This is partly a repost from August ’09, but I thought it was worth updating it for Cata content. As before, please don’t treat this as me saying ‘your keybindings are wrong, change them to match mine!’ cause it all boils down to what works for you.
If you are looking at reworking your bindings, there are a couple of basic tricks that can help you come up with an efficient and comfortable layout. You may be doing this already, but hey it might be of use to someone!
Firstly, you obviously want to keep your important abilities bound to easily reachable keys/combinations. Assuming a normal sized keyboard and a lack of mutant/pianist hands, ’6′ through to ‘=’ are pretty hard to accurately hit unless you take your fingers off WASD. For PVE that’s fine, but unless you’re fighting in TB you’ll need to rebind them to other keys. If you play with your little finger (or thumb) sitting near the shift-key, you’ll be able to hit shift-modified keys as easy as an unmodified key – I don’t find left-ctrl as comfortable to use, but it’s still reachable.
Secondly, if you haven’t done this already, it’s a big help to bind reply/re-whisper to a different key (I use ‘T’/'shift+T’). ‘R’ is too easy to hit in combat – if you accidentally hit it you can really mess things up (a’la Dark Legacy Comics). I also use ‘shfit+C’ instead of ‘C’ for my character pane, but bringing that up accidentaly isn’t nearly as deadly as whispering somebody with 1112wwwwwwa.
Thirdly, I find it helps to try and keep some continuity with the keys, especially when trying out a new layout. For example, I use ’2′ and ’3′ for my finishers. In Subtlety spec, ’2′ = rupture, ‘shift+2′ = SnD, ’3′ = eviscerate and shift+3 = recuperate. When switching to Assassination, rupture/snd/recuperate remain the same, but ’3′ changes from envenom to eviscerate with the previously unused ctrl+3 becoming eviscerate. Similarly, ‘E’ is used for my combo generators and ‘Q’ for interupts. Out of stealth, ‘E’ is backstab/muti, shift+E is hemo and ‘Q’ is kick. While stealthed, ‘E’ becomes ambush and ‘Q’ becomes garrote.
If you’ve rerolled as a rogue, it would make sense to try and replicate the keys on your other characters. Hitting ` makes my rogue vanish, my DK lichborne + /target self (for the OP coil spam), my mage iceblock and my hunter feign death. It’s all about muscle memory – when things suddenly go wrong you don’t want to have to think about where your panic button is.
There are some abilities that don’t need to be used in PVP, but if you need them on your bars for PVE it’s worth getting Bartender4, or a similar bar addon. This will give you several extra bars to drag non-essential abilities onto. Bartender4 also replicates the functionality of the SnowfallKeypress addon, but more on that later.
If you have extra buttons on your mouse you might not be able to bind them from within WoW. My Logitech 518 (awesome mouse!) has 5 extra buttons that aren’t recognised ingame, but they can be remapped through the mouse software to wierd combos like ‘alt+[‘. This will let you use them within WoW and also let you modify them with shift/ctrl.
I was asked about the bindings I use in Cata – I’m not on a PC with WoW on it at the moment but I’m 99% sure this list covers everything! Here’s a picture of the keys as well – blue indicates there’s no modifier, green means it’s also used with Shift and red means it’s used with both Shift and Ctrl modifiers.
I’m currently using a UK keyboard, so have the ‘\’ and ‘z’ keys underneath the ‘a’ key. The last US keyboard I used had a large shift key under the caps-lock, which meant a little bit of rebinding keys was in order.
