Weaknesses
I am full of those. Weaknesses.
1. I am cocky and think too highly of my skills at times.
2. I am a pessimist and don’t believe in WoW miracles, when we still pull them off at times.
3. I am a keyboard turner.
Everything I have read in the official forums, blogs, tanking sites, they indicate I must suck, because I am a keyboard turner. It’s something I’ve tried to rid myself off for maybe…2 years? And yet, it goes against my whole playstyle. Trying so hard, yet I can’t shake it.
So how do you move from the path of keyboard noob and joke in every BG to mouse superfast turner and glorious tank zipping from mob to mob? You tell me. I am currently using my rogue to train myself once again to use the keyboard. I can now stealth and distract with the left hand while using the mouse with the right. And yet. My hand will automatically reach for my trusted friends, the arrow keys, and I will turn agonizingly slowly, but with great familiarity. When I notice I curse and vow to do better, and forget again the next mob. I do all my non-combat movement with the mouse now. It’s very comfortable. Combat begins? All the brain cells controlling my right hand turn off and I do what I have always done. Keyboard turning.
The only fight I actually remember not to keyboard turn is Murmur in Shadow Labs. That works like a charm. I practice a bit before the fight, and it works. I wonder why my mouse brain cells work there? I wish I knew. So, seasoned tanks who read this, share your insights. How can I stop being a noob, or should I just accept that I can tank well despite being a keyboard turner? Because I certainly shall not start playing FPS to learn the art of mouse-turning.
I am skipping those other weaknesses, because being a keyboard turner is clearly worse. Just ask in the official forums and feel those hot fiery waves of flames coming your way.
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As a healer and someone who has played three out of four healing classes, I’d absolutely prefer a cocky tank over one who spends far too much time explaining why he might fail on every pull, however unlikely that may be. We have that problem currently with a tank in her raid and it drives all of the healers absolutely bonkers; if the tank has no faith in himself, why should the healers feel the same about him?
I’m not quite sure how I got accustomed to turning without the aid of the keyboard. While I didn’t play many FPSes for the PC (the only notable exception being any of the Unreal games), I think it was common of many RPGs that were played in first-person; the Elder Scrolls series in particular comes to mind. My recommendation is to continue to try and wean yourself of this habit.
One thing you might consider is using the Battlegrounds as your proving ground. I found that good PvPers are often the ones who are able to react quickest to the fast-paced action that can occur on the battlefield and part of that is the ability to quickly turn and face your opponent. A trick I like using against keyboard turners when I recognize them is to quickly move behind them; this prevents their attack or spell from hitting me since I’m no longer in front of them. And the time it takes for them to turn around is plenty of time for me to get in some choice attacks of my own. The trick also works well against those who are keyboard turners, but I lose a lot of time that I could otherwise use to cast a spell or shoot some arrows into their exposed backs.
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Battlegrounds are a great way to wean yourself off keyboard turning. When I’m guarding a node in Arathi Basin or following the flag carrier in Warsong Gulch, I’ve constantly got my left mouse button down and rotating the camera to check my surroundings. If someone’s behind me and about to attack I can quickly turn around using the right mouse button and start casting. It saves a lot of time.
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@Niza – Whee, Niza!
I am doing BGs with my rogue atm, and I am really trying, but damn, it is hard. Maybe I should try AB for learning instead of AV where I don’t usually guard anything and try to recap towers.
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Confession! I use the left hand movement keys (ASDW) to turn, never the mouse. I have tendonitis in my right wrist and I *can’t* use the mouse for everything without doing myself harm. So it may be slower but I do it anyway and won’t be changing.
Only time I use the mouse to turn is when I’m running or flying long distances.
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admin Reply:
July 9th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
@Nagna – We can be the super-awesome guild of prot warrior tanks that keyboard turn, haha.
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Nothing at all wrong with us keyboard turners! If we weren’t meant to use those arrow keys, they wouldn’t be there (well, thats my theory and I am sticking to it!) Of course, I look like a total fool in PvP running around in circles instead of dashing from side to side
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The sure fire way to stop keyboard turning is to disable the buttons in your keybindings. I did that and it took about a week to fully adapt.
