My Keyboard Setup
I think every PC gamer has their own exact keyboard setup that they like to use for as many games as possible — which is why there are disgruntled folks when a title doesn’t allow remapping keys.
I thought, for lack of anything else that’s interesting this morning, to share my keyboard layout. Since my right hand is occupied with the mouse, my left handles all of the movement plus skill activations. Because your hand tends to stay put over the movement keys, the real estate around those keys becomes quite valuable. The graphic to the right there is my keyboard sweet spot — the keys that are within easy reaching distance of my fingers.
ADWX — Left, right, forward, backward. I grew up using X for backwards long before S became the standard, and I simply cannot switch to that as it feels quite unnatural. My thumb’s always over the X, switching to SZC or spacebar as needed.
QE — Strafe left, strafe right.
1-5 — My main battle rotation, skills that are used in most every battle, arranged in a way that I usually fire them off in sequence.
ZSC — I always map less-common skills that are nevertheless needed in most fights here, including “reaction” skills to battle events.
R — Auto-run
FV — These are the final two common skill keys I typically assign, and if my character has healing abilities, they’ll go here.
So I have no idea — is this the norm for most, or is this weird?
- Posted in: General
Do whatever is most comfortable to you, but as far as “normal” goes….I think that’s a bit odd
Not to say I’m not wierd BUT, here’s mine:
WASD – forward, left strafe, backward, right strafe
Q- target nearest enemy or cycle enemies (depends on the game)
E- use
R- reload for shooters, reply for MMO’s
shift- sprint
ctrl- crouch for shooters, +Z – disable UI (fer picture takin’)
1-6- hotbar, I can’t reach past 6, so those buttons on my hotbar are usually seldom used things like self buffs
num-lock- auto run (although I sometimes map this to a mouse button)
Caps-lock- for when something needs to be AWESOME
I don’t understand WASD for movement, particularly in an MMO. If you ESDF for movement, your left hand is always in home position (no transition for chatting) and you gain easy access to another column for hotkeys.
To each their own, however.
I use the typical WASD for movement with Q and E for strafing, but I have almost everything hotkeyed. I use all of the buttons around WASD, including with the SHIFT key (1-5 and SHIFT 1-5 as well, for example) and in rare cases the CTRL key (CTRL Spacebar is an easy one to quickly mash).
In a lot of MMOs, the Z X and C keys are taken to open windows. I move these to the right side of the keyboard and instead use them for hotbar actions, again also using them with SHIFT for other hotbar actions.
Not counting my mouse buttons (those account for 6 hotbar actions), I have 25 keybindings I can use for various hotbar buttons. I’d thought about getting one of those dedicated gaming WASD keyboard things, but they’re a little too pricey for me to only get a few more potential keybinds.
I know this make me weird, but I almost never remap my keys. I take whatever the game gives my and go with that.
That only key I have ever remapped is the tilde in World of Warcraft. It’s such a waste of a good hotkey, otherwise.
@Scott “I don’t understand WASD for movement, particularly in an MMO.”
It’s just because it’s the default First Person Shooter setup in most games. Is it the best way? That, like everything else online, is arguable. I think ESDF might make more sense for an MMO from a typist perspective, but as someone who plays alot of FPS’s as well as MMO’s, it’s nice to not have to remap my buttons for every game I play.
For WoW and similar MMOs:
WASD: forward, left strafe, backward, right strafe (I keep trying to rebind “S” but it never works out)
tab: cycle enemy targets
`12345, QERT, FG, ZXCV: quick reaction abilities (I play a hunter, we need tons of buttons)
Mouse buttons 4,5,6: voice comms, mouseover target macros
Shift + any of the above: engineering items, certain less-used traps and macros
I’m looking forward to the next EVE Online patch, which makes some improvements to keybinding. Right now I can get away with just using number keys to activate the few modules in my little cruiser.
I don’t understand keyboard moving in MMOs full-stop, but that’s just me
QWERTYU
FGH
CV
Is my ability setup, top-line are openers/key utility, middle is hard attacks/heals and bottom row is buffs or spare.
For the mouse, the big button on the left is auto-run, the smaller one just forward of it is my mount and the middle mouse is flying mount/other mount (now that I play LOTRO
)
So, yeah. Mouse-movement is a big nono for me, I need speed precision and comfort and that comes from using the mouse.
