Cross-Class setups: How do you manage it all?

[EvilSqueegee]

- Consider your keyboard layout VERY carefully. I have mine over here: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2138/...bb107ab2_o.png (although I use more keys then are marked)
- Weigh the pros and cons of your setup: do you want 1 button(with modifiers?) for healing which allows you a simple setup yet you have to select a target to heal each time you want to (or have your targettarget healed) OR have 5 buttons for healing where each button will heal a specific character.

Most of it is personal preference of course.

Okay. So, the time has come to break me of my horrible keybinds. After looking at it all, I need a more efficient method of accessing spells. My current setup is clunkier than a coal-powered wheelchair with square wheels.

CLICKED SPELLS: Blessings, rezzes - and divine shield for some reason. O.o;;

TOP ROW
Tilda (the one right next to the 1 key): Grounding Totem for the shamans.
One: Purge for the shamans (god I love purge - PVP SPAMSPAMSPAM)
Two: Lightning Bolt
Three: Chain Lightning
Four: Earth Shock for the shamans, Excorsism for the paladin.
Five: Flame Shock
6: Frost Shock for the shamans, Judgement of Justice for the paladin.
7: Water Shield for the shamans. Currently Seal of Command for the paladin (seal of righteousness when the spec changes.)
8: Chain Heal for the shamans. Holy Light for the paladin.
9: Lesser Healing Wave and Flash of Light.
0: Currently in the air. I don't use it much - until very recently, this was the earth totem setup (stoneskin, Strength of Earth, and Earthbind.)
-: Water.
=: Gift of the Naruu. (always used racials on =. Dunno why, needs to change.)

Ctrl+4: Hand of Freedom
Ctrl+5: Hand of Protection

Other keybinds of note (prepare for FUBAR bindings):

Q: Follow macro. Very accessible. Constantly smashing it.
E: Nuke. EM/CL.
R/T: Thunderstorm buttons (R for roundrobin, T for EM-Thunderstorm simultaneously.)
Backspace: PVP trinket.
Shift-Backspace: Totemic Call.
Ctrl+Backspace: Hearth & Astral Recall.
i: Magma totems.
O: Round-robin Tremor totems.
P: Healing Stream Totems.
Shift+P: Mana Stream Totems.
[: Fire Nova & concecrate
]: Stoneclaw
\: Searing Totems.
Numpad Delete: Mount
Numpad 0: PVP Totem-Farm Cast Sequence
CTRL+Numpad 0: PVE Totem-Farm Cast Sequence
Nupmad 5: Spread macro (one shaman moves back, one to the left and one to the right. Breaks follow, also handy for showing off.)

Since I *will* be switching to an FTL system, I need to -not- use alt, shift, or control on targeted spells (I think. Just because I use it now doesn't mean I remember how the hell I got it working in the first place, lol.)

As you can see, I, uhm... well, yeah. I suppose a large part of the problem is that, never having played a paladin (well, I did - but it was a while ago) I don't know the whole spell list or what I'll need on-the-fly on-demand.


I'm not entirely sure if the way I've been actually controling the mouse and keyboard is efficient enough - I use the mouse to steer, but I use WASD to strafe and run around. I leave WASD on do-not-pass to keep the slaves from breaking follow.


Let me explain a little further about the cast-rotations and interfereing with a needed spell - When I find myself in a situation where the pull goes bad (or I make it go bad, I start the second pull before the first one finishes because I know I can handle it if I play it right, etc) or if I attract some world PVP to my doorstep unexpectedly, I want to operate at maximum efficiency and with as much precision as is possible. I have no problems in a fourbox group hitting the buttons 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4 instead of hitting a LB, LB, CL, ES macro. I have more precision like that - I know exactly what is being cast by who, at what, and when. That way I don't have to worry about finding mana-efficient rotations, or whether an ability is active or not for a macro. I already *know* what's on cooldown and so on, because I manually hit the buttons.

Manual control of as many abilities as possible is my goal.

That isn't to say (if I have room for it) I'm against macroing castrotations and so forth for bosses and so on, to make things run a little more smoothly - I agree, having your threat-generation castsequence macro on the same button as your DPS rotation and healing rotation makes things very very simple to manage. But what I'm after is precise control over what's going on with each toon, but to have that precise control on a global scale if you will. I really don't know how else to say it. =/

I'm pondering setting up a healing macro for each individual toon. As of now, I'm clicking unit frames in my main UI to heal individuals. I'm looking for, again, more precise and efficient control of my team. The only difficulty with that is that the toon names are all Curvy. Each toon uses a different accent over the U. I have no idea how unit frames prioritize this, so I have no idea what order the characters will be in when I look at my UI, and thus no idea how to associate the different healing buttons with the different toons.

[Dorffo]

I'm actaully planning on buying some foot peddles to "strafe" my alts around.

I've tried controlling the tank solely with my mouse and using QWEASD to control the alts, but I have been unsuccessful so far - Its really hard to break old habits.

I've got some foot pedals waiting for me once I get settled into the new place and back online for exactly that - if I recall from a few months ago it seems like we were using almost identical keymaps for the pal/sham setup. One of the things I was experimenting with before I was offline for the summer was a USB 10-key sitting to the left of my keyboard for ALT movement but I found that it didn't really buy me any response time in comparison to just stacking keyboards.

[Marious]

Good lord Evil you have a whole lot going there. Sorry but I cant see how you need to have all that, I have something similar but not nearly as chaotic as I see yours, for the most part its
1-CL, 2-LB 3-TS 4-Totem Castsequence 5-Totem recall 6- /dance (I know I forget to stop having that there FOR DPS Group only running shaman since that is what I am leveling.

1 Att(this is kind of screwy since when I do CL it stops attacking need to fix that) 6-Concecrate 7-SoR 8-HoJ 9-JoW --A.Shield/ =-HoR/watershield

Q-Follow E-Accept Macro Shift+F-mount Shift+G-Ghost Wolf Shift+H=Heart/Astral Recall

Shift+Q= Spread out Macro, Shift+1=drink/eat

Num1, Num2, Num3 heal macros.

And thats about it. I am sure I am missing stuff and I can combine some stuff but for the most part this is what I have. Seems you have way to much going on in yours, to me at least, I cant imagine what some of the other guys have going.

But if you know your system and can keep yourself alive then why change it? I tend to still strugle even with my own set up, healing is what kills me, I tend to let myself be killed because i just DPS everything. You probably do better than me even having all that you have going on.