Standardized Action Bars

I'm sure this is not a new concept but I hadn't seen any posts about it so I thought I'd throw this into the ring. While running my priest/hunter duo I got accustomed to using certain keys for certain actions. Healing rotations/spells on the 9, 0, -, and = keys, Follow on the 1 key, pet on 2, dps rotation on 3, aoe on 4 ect.... Now I always have used the 1 key for my follow/assist macros on all of my multiboxing groups. While playing my Lock with my priest the other day I put spells in the same spots on the lock without thinking. I now find myself always going for the #3 dps rotation key, so I pretty much have to move my other teams and alts to putting their dps there.

Wouldn't it make sense to use the same general layout for all of my characters/teams so that they are interchangeable to a degree? Does anyone do this? Are there special considerations to take into account? I'm just thinking this would be effective if for some reason I decided to run my Druid through an instance with 4 of my paladins, or switch my Lock to my Shaman group for a while, ect...

*Edit*

Not awake yet, sorry my post is kinda rambling. Really what I'm looking for is an opinion on how difficult it is to coordinate 3-4 teams to allow a bit of interchanging on a regular basis. The goal would be to set it up so that I don't have to switch anything (other than the /follow/focus/assist macro) if I was switching a dpser for another dpser or a healer for another healer.

Go to your keybindings window, then click the little checkbox in the upper right called "Make these character specific key bindings". Voila, now all your characters can have different bindings for each key :) You should do this for every character.

I understand what you are saying and yes its fairly simple to do - I'd go crazy if i didn't do it this way. I have 3 tanks and swap priest/shaman for healing and mage/shaman for dps. My dps 'kill' buttons are the same whether mage or Shaman and my 'heal' buttons are the same for priest or shaman.

My totem buttons are empty when playing the mages so its funny when habit kicks in and I hit my totem keys and nothing happens!


I think its a good idea and you should work it that way.