On the forums people pay a lot of attention to theorycraft. They’re constantly tweaking builds, comparing gear, running spreadsheets, and breaking game mechanics down to their core formulas. This is great stuff, but all your theorycrafting can come to naught if you miss the basics of playing your class. We are rogues, and we must play our characters in ways fundamentally different from other classes. I’m not talking about stunlocks and stealthing, I’m talking about keyboards and mice. Playing a rogue requires a lot of finesse. You must be fast, smart, and prepared to react. If you haven’t set up your peripherals and user interface efficiently, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage to other classes.
Ranged fighters have the luxury of standing at a distance, choosing their targets, and avoiding direct melee damage. Their primary concerns, positionally, are maintaining range and line-of-sight. Once they’re in a good spot they can stand planted, clicking away on their abilities.
Tank classes have the benefit of plate armor. They can go toe-to-toe with any class and take a serious pounding before going down. Running into the fray is the name of the game for them. What they lack in finesse, they make up for with thousands of extra hit points.
The difficulty Rogues face is that we must be right up in the face (or back) of our opponent, but we’re fragile. A few good hits will send us to the graveyard. We can defeat this weakness with our speed and mobility. So long as we’re able to move and stun, the rogue is still the deadliest class in the game.
But what if you have to split your attention between moving and attacking? What if every time you need to blind someone, you have to move your hand away from your movement keys and hit “=†? That’s time lost and damage taken. Now suppose you move your hand back, but you’re one row off? You try to run forward but nothing happens. Now you’re fumbling, your fingers are getting fat and clumsy while your character is dying.
There are two obstacles Rogues must overcome to be successful: “Keyboard-turning,†and “clicking.â€
Keyboard-turning is the practice of turning with your keyboard. Big surprise, eh? Keyboard-turning fails because it is slow. If you don’t get it, try this experiment: Using your keyboard, turn to your right. Turn forward. Look up. Turn completely around and look down.
Now, holding down your right mouse button and, using your mouse to turn, do the same thing. If you’ve never used a mouse to turn before you might be flinging your character all over the place – but you should still be able to see how much faster using the mouse to turn is. It will feel awkward at first, but over time this kind of motion will become second-nature. You can turn down the mouse sensitivity in the Interface Options menu if its default setting is too high for you.
I think the best way to learn mouse-turning is to play a couple of first person shooters. If you don’t want to do that, though, I suggest you immediately change all your turning keys to strafing keys. Strafing, if you don’t know, is another word for sidestepping. Your character will move left or right, but will still face forward. Getting rid of your turning keys forces you to use your mouse.
You’ll probably get frustrated but keep at it. You’ll adapt, and you should already be playing better - even if it feels a bit clumsy.
Clicking is the practice of clicking on your abilities onscreen rather than hitting a key on the keyboard. If you move your mouse over to the stealth icon every time you use stealth, you’re doing something wrong. Clicking is a nightmare in player-versus-player combat, because it forces you to sacrifice movement. Every fraction of a second that you’re not mobile adds up to more damage taken and less damage dealt. In order to compete, a rogue must have full freedom of movement while simultaneously using his abilities. Your hand must never stray from your movement keys, but you also need to be able to do everything.
And now some of you must be thinking, “How in God’s name is that even possible?â€
It’s no small task. You have dozens of abilities but a very limited number of viable keys. You’re probably using the w-a-s-d keys to move around, so all your function keys are out of reach. Reaching the seven key without moving your hand is damn near impossible. You lack ring-finger dexterity, so hitting z twists your hand into an inhuman claw.
The time has come to do something most gamers work hard to avoid – think.
The first step to keybinding is to list your abilities into prioritized groups. Your list may be different from mine, depending on your build, but this should give you an idea of how to go about it.
Level 63 Undead Rogue – Mutilate / Sub build.
Stealth
Most commonly used attacks:
1 – Cheap Shot
2 – Mutilate
3 - Kidney Shot
4 – Gouge
5 – Eviscerate
Frequently used alternatives:
1 – Sap
2 – Garrote
3 – Throw
4- Sinister Strike
5- Rupture
6- Ambush
Oh ****! abilities:
1 – Blind
2 – Vanish
4 – Bandage
5 - Healing Potion
3 - PvP Trinket
4 – Will of the Forsaken racial
5 – Evasion
6 – Sprint
7 - Kick
Raid abilities:
1 – Slice and Dice
2 – Rupture
3 - Expose Armor
4 – Feint
If you haven’t been keeping count, that’s twenty-two things (rupture appeared twice) you need to be able to do without moving your hands. I’m not even counting everything. I have Envenom (won’t use it though ‘cuz Mutilate), I’ll be getting Deadly Throw and Shiv soon. And then there’s a pile of non-combat abilities – lock-picking, poisons, cannibalize, disarm trap . . .
