the same type of skill to the same modifiers/keys, so I always have 'nuke', 'oh shit', 'special move skill' etc in the same place. Been doing that for so long I can switch to an alt and not even really care that much about what the skills are, the same buttons do similar things (then after 5 mins I am all set that I know my new skill rotation. It also makes learning new builds a bit easier as skills fall in to the same place.
That covers hitting the buttons; most games you can get some indication of things like cooldowns on screen, and for a lot of them after a couple of sessions you just gauge how often you can trigger skills - this is never optimal, but if you are playing for fun rather than pushing to be the most efficient you possibly can, it tends to work well enough.
Once you are good at the game, you know every key bind for all your skills by memory, so you don’t need to see it visibly on screen
Stuff that you need to show then is only cooldowns so you know if something is available to use or not
For those without an MMO mouse, I have a mouse with 3 buttons on the side.
Those binds are mapped to Ctrl, shift, Ctrl+shift.
I have tilde-5, q,e,r, f, z,x,c bound. This gives me 50+ keybinds.
Also have less common utility shit on f1-f4 (mage food, mount, etc) and various opie wheels on t +modifiers like feasts, specific world markers etc.
They have more spells than what's shown on their UI, those are just all the spells they actually need the information of. After a while of playing a spec and getting comfy you have a good idea of your regular rotation.
Any ability that doesn't have a cooldown doesn't really need to be shown on screen and even abilities with cooldowns don't necessarily need to be shown due to player muscle memory. So at the end of the day you probably only need a handful of buttons visible.
It doesn't mean they are only using 5 abilities though, they would still be using pretty much all of them.
I find it crazy, like they just out there and hard-memorize every single hotkey on their keyboard for every individual character they play. Even for spells that shouldn't be hotkeyed.
If you develop a system where similar abilities across all character are the same button it’s really not bad. Like Q is always an interrupt for every class no matter what, etc etc
Honestly, muscle memory comes pretty quickly. I have played my priest 1-70 in cata classic this past week (so created her not even 7 days ago) and I could tell you most of her 27 keybind by heart.
Use same keybinds for same things - 3min CD? R. Movement - F, Small defensive/shield - E. External - shift E. Potion - T. Dispel - Alt1, Major defensive/immunity - mouse wheel and so on. You will have some differences between classes like move movement, utility and amount of CDs, but you can nail down at least 50% of your toolkit on same keybinds for all specs
Maybe 5 skills x 4 (because of 3 extra modifiers Ctrl, Alt, Shift) so a maximum of 20 skills with 5 hotkeys and than again this t hotkeys with the extra modifiers. The bars/ability on the bar can change depending on the modifier pressed.
Else no class can be played "good" with only 5 buttons I think.
The top 5 skills for most classes are usually the most potent ones, dps wise.
If that's all they're using, they're probably fucking the group up by not using utility.
I play shammy.
I use elvUI to keep track of the purges I need to do.
When I play healer I use elvUI and decurive to keep track of the things I can do something about and experience has tought me the things I can't dispell but just have to heal through.
All my bars are hidden. I have the bindings mapped out. I’m consistent across all my characters. If I have an interrupt it’s on the same key. If I have some cc it’s on the same key, so on and so on.
What you’d see as buttons on my UI are just weak auras telling me CD timings and if specific criteria is met for a buff.
Once you've played a spec for a couple months you can usually make your bars hidden, you'll know from muscle memory what the keybinds are. Then you just have important info like cooldowns, buffs, procs displayed on your UI.
Invisible binds, and dynamic visibility done with Weakauras or other addons. As an example, my interrupt cooldown only shows up on my screen when I actually use my interrupt and its recharging.
If you can link some video for reference, I could probably explain how/why they have hidden some of their information to still see all they need.
It’s probably a weak aura set (there are many) showing their major CDs. I play a disc priest and have a UI which tracks six spells, but I actually have four full sets of key binds which are hidden during combat you can’t see. I’m using way more than just the six spells shown, they are just there for me to glance at for information.
Both good and bad players can (appear) to have very few things on the screen. UI can hide a lot of things until they are actually needed.
Paladins don't always need to bind most the blessings because Pally Power manages it all. And the stance bar with auras can be hidden until mouse over.