| Key | Action | Shift Mod | Ctrl Mod | Stealthed | Shift Mod | Ctrl Mod |
| Space | Jump | Stealth | - | Jump | Distract | |
| E | Mutilate | Cold Blood | FoK | Ambush | ||
| Q | Kick | F Kick | Distract | Garrote | ||
| 1 | Kidney Shot | Combat Readiness | - | Cheap Shot | ||
| 2 | Rupture | Slice n Dice | - | Sap | ||
| 3 | Envenom | Recuperate | Eviscerate | |||
| 4 | Gouge | F Gouge | - | Sap Macro | ||
| 5 | Disarm | F Disarm | - | Pick Pocket | ||
| V | Cloak of Shadows | PVP Trinket | ||||
| R | Redirect | Throw Macro | ||||
| ` | Vanish | |||||
| Z | Feint | |||||
| X | Vendetta macro | Unused atm | ||||
| \ | Sprint | Rocket Jump | ||||
| F | Tricks | Backstab | ||||
| M1 | Blind | F Blind | ||||
| M2 | Shiv | Focus Target | ||||
| M3 | Evasion | |||||
| M4 | Health Stone+pot | |||||
| F1 | Arena1 Target | Arena1 Focus | ||||
| F2 | Arena2 Target | Arena2 Focus | ||||
| F3 | Arena3 Target | Arena3 Focus | ||||
| Shift+MWup | Pyro rocket |
To use stealth I hit shift+spacebar – once stealthed, shift+spacebar becomes distract. Another basic trick is to bind ‘A’ and ‘D’ to strafe left/right. I have ‘shift+A’ and ‘shift+D’ set to rotate, so I can still fly around one handed if I’m eating.
I know a rogue who has ‘S’ unbound – it’s a nice way of breaking the habit of backpedaling, but there should be enough easy-to-reach keys on the keyboard to bind actions to without needing to do this.
Lastly, I always try and keep blind off the keyboard – shift+V for trinket, mouse thumb button for blind. This lets you hit both simultaneously without having to create a trinket/blind macro.
When put together, it looks a little something like this -screenshot.
Please post if you have any more tips/tricks for keybindings!
Hey man ! love the site and these keys are awesome !
would be nice if u put up a “rotation/priority” list or something like that ! thx again !
after roguerogue.com went down I was looking for such a page! THX for all your effort and work I’m realy excited to read more from you!
Any pro pvp macros you use?^^
What comp do you play currently?
cheerio
Hi,
with those that know blind typing.
For those just starting playing WoW, or games in general, I’ll recommend moving away from WASD to ESDF (of course if your hands are large enough). This open up 3 more keys to use (QAZ). It also is…compatible
After a long period of inactivity, I started WoW again and made this change. After a few hours of training, I had no problem adapting to the new key-bindings. I thought it well on where to bind each spell/ ability/ macro and I’m really happy with the new layout.
Pretty similar keybinds to what I use, I can only suggest adding G and T to it as they aren’t too hard to reach especially if your index finger is resting on F as it should do. The hardest keybind I find to reach is Shift+\ as I generally out of habit use my little finger for \ so then have to change habits to use the shift as well. I really should move Mutilate from 2 to E but hard to change the habit of years!
@ASID I wish I’d moved to ESDF when levelling 80-85! It really does look like it opens up more of the keyboard, maybe if I painted ESDF bright yellow it would help….
@Stu Z is the key I struggle with hitting consistently, and yeah it’s hard breaking habbits with keys! I swapped around the bindings for kick and dismantle for 80-85 and I was still occasionally kicking warriors and disarming priests by the time I’d levelled ><
Just realised I was being stupid before when saying index finger should rest on F, but eitherway I find G and T are very manageable.
Haha yeah I’ve done stuff like that before, mostly with CoS and Trinket. Just had idea to put disarm on the same key (with shift) as kick as that makes sense!
I recommend making Shift Lock another Control key (Google will tell you how). You can make the existing control key a Shift Lock if you really need it, but that will just confuse you in the short term. I have no use for it, so I just roll with two control keys.
That’s a much better suggestion than doing what I did, which was to pull it out with a screwdriver.
Could you make a post for Subtlety too Ive already made my own from the old thread but I would like to see what you make out of it.
thanks for your time!
@Dcruize
> maybe if I painted ESDF bright yellow it would help
If you have time, try it. I’m sure after a few hours you’ll be fine
I have all my finishers in ZXCV and use Alt as a modifier key, not Shift, since it would be hard to hit something like Shift+A. Though it looks like my thumb will get a cramp
it rests between space and Alt without problem.