Well I map A,W,D for left, forward, right respectively. I don’t have a back up because turning around is always quicker than backing up
I don’t use the number keys at all, Q, E, R, S, F, and C are my attack/rotation binds where the keys closest to movement are most common and F and C and R are situational or Cooldowns.
I also bind Q, E, and R for additional situation needs.
Strafing is just holding in the right mouse button and using A and D
@Scott, I’m curious now to try moving over to E,S,F for movement keys to add A and possibly Z to lessen combos.
Let’s see:
WASD: Movement (including strafing, I don’t “turn”).
`,1,2,3,4,5: Core Healing Abilities
TAB: Target Nearest Enemy
CTRL: Vent
F1,F2,F3: Raid Save Buttons (Cleanse, DI, LoH)
Q,E: Macro Button (Mana Regen Ability, if alt pressed, Mana Pot / Bandage, if alt pressed Health Pot)
ZXC: Don’t use them yet, can’t quite reach them, but I might soon.
Clique: The bulk of my healing rotations are conducted through Clique; I’ll put up a post about this soon.
Gave up using QE as strafe long time ago, most MMOs allow you to strafe by some combination of right click and direction keys WASD. It allows me an additional two keys to bind for abilities, usually fast cast abilities that can be done on the move, as I do not need to release my movement keys to press them (hots, dots etc).
WASD: Movement
1-5: Core abilities
Q,E,F: fast reaction spells (Like Cleanse, flash heal, or CC)
`: Teamspeak/Vent, means I can talk and cast at the same time without straining my fingers
Strafing, Targeting and less-used spells are done with the mouse (such as potions, damage spells on my healer, or healing spells on my DPS)
ESDF: Movement (SF are strafing, I don’t use keyboard for turning ever)
QWRTAG: Core abilities
1-6: Secondary abilities / Heals
Shift + Previous “sets”: Any other abilities
I prefer to bind most everything I need to use. Typically I use Tab to target cycle, but if the game allows me I’ll use the mouse buttons to do my targeting.
One of these days I am going to have to start using hotkeys for skills. I still hunt them all down with the mouse and regularly panic when i get distracted and can’t find the mouse cursor.
I use a pretty standard keleyboard with wasd movement. Mouse 4 is auto run and mouse 5 is select nearest/next target or object depending on which shift or control key I press with it. Middle mouse is push to talk key for me.
WASD user here too. I find W versus S perfect because it uses the same finger. I’ve never found a situation where I wanted to go forward and backwards at the same time anyway. This leaves the thumb free to e.g. jump with the spacebar while changing forwards/backwards direction interchangeably.
Back in the Texas Instruments TI 99/4A days I used ESDX (I believe it was standard there) and in the 90′s on the PC it was just the cursor keys. I started using WASD when I saw it becoming a standard in shooters, and I experimented with it to see why.
In MMORPG I usually always reserve the Q button for a mount and E for a fast action (e.g. stun or cure). For emergency I use Keypad+ and Keypad-, since these are easy to hit fast with the right hand quickly leaving the mouse. In World of Warcraft it used to be the bubble for my Paladin on Keypad+. Hitting Keypad+ with the right hand thumb this way is actually quite efficient, especially when you really need it fast in e.g. raids.
In a moment of boredom Syp I experimented with your ADWX control scheme. How on earth do you do it? If I try to hit “X” with my thumb I invariably hit another key as well.
I have experimented with several different keyboard layouts for MMOs and Shooters. The standard WASD has the right idea for movement but doesn’t leave much room for your other fingers to do anything. Make your directional (RDFG) and you can still have easy movement with more available buttons around your hand that are easily accessible. With your pinky you can hit (S,A,CAPS) real easy in a row. With your thumb (and a bit of practice) you can hit around 6 keys depending on how big your hands are. For me these are usually (M,N,B,V,C,SPACE) with the other 3 fingers you can usually move to the keys next to the directional buttons really easy. This becomes really useful in games when you can activate all of your skills and actions without having to look down at your skill bar or anything like that. In total you should be able to quickly hit about 12 different keys, not including the movement keys. This may seem strange and complicated, but after an hour or two of playing with this system, you will have it down. I promise your gaming will improve. Mix it up, see what works best for you, try to maximize the number of buttons you can hit easily by trying different areas around the keyboard. No need to restrict yourself in a corner of the keyboard.