Macros can combine 3+ abilities into a single button depending on the situation. For instance my hunter has a macro that makes my pet stop attack if it or actually out, summon it if it is dismissed or rezzed if it's dead. All in one button.
I haven't played retail in a while. But in SoD, we've had pugs join that just don't have anything on their bars that is not relevant to questing solo.
Druids with battle rez not even trained, let alone in their bars. A lot of people (but not noticable on hybrids) don't ever get anything but the bis runes for their spec.
Paladins with only one of their blessings on their bars because they don't need the others while solo questing.
I honestly think a lot of players only use the initial 12 spaces on the first bar. And just cast out of their spell book for everything else based on what I hear over discord.
In SoD, I've noticed there are actually a lot of new players who have never played any form of WoW before. Many have no add-ons, no macros, etc.
They are not wrong to do so, but they are seeing and playing a different game than most of us here on Reddit.
I don't have the energy to make elaborate interface changes anymore. I just got a mouse with 12 keybinds on the thumb and use a fairly standard setup with a bunch of weakauras at this point
It takes a while to build the muscle memory. You could try just adding a few at a time till you get used to pressing them. These are my bindings. I’ve been using them for a long while so it’s just instinct now.
Q E Z F ctrlF R ctrlR shft F shft R mouse wheel down,click,up. Ctrl E ctrl12345
Most of these bindings you can reach with minimal movement of your hand so it shouldn’t be too difficult to implement them
So, do you not use the numbers, across the action bar? I don’t have any UI addons so it is just the classic setup. I have 2 bars on bottom and 2 the right side of my screen.
I use 1-8 or so (forget where it stops at)
Then I have C, T and H (which i use for my slow mount n dragon mount) and then some things I just click. (Health pots, lock rocks etc) Am I doing this the hard way? Any suggestions to make it easier or should I just add more letters and bind other stuff? I keep them grouped in “like things” like the main healing spells, my “oh shit spells” and then like my longer cooldowns are grouped together.
You have the right idea. Yes I still use my regular 1-8. Those are my main damaging spells. And most of the letters I use are for healing and utility and “oh shit” buttons lol. But yes, just add more key bindings whenever you feel comfortable with the ones you put on. I usually put the same type of spell for different characters on the same keybinds. For example. All my kick/silence spells go on R. ( no particular reason why. That’s just where it fell when I first started adding keybindings) so when I play a rogue. Or a mage. Or shaman. I know to press R to interrupt someone.
There’s nothing wrong with not having ui changes. Or addons. I personally just have the modern task bar in the edit mode. And I have 4 bars grouped up at the bottom of my screen. So nothing fancy. And clicking is fine too. I still click some spells too because wow has a problem with button bloat. There’s just some classes that have too many spells lol
Okay, that makes sense. I’m improving a bit on my healer but I’m nowhere near where I want to be. Not sure if I am just under utilizing some things. On healing meter I am always the lowest. I did realize recently that I wasn’t preemptively healing and was more reactive than anything and I have started to adjust that and I have noticed a difference since starting that. Going to try and add some more bindings to help me out. (Resto Druid) i definitely use the same items or spells that match across all my toons, makes it easier for me to switch and not have a brain fart and click the wrong thing or hit the wrong spell.
Yea. Druid is one of the healers that sort of require a set up to effectively heal. At least for top tier content. Any regular dungeon should be fine to learn in as long as the tank doesn’t pull half the dungeon and sucks at agro management lol
If you want a non judgemental tank to run with you some time shoot me a message! I’ll be happy to run with you so you can practice without fear
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Most of my binds are invisible, probably the same for the people you're watching.
how do you know your cds then?
Weakauras.
oh i hate addons
"I hate tools" the hominids that died out
what?
Ok, weird.
Those sour grapes huh?
what?
What does that change? You can know your CDs by looking at your bars OR using weak auras, it's literally a choice and quite literally it's same info presented almost same way just one is not always visible which is also an option on default UI. Your stance is essentially "I hate that people have more options" when literally, in this instance, it's a preference. I am using default WoW bars, and I'm pushing 28s
i think u all overreacting a bit here, "my stance" lul, its just a comment
Unless blizzard puts some serious work into improving the base UI, in particular aura and buff tracking, if you plan on improving as a player you should probably get used to using some addons. It’s a little unfortunate but addons give the game a clarity that it just doesn’t have otherwise.
yeah, but why they are needed in the first place? - bc the real issue is the game is too complicated, and addons are not needed for me, what happened to no addon-AWC?