I also use WU (wheel up) (Gouge) and WD (Smoke), plus, Alt+WU (Evasion) and Alt+WD (HfBlood), since I find it too easy to use and there is no need to waste it on something like zoom in/ out which I barely change. For this I have something like Shift+WU/ WD.
i bind my caps lock too well i dont talk that much anyway
I know it’s not related to keybinds but this is most recent article so am asking here. What do you do for +hit? I see you don’t take precision so do you reforge most of your crit into it and gem for it? I’m asking as I’ve just got to 85 and starting to get the blue pvp gear but have very little hit at the moment due to not having precision. Will reforging crit and gemming be enough to get the special cap and a good way into poison cap?
If you get the PVP ring with +hit on it, it should be possible to reforge enough crit/expertise to get you to the 5% hit cap without having to gem for it.
hi, whats the Vendetta macro you are using? thanks for the bindings, helps me alot.
Hi the vendetta macro is just vendetta + Unsolvable Riddle. They share the same CD so I always proc them together.
ahh yea, i had it on cb, but vendetta seems alot more logic.
thank you again.
how bout doin the sub keybinding ?
What addon do u use for this keybind, i cant make diff on steath and normal mode, i can only bind to 1 of them…like i bind kidney to 1, so i cant bind sap then.
Hi I’m not entirely sure I follow – when you stealth, it should replace the main action bar with a new one, allowing you to bind the first 12 actions to other things.
Would also love to see the sub keybinding. I haven’t played WoW in 2 years+ and just redownloaded it on a different box. Unfortunately, that means I’ve lost all my keybindings, macros, and addons. I can barely remember how to play even. Information like this really helps me get back in the game fast. Thanks!
Did you take that screenshot at 13:37 on purpose? either way, it’s awesome! hahaha
lol hadn’t noticed, no was just lucky timing hehe
i’m sorry but nobody should be using WASD at this stage of the game… moving with your mouse frees the entire keyboard AND it makes it SO much easier to move around in pvp… it takes maybe a day or 2 to get used to… please do yourselves a favor and don’t be a fail keyboard turner
lol nobody said they are using WASD to keyb turn? A/D are set to strafe…
“Another basic trick is to bind ‘A’ and ‘D’ to strafe left/right. I have ‘shift+A’ and ‘shift+D’ set to rotate, so I can still fly around one handed if I’m eating.”
LOL, Stoney. I hope to see you in arena, I’ll be one of the many rogues on a team that says “how could that guy not have noticed me chasing him while he los’d around that pillar?”
Lol I just bought a naga razor so that plus a few shift keybinds is more than enough, but good article for those who dont have the cash for the mouse.
I use WASD to move, the numpad keys are where my main attack abilities are, the ctrl+numpad keys are mostly defensive/offensive cooldowns, the shift+numpad keys are also used. Even numpad 0, ‘.’, ‘+’, ‘-’ can be included with their respective shift and ctrl modifiers. Then 1,2,3,4,5 on the top bar can reliably be used for things like potions , or other instant attacks.
Have your camera auto shift for horizontal motion only, and increase the zoom out. Macros like \target arena 1 , \target arena # are useful. Make sure you deactivate shift as self casting in the options.
An addon like Macaroon will help you create action bars that look like the numpad for visual aids, hotkey them as above, and even allow you to save button mapping profiles for quickly changing specs.
I changed my move button from wasd to only werd, W and R being strafe and E D being backwards and forward. This allowed my left pinky to press more buttons like qaz very easily. I also bought a naga. WERD took a bit of getting used to but it really helped in the long run. I also key bound auto run to my naga to free up my middle finger so it doesn’t have to press forward all the time.
How do you bind keys so that they differ when you are in stealth or not? I got the addon “bindkey” but I don’t understand how shift+space = stealth, but while in stealth if you press shift+space you distract
You could use the following;
/cast [nostealth] stealth
/cast [stealth] !distract
If you’re unstealthed, it will stealth you. If you’re stealthed, it will cast distract.
How do you make it so E does something when unstleathed but in stealth it does another?
/cast [stealth] spellname
/cast [nostealth] spellname
It will use the first one if you’re stealthed – if not, it will use the second one.