Keybound: Part 2 — Planning

Let’s take a look at the keyboard. I’m going to be using a QWERTY keyboard in my examples, but of course the only significance is in what’s on the keys themselves: a standard keyboard is a standard keyboard.

Pictured here is a keyboard layout with movement keys in blue and what I consider to be conveniently bindable keys in green. Conveniently bindable basically means those that I would consider assigning combat functions (meaning no portals, hearthstone, etc.). F-Keys are very useful and unfortunately not pictured, but I prefer to use them for your typical 10, 30 or 60 minute buffs. I recommend C, X, V, R, T and Q for use with bread and butter abilities because they’re easy to access whilst in motion.

Keyboard modifiers should absolutely not be disregarded: you’ll never get by without them. I’m using binds as obscure as Alt+~ for reasonably frequent skills, and find them to work wonderfully. Just move your hand around the green areas and see what feels comfortable and easy to access.

Speaking of modifiers, I strongly recommend unbinding anything using Space and a modifier, provided you use Space for jump. If you’re jumping around and want to hit your Instant Ability of the Bind (Shift+E) you’ll be sorely disappointed to see that your character remains grounded because Shift+Space is bound to dance.

Another important consideration when planning your binds is your memory of them, and how they fit in with other characters. For example, if you’re used to playing a mage whose Counterspell is bound to R it would be a good idea to attach the R key to a similar function on other characters. It’s for this reason that the binds I use on alts may perplex anyone but myself: they make sense on my main, so I use them on my alt. You’ll see this trend in my cat form binds.

Of course, the keyboard isn’t your only tool. A decent gaming mouse — or just one with a couple of extra buttons — will work wonders. The one or two extra keys will quickly amount to essential once you’ve stuck a bunch of modifiers to them. Not to mention the incredible utility you’ll get with click-casting (more on that later). I’m using a Logitech MX518, which may not be the newest kid on the block, but I can thoroughly recommend it through years of hard use.

Some people also enjoy the use of other key-based accessories, like the Nostromo Speedpad. I can’t say I’m a fan — it seems as though you lose more than you gain — but it may be worth looking into if you don’t like the traditional keyboard style.

OK, enough about hardware. By now, you’re probably pondering about what you should “spend” your keys on, along with just what should be bound. In short, you should bind every useful combat ability at least. This would also include potions, healthstones, resurrect, and those skills that even have the slightest use. I’ll look the other way if you don’t bind sentry totem, however.

Getting down to actually binding all of those skills can be a daunting and even stressful task, particularly on an old character you haven’t played in a while, or even for someone switching to binds from a lifelong clicking career. Upon recently creating my druid, I went through a huge headache trying to find a way to elegantly implement binds in different forms and keep them relatively easy to remember. Ninoa suggested that rather than bind them as the druid levels, plan them all out at the start. I really should have started this practice long ago.

On a character old or new, planning your binds “on paper” can be an excellent eye-opener. You’ll come to realise that those once-few couple of keys can fit your universe of ever-growing binds — and then some. So I went along to Wikipedia to grab a nice SVG of the layout you see above, awkwardly opened it in Inkscape and edited binds for each of the druid’s forms. I used colour coding and prepended the modifier’s name. It took quite some time to pin them all down, but I no longer had to worry about new binds when leveling. I also had an easy, quick, printable reference in case I don’t play for a while.

So the next step is to try this yourself. Edit the template to include every bind you’ll ever need. If you’d rather print it, a PDF is available here. This may not suit your layout, so feel free to tweak it as necessary.

Hope you enjoyed the read. In the next part I’ll be deviating from tradition with the use of certain addons to get around limitations.