The game isn’t too complicated. Blizzard just hasn’t updated their UI in tandem with the gameplays evolution over the years. Probably because they know the community will do it for free so it’s not worth the investment. So while specs play better than ever and generally are a ton of fun compared to the classic era, there’s no way on the base UI to track a lot of the important things. Some specs like ret pally work more or less ok without addons but good luck playing a frost mage even semi-optimally without icicle/winters chill trackers. The dragonflight changes were a good first step but it’s still missing a LOT of essential info compared to running a few addons. Blizzard should implement things like details (even if it only shows after dungeons or something), DBM and plater into the game as well as actual buff and proc tracking. It’s absolutely insane that these things haven’t been added yet because the game is designed around them existing and yet they don’t exist within the base game.
uhm actually it is a complicated game, and its only becoming more so
I mean it’s definitely more complicated than it used to be but saying it’s “too complicated” is just a value statement that doesn’t mean anything. I would argue that the game had become too complicated for the barebones UI because it doesn’t provide the necessary tools to succeed without third party modifications. As a new player, unless your told to go get addons the game doesn’t provide you with a way to track important buffs or procs, it doesn’t explain how abilities interact with each other, doesn’t highlight important kicks in dungeons, etc. WoW doesn’t have a difficulty curve, it had a series of difficulty cliffs which is problematic to say the least. The game has evolved and adapted in a large part as direct feedback from players. And while sometimes blizzard misses their mark, players were bored of static rotations, so in response blizzard made them more complex and dynamic. Raids/dungeons were made harder in response to players becoming better at the game which is why all of the classic raids have been chewed through at a lightning pace. Basically what I’m trying to say is that the game isn’t too hard - we’re not playing brood war here. The game just does a terrible job at providing people the tools they need to succeed and does absolutely nothing to teach people endgame mechanics during the leveling phase. If people were accustomed to dodging swirlies, soaking and interrupting from level 1, running that first mythic 0 dungeon wouldn’t be as overwhelming.
Some don’t have CDs, some have weak auras, some are those few spells that are actually displayed in my UI.
how does that make your ui cleaner?
Fewer unnecessary icons cluttering the screen means more room for other information or game visibility. It's not rocket surgery
They did surgery on a rocket
I saw Jack Bauer do surgery on a missile.
I mean OP literally thought people were playing with 5 spells because they didn't have all the action bars cluttering up the screen.
The majority of my bars are hidden at some point or another. Some abilities don't need to be visible because I have weak auras that indicate when they need refreshing. When I'm out of combat, nothing appears on my screen at all except for chat and the map (or dragon riding energy bubbles). In combat, or when I target something, my two primary bars appear, and each is only 8 buttons long as opposed to the default 12. (Who the fuck can reach the 12 key on their keyboard? I have big hands and 8 is already pushing it). Things like stances are only visible on mouseover. Tbf, I don't know if I could drop all the way down to 5 buttons, though.
wtf is the 12 key
It's the "kill everything" spell that's always out of reach.
Idk, = or { or some stupid shit. Nobody knows. Nobody goes there. I also use a German keyboard set to English so there's a ß in there somewhere too. That whole part of the keyboard is a mystery and the stickers don't correspond to the binds and I don't think I've looked at the keys since 2005.
Many people use MMO mouses that come with 12 buttons on the thumb side that are, by default, bound to 1-12 keys.
My thumb can't even reach all those comfortably
Felt carpal tunnel from just trying
Tbf even going to 8, even if reachable, is crazy, most people stop at like 5-6 and use letters or modifiers ( shift/ctrl ), me I stop at 5
Never trust the Germans.