I still use my W and S keys for forwards and backwards. I moved the strafe keys to A and D. I made the Q key tab target and E target. That all works fairly well for me. I still have trouble trying to hit action keys (mainly 1-4) while moving forwards or backwards. Mapping devestate and taunt to my side mouse keys to hit with my thumb helped a lot too.
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admin Reply:
July 12th, 2008 at 9:59 am
@Tankette – That’s potentially scary but makes sense. My SO already said she wouldn’t want to be in the same room with me though while I learn.
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If it makes you feel better, I don’t use a mouse at all. I’m a “touchpad turner” it’s a messy dirty thing when I turn. Fortunately I don’t have to face the tank I’m healing. =P
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I can tell you how I did it – but it’s painful (no joke.)
Take the movement keys you usually use (I use esdf – other people often use wasd – a friend of mine still uses the arrows over on the number pad and just twists her keyboard around.)
Use the wow keybinding system to remove left and right from these keys … replace it with the strafe movements (wr / qe / 79).
Now you can’t turn with the keyboard. When you hit those keys you will simply strafe.
Get familiar with which mouse buttons do what (for me holding the right side mouse button down moves my toon – the left swings the camera only.)
Now go play battlegrounds.
(Painful right?)
But after even an hour you will start to be able to move without the keys, because there is something unpleasant about dying a lot when you don’t want to that increases the speed you deal with the learning curve.
I only bothered to learn because a lot of arena PVP guides said it was necessary – for the week or so it took to stick I went from being a decent hunter to a complete huntard who couldn’t even run a straight line o_O also painful.
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@greenhunter – That actually makes a lot of sense, as painful as it sounds. I’ll have to go check it out on my rogue, but dang, I might have to cry. Thanks for the hint!
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Bite the bullet and just do it 100%. It won’t take that long to adapt. Give yourself a few days before you are tanking one of your raids so your learning time doesn’t cause raid wipes. The BG idea is a good one. You’ll learn quickly that way.
You can’t ease into it. All or nothing.
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I use wasd + q/e for the most part – when I initially started playing, I set up my hunter with ranged on the right end of the bar and melee on the left. So then all my toons ended up with their main combat stuff on the right end of the bar – rogue, priest, shaman, etc. Rogue finishing moves ended up on right end of the bottom left bar above the main bar; priest heal spells are on the same bar; “oh sh**” buttons are all on the left end of the bottom right and the right end of the bottom left (basically, dead center).
The only toon whose main buttons *aren’t* set up like this is my warrior – I put her stuff at the left end of the main bar, with the more “sometimes” buttons on the right end. I did this because I was trying not to be a keyboard turner with her; I’m not sure it’s worked (since she still mostly solos, only being 50).
So yeah, all my hunter’s in-combat movement is wasd/qe, including my kiting. (Except Drakk… I did at least just use the mouse for that.) I generally just strafe. My rogue is a keyboard turner; I tend to use a+e instead of actually just running through/turning when, say, kidney shotting followed by backstab – which does allow me to hit them while I’m circling them, and I’m generally waiting for my energy to regen enough for the backstab, anyway. Being a shadowstep rogue, I’m getting in a bad habit of waiting for that cooldown instead of actually, you know, running up to mobs.
I do have issues with my right wrist, as well; shortly after I started playing I had to turn on click-to-move, since I do use the mouse for overland travel, and it was causing me serious pain. (Click to move does cause me occasional issues while healing – my focus macros are all right click to heal focus, and sometimes I click between buttons, and… yeah, it looks like I’m trying to flee. >.>)
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I haven’t read thru all the comments but this is how I changed my keyboard habits… completely rebind those keys. It sucks at first but it didn’t take too long to not suck at it and now I can’t imagine any other way. That also got me started in rebinding my entire left side of the keyboard… a few keys at a time. I still left forwards/backwards but they are now at “E” and “D”… I only use 1,2, and 3 for binding numbers and basically all the letters are bound since they are much easier to reach. I started using Bongos about the time I did this which makes binding any key you like must easier also. So now almost anything I need is a fast click away while I can move with my mouse at the same time.
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This is a bid late but just read some posts and it seems you finaly mastard the art of using your mouse while turning.
but the fastest way to learn would of been 1 week css or something in that span and you would of learned it by then
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