In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, don’t panic.
We’ve got this.
When faced with the plethora of abilities we have, some people start buying specialized peripherals – mice with eight buttons. Nostromo game pads. If you’ve got the cash and want to give these things a shot, go for it. Choose wisely - a lot of these devices tend to be cheap gimmicks that work poorly. I’m here to say, though, that you don’t need those things. A standard qwerty keyboard and two-button + wheel mouse will do the job just as well as anything else.
Keybinding tricks part one: Mouse of DOOM
Look at what you’re working with here. Left. Right. Wheel. A humble device, yet its potential is vast. Your right button is now relegated to turning. Your left, clicking (let’s face it, you still will need to click stuff). But the mousewheel – what is it up to right now? Zooming the camera around? Gah! How lame.
The simple truth is that your mousewheel is the most versatile AND accessible key you have. On its own it functions as three keys – up, down, and click. Now add shift, alt, and control. The mousewheel can function as a whopping twelve keys.
Blizzard has down a great job of creating a “smart†camera. Your view automatically adjusts itself whenever you enter or exit a space. Being able to zoom in and out is great, but it shouldn’t be your highest priority. Remap camera zoom to Ctrl + mousewheel up/down. Control is the most awkwardly placed of the three function-altering keys. Go ahead and use it for your camera, thereby freeing up the other nine possible combinations. This is how I mapped my stuff:
While Stealthed
Mousewheel Up = Cheap Shot
Mousewheel Down = Sap
Mousewheel Click = Distract
Shift + Mousewheel Up = Garrote
Shift + Mousewheel Down = Ambush
Shift + Mousewheel Click = Not Bound
Alt + Mousewheel Up = Pick Pocket
Alt + Mousewheel Down = Throw
Alt + Mousewheel Click = Not Bound
While Unstealthed
Mousewheel Up = Mutilate
Mousewheel Down = Eviscerate
Mousewheel Click = Blind
Shift + Mousewheel Up = Gouge
Shift + Mousewheel Down = Kidney Shot
Shift + Mousewheel Click = PvP Trinket
Alt + Mousewheel Up = Sinister Strike
Alt + Mousewheel Down = Rupture
Alt + Mousewheel Click = Will of the Forsaken
With this configuration I am able to handle the vast majority of combat without, quite literally, having to lift a finger. If you were to watch my hands while I was out questing, it would look like I was hardly doing anything at all. This is great. This is economy of motion at its finest.
Note that all of my most commonly used attacks (with the exception of an unstealthed throw) made it onto my mouse. Also note that my twitchiest “Oh ****!†buttons made it there as well (I use twitchy to describe abilities where being as fast as possible is crucial).
Of course you combat and lolstep rogues are going to have completely different keybindings. But you can use the methods I just described to figure out how best to map your mouse.
Keybinding tricks part two: Keyboard of DOOM
With all of your grunt abilities out of the way, examine what’s left. For me it is:
Stealth
Frequently used alternatives:
1 – Throw (unstealthed)
Oh ****! abilities:
1 – Vanish
2 – Bandage
3 - Healing Potion
4 – Evasion
5 – Sprint
6- Kick
Raid abilities:
1 – Slice and Dice
2 - Expose Armor
3 – Feint
That makes eleven things left to map. Now put your hand on your movement (wasd) keys and fool around. Check how far you can reach with individual fingers without moving or contorting your hand. If you’re like me, the numbers 1-5 are no problem. Also, my index finger dominates. It feels the strongest and most accurate, so it would be smart to utilize the keys closest to its resting place on d. So here I’ll list the good keys and fill the blanks:
1 = Stealth
2 = Bandage
3 = Vanish
4 = Evasion
5 = Sprint
E = Slice and Dice
R = Expose Armor
F = Kick
C =Feint
Shift+E = Throw
Shift+R = Healing Potion
And that’s it! Also there’s plenty of room to expand.
Hopefully I’ve shed some light on techniques that will help you get past your keyboard-turning, screen-clicking, noobish ways. From here on, your hands and eyes should stay put when you’re in battle.
I know that I left a lot of stuff out, such as a key to get on your mount or to open all your bags. Well, that’s what those F1 – F12 keys are for.
Once you’re comfortable with your keys, once you have them memorized, you can pretty much just hide your action bars. I like to keep my screen as sparse as possible, so all I have left in the way of buttons are my long cooldowns and my consumable – just so I can keep track of them. But really, Theo’s handling the User Interface topic on his own thread a couple posts over.