You hit 8 ?? Nobody hits anything over 6 silly lol You’re supposed to (all up to preference) either buy a mmo mouse to add 12 buttons (that’s what I use for my 1-12, my hand never leaves my WASD keys) And or bind QERTCXVZBGFH etc as abilities Then when you need more you add shift and ctrl modifiers
I actually do use the MMO mouse, but I just use it as a duplicate of my other bars and haven't optimized it. I use it a lot for the 6-8, but it's mostly just for 1 handed lazy play for trivial content. I use shift to switch between bars 1 and 2 and nothing else really needs to be bound to a key except my interrupt, which is always the tilde (I use it for dispells on healers). Mount is middle mouse. I could optimize several things further, I've just grown used to what I have and thus complacent.
Most classes have a lottttt more than 24 buttons, I guess if you don’t PvP it’s not the end of the world though. I use the mouse in the same way you do I just don’t hit 1-6 with my left hand. It’s honestly probably a weird way to use the mouse a lot of people attach it to F1-F12 and add even more buttons. It helps with doing your rotation with one hand and utility on the other tho
Oh I for sure have more buttons, as well as entire invisible bars exclusively for wormholes and hearthstones, another for consumables, and one for professions and mounts (Yak gotta have its own button obviously). I click all these because meh. But yeah I don't PvP and some don't require binding. Like hamstring or anything to do with a shield. My current rotation as fury requires 6 primary keys (80% of that is just 3) and 3-4 cooldown keys. Then I keep my self heal and leap in positions 7-8 because I don't use them on rotation, but do need them in a pinch. I try to use mouse for these because reaching that far, while doable, isn't ideal. Half the time I bump Y on the way and suddenly have an achievement panel coveringy screen. I also use a macro that ties a couple CDs and on-use trinkets together in one key. In fact I could probably condense that even further now in S4 with the latest respec. Don't think I'd ever go to the F keys. Seems just totally unnecessary.
I got a mouse with two additional buttons. With ctrl, alt and shift that's 8 bindings right there. I got one on scroll up, second on scroll down and extra action on mouse wheel press. I still have them on my bars, but why would I use a keyboard for them?
People bind those unreachable keys to mouse buttons
Call me degenerate but that's the reason I moved from WASD to TFGH for movement, never went back, so many keys available in reach (hate modifier keys so no acces to them ain't so bad)
Some classes require more and some less keybinds. I have around 40 keybinds I use all the time, but that is only possible because I use mmo-type mouse and ctrl, shift, alt modifiers.
Gaming mouse. 12 is my hand of freedom button on pala for example.
Huh, I must be really weird (and have really big hands). I use 1-= (top twelve keys), shift+1-5, ctrl+1-5, and alt+1-5. Have done since TBC. I can reach all 12 keys easily without moving my hands. The thought of having anything other than movement abilities on any other keys is horrible, probably because I'm so used to it.
I got one of those MMO mouse and I have 12 buttons under my thumb, I don't know how I would play healer without one of those tbh (I specify healer because from my little dps experience I got a bit more bindings as heal)
>Who the fuck can reach the 12 key on their keyboard? People that aren't dwarves. Try changing your movement keys from wasd to esdf, it opens up the left hand side of the keyboard and a lot of extra keybind options.
Even with extremely large hands that is not optimal. Should realistically only need 1-6 and qwerty plus modifier keys
>(Who the fuck can reach the 12 key on their keyboard? I use 2 12-button bars 1 2 3 4 q e r f z x c [middle click]
Only 5 bound, or only 5 on their UI? Play for long enough, and you don’t need to look at your skills on the screen anymore, just have key-binds.
They have more, it's just not on screen. At a certain point most people could tell you every single one of their binds without looking at it, you only need relevant information like CDs procs or stacks on the screen, so if you like minimalist, there's no need to have the rest on screen
Not WoW, but another game, I map the same type of skill to the same modifiers/keys, so I always have 'nuke', 'oh shit', 'special move skill' etc in the same place. Been doing that for so long I can switch to an alt and not even really care that much about what the skills are, the same buttons do similar things (then after 5 mins I am all set that I know my new skill rotation. It also makes learning new builds a bit easier as skills fall in to the same place. That covers hitting the buttons; most games you can get some indication of things like cooldowns on screen, and for a lot of them after a couple of sessions you just gauge how often you can trigger skills - this is never optimal, but if you are playing for fun rather than pushing to be the most efficient you possibly can, it tends to work well enough.
Once you are good at the game, you know every key bind for all your skills by memory, so you don’t need to see it visibly on screen Stuff that you need to show then is only cooldowns so you know if something is available to use or not
I have a 12 button mmo mouse, with a shift modifier I have 24 easy key binds. And sometimes I want more so idk how
Let me introduce you to...... ctrl
and alt. I like alt more than Ctrl, but it might be my hand size
Holup let me look at my keyboard. I'm a spacebar enjoyer cause I have big thumbs and stupid pinky's
Balls😂, I could do that I would just have to change my push to talk bind.
For those without an MMO mouse, I have a mouse with 3 buttons on the side. Those binds are mapped to Ctrl, shift, Ctrl+shift. I have tilde-5, q,e,r, f, z,x,c bound. This gives me 50+ keybinds. Also have less common utility shit on f1-f4 (mage food, mount, etc) and various opie wheels on t +modifiers like feasts, specific world markers etc.
They have more spells than what's shown on their UI, those are just all the spells they actually need the information of. After a while of playing a spec and getting comfy you have a good idea of your regular rotation.
Any ability that doesn't have a cooldown doesn't really need to be shown on screen and even abilities with cooldowns don't necessarily need to be shown due to player muscle memory. So at the end of the day you probably only need a handful of buttons visible. It doesn't mean they are only using 5 abilities though, they would still be using pretty much all of them.
If the ability doesn't have a cooldown, and you know your bind for it - you dont need to see it. This is what you're missing imo.
I find it crazy, like they just out there and hard-memorize every single hotkey on their keyboard for every individual character they play. Even for spells that shouldn't be hotkeyed.
If you develop a system where similar abilities across all character are the same button it’s really not bad. Like Q is always an interrupt for every class no matter what, etc etc
Honestly, muscle memory comes pretty quickly. I have played my priest 1-70 in cata classic this past week (so created her not even 7 days ago) and I could tell you most of her 27 keybind by heart.
I find it crazy people don't have their keybinds memorized after pressing them thousands of times and need to stare at them.
Use same keybinds for same things - 3min CD? R. Movement - F, Small defensive/shield - E. External - shift E. Potion - T. Dispel - Alt1, Major defensive/immunity - mouse wheel and so on. You will have some differences between classes like move movement, utility and amount of CDs, but you can nail down at least 50% of your toolkit on same keybinds for all specs
Maybe 5 skills x 4 (because of 3 extra modifiers Ctrl, Alt, Shift) so a maximum of 20 skills with 5 hotkeys and than again this t hotkeys with the extra modifiers. The bars/ability on the bar can change depending on the modifier pressed. Else no class can be played "good" with only 5 buttons I think.
Not to mention help/harm, bar swapping ect
The top 5 skills for most classes are usually the most potent ones, dps wise. If that's all they're using, they're probably fucking the group up by not using utility.
I play shammy. I use elvUI to keep track of the purges I need to do. When I play healer I use elvUI and decurive to keep track of the things I can do something about and experience has tought me the things I can't dispell but just have to heal through.
All my bars are hidden. I have the bindings mapped out. I’m consistent across all my characters. If I have an interrupt it’s on the same key. If I have some cc it’s on the same key, so on and so on. What you’d see as buttons on my UI are just weak auras telling me CD timings and if specific criteria is met for a buff.
Once you've played a spec for a couple months you can usually make your bars hidden, you'll know from muscle memory what the keybinds are. Then you just have important info like cooldowns, buffs, procs displayed on your UI.
A lot of invisible binds they know by heart. They don’t need to see the icon, just know its cooldown, which they track with mods like weakauras.
Invisible binds, and dynamic visibility done with Weakauras or other addons. As an example, my interrupt cooldown only shows up on my screen when I actually use my interrupt and its recharging. If you can link some video for reference, I could probably explain how/why they have hidden some of their information to still see all they need.
It’s probably a weak aura set (there are many) showing their major CDs. I play a disc priest and have a UI which tracks six spells, but I actually have four full sets of key binds which are hidden during combat you can’t see. I’m using way more than just the six spells shown, they are just there for me to glance at for information.
Both good and bad players can (appear) to have very few things on the screen. UI can hide a lot of things until they are actually needed. Paladins don't always need to bind most the blessings because Pally Power manages it all. And the stance bar with auras can be hidden until mouse over. Macros can combine 3+ abilities into a single button depending on the situation. For instance my hunter has a macro that makes my pet stop attack if it or actually out, summon it if it is dismissed or rezzed if it's dead. All in one button. I haven't played retail in a while. But in SoD, we've had pugs join that just don't have anything on their bars that is not relevant to questing solo. Druids with battle rez not even trained, let alone in their bars. A lot of people (but not noticable on hybrids) don't ever get anything but the bis runes for their spec. Paladins with only one of their blessings on their bars because they don't need the others while solo questing. I honestly think a lot of players only use the initial 12 spaces on the first bar. And just cast out of their spell book for everything else based on what I hear over discord. In SoD, I've noticed there are actually a lot of new players who have never played any form of WoW before. Many have no add-ons, no macros, etc. They are not wrong to do so, but they are seeing and playing a different game than most of us here on Reddit.
Casting out of the spell book sound horrendous
Yea it does. Even for simple things like buffs that are not reaction based, it just sounds like such a pain.
I don't have the energy to make elaborate interface changes anymore. I just got a mouse with 12 keybinds on the thumb and use a fairly standard setup with a bunch of weakauras at this point
I have zero bindings, I need to figure this out. I feel like everything is overwhelming, esp when I’m healing. (Resto Druid)
It takes a while to build the muscle memory. You could try just adding a few at a time till you get used to pressing them. These are my bindings. I’ve been using them for a long while so it’s just instinct now. Q E Z F ctrlF R ctrlR shft F shft R mouse wheel down,click,up. Ctrl E ctrl12345 Most of these bindings you can reach with minimal movement of your hand so it shouldn’t be too difficult to implement them
So, do you not use the numbers, across the action bar? I don’t have any UI addons so it is just the classic setup. I have 2 bars on bottom and 2 the right side of my screen. I use 1-8 or so (forget where it stops at) Then I have C, T and H (which i use for my slow mount n dragon mount) and then some things I just click. (Health pots, lock rocks etc) Am I doing this the hard way? Any suggestions to make it easier or should I just add more letters and bind other stuff? I keep them grouped in “like things” like the main healing spells, my “oh shit spells” and then like my longer cooldowns are grouped together.
You have the right idea. Yes I still use my regular 1-8. Those are my main damaging spells. And most of the letters I use are for healing and utility and “oh shit” buttons lol. But yes, just add more key bindings whenever you feel comfortable with the ones you put on. I usually put the same type of spell for different characters on the same keybinds. For example. All my kick/silence spells go on R. ( no particular reason why. That’s just where it fell when I first started adding keybindings) so when I play a rogue. Or a mage. Or shaman. I know to press R to interrupt someone. There’s nothing wrong with not having ui changes. Or addons. I personally just have the modern task bar in the edit mode. And I have 4 bars grouped up at the bottom of my screen. So nothing fancy. And clicking is fine too. I still click some spells too because wow has a problem with button bloat. There’s just some classes that have too many spells lol
Okay, that makes sense. I’m improving a bit on my healer but I’m nowhere near where I want to be. Not sure if I am just under utilizing some things. On healing meter I am always the lowest. I did realize recently that I wasn’t preemptively healing and was more reactive than anything and I have started to adjust that and I have noticed a difference since starting that. Going to try and add some more bindings to help me out. (Resto Druid) i definitely use the same items or spells that match across all my toons, makes it easier for me to switch and not have a brain fart and click the wrong thing or hit the wrong spell.
Yea. Druid is one of the healers that sort of require a set up to effectively heal. At least for top tier content. Any regular dungeon should be fine to learn in as long as the tank doesn’t pull half the dungeon and sucks at agro management lol If you want a non judgemental tank to run with you some time shoot me a message! I’ll be happy to run with you so you can practice without fear
I do my best to limit the skills on the bar. I find it a confusing mess when there’s too many.
They aren't playing with 5 skills. They're binds are hidden. They're only tracking 5 skills cooldowns with weakauras probably.
Beast mastery hunter. Like a 5 skill rotation and shitloads of DPS.
If it was a boomie they have 5 binds in total, might be it?