Moving to ESDF

[MiRai]

I've always been a key binding maniac, but I want more. I need more; and I think ESDF is the answer.

I've tried to move from WASD to ESDF a few times in the past, but I never really put too much effort into it and ended up reverting back to WASD soon after.

So, my question is: Those of you who've tried to make the move from WASD to ESDF...

Were you able to make it happen?
Do you remember how long it took before it no longer felt awkward? (Subjective question, yes, I know.)
Any regrets?
Any tips?

I just made the decision to try it again about 30 minutes ago while I level a new profession. I figured I'd just start slow with the movement keys and a single binding for my mount, then move on from there and practice typical number row action bar bindings on a target dummy for endless hours.

[heyaz]

I've always been a key binding maniac, but I want more. I need more; and I think ESDF is the answer.

I've tried to move from WASD to ESDF a few times in the past, but I never really put too much effort into it and ended up reverting back to WASD soon after.

So, my question is: Those of you who've tried to make the move from WASD to ESDF...

Were you able to make it happen?
Do you remember how long it took before it no longer felt awkward? (Subjective question, yes, I know.)
Any regrets?
Any tips?

I just made the decision to try it again about 30 minutes ago while I level a new profession. I figured I'd just start slow with the movement keys and a single binding for my mount, then move on from there and practice typical number row action bar bindings on a target dummy for endless hours.

I dunno about a few of those for movement keybinds. Especially F. that's a really prime keybind because it's notched and the easiest key to find on the board. That's my panic pop all healing and defenives CD because its easy to hit no matter how crazy stuff gets. From F you can easily find RTYGH just by muscle memory so those are all very important cooldowns as well. I've used R for follow since I started multiboxing.. maybe not the best but I'll probably never be able to unlearn that muscle memory.


I use A and D for backpaddle (no hold) to stop runaways.

I guess Q would make a good key for important stuff but I have most of that on RTY, FGH, CVB. For regular rotations it's ` and 1-5, past 6 is too hard to hit... F1-F4 are offensive/defensive cooldowns, F5 F6 major cooldowns like army or bloodlust. I still ran out so I had to use 1-12 on the naga... have a bunch more stuff I need to bind somehow, without crazy modifies...

might free up C and N and get out of the habit of using those for character/talent tab. Maybe Shift F,G,H, Shift R/Y would work.. testing it now cant go much further with shift. Alt and Ctrl are tricky as well.. never got big into modifiers.

[MiRai]

I've only been at this for about two hours and I already want to move back to WASD -- Just like all my other attempts.

With WASD for movement I use:

1-5,Q,E,R,T,F,Z,X,C // Shift 1-5,Q,E // Alt + Some random keys (nothing for combat) // Whatever is on my mouse

With ESDF for movement I will theoretically have:

1-6,Q,W,R,T,A,G,H,Z,X,C,V ...but I'm worried about getting used to Tab, Shift, and Alt.

I'm going to be fat fingering so much of this while I train both the ring and pinky fingers to move a little further left. I guess this will just take some practice... and patience.

I've never been a fan of binding any of the F-keys since I have to move my hand away from the movement keys to hit them, but I guess I could start using them for something that won't be needed in the blink of an eye.

[JohnGabriel]

To me WASD feels best. I don't think its muscle memory because its mirrored on the right hand ilkj feeling better than o;lk. I can just plain type WASD faster.

[hobothe1st]

I've been using E-centric bindings for a few years now and I can't imagine ever going back to WASD. Personally, I use WER for strafing/movement with Follow typically bound to D (I don't backpedal). I use three banks of keys for binding:

1 2 3 4 5 6
Q A S F G T (and optionally Y)
Z X C V B N (all of these can be reached with your thumb)

The beauty of shifting the hand over to WER, I find, is that it allows me to hit CTRL with the part of my hand just below the pinky finger. This acts like a 6th finger and doesn't require me to move my other fingers out of position--effectively doubling the number of easy-to-reach keybinds. This trick is entirely awkward to use in a WASD-setup from my experience.

I think it took me several days to adjust when I originally made the switch. But now I spam the 1 key with my pinky as if it was the only way to do it. And think, you'll be a five-fingered gamer again, just like the gamer gods intended. No more four-finger handicap for you.

[heyaz]

I've only been at this for about two hours and I already want to move back to WASD -- Just like all my other attempts.

With WASD for movement I use:

1-5,Q,E,R,T,F,Z,X,C // Shift 1-5,Q,E // Alt + Some random keys (nothing for combat) // Whatever is on my mouse

With ESDF for movement I will theoretically have:

1-6,Q,W,R,T,A,G,H,Z,X,C,V ...but I'm worried about getting used to Tab, Shift, and Alt.

I'm going to be fat fingering so much of this while I train both the ring and pinky fingers to move a little further left. I guess this will just take some practice... and patience.

I've never been a fan of binding any of the F-keys since I have to move my hand away from the movement keys to hit them, but I guess I could start using them for something that won't be needed in the blink of an eye.

With the F keys I'm particularly picky about the keyboard, some them in rows of 5, shape is different or smaller. On the G510 (and others) they are in rows of 4 and easy to hit. They may not be the best bindings (I'm sure there's a modifier that may work better) but I've been using them since vanilla and muscle memory is good. F1-F4 are all related to combat (F1 being a offensive/defensive CD depending on context), F2-F3 being a DPS/Healing CD, and F4 being a major defensive CD (iBF, Shield Wall). F5 and F6 I don't consider good bindings but I use them army of the dead which I'll do standing still several seconds before entering combat.

I have key up/key down IWT on F1-F4 because I noticed slight runaways when I was say, using AMS while in combat, so in this case they'll AMS and continue another IWT towards my target, giving me time to move back down to 1-5 which are DPS keys. I ended up doing the same for a lot of things, like fear break (lichborne/tremor/etc.) - IWT on key up so when they break fear they start running back right away.

I never get big into modifiers and I don't know how long that takes to string.. I have I think shift 3, 4, and 5 and that's about it. I supposed shift could work well with R, T, Y, F, G, H, V also. But I still fat finger FTGYH without modifers as it is (trying to pop bloodlust/pillar/skull banner and hit panic heal rotation instead, or G which activates a virtual keymap that turtles the healers - rock guys, astral shift, healing on each other, hand of protection and such, and then the rest of the team gets no healing).

I never quite find a perfect keybind setup, and sometimes I settle for less than optimal ones and just get used to it and when I try to change to something else, things get sloppy. I used G for D&D and H for Unholy Blight 9 months ago and I still accidentally hit those and end up blowing tons of cooldowns. Those are now shift+3 and shift+4.

[heyaz]

The beauty of shifting the hand over to WER, I find, is that it allows me to hit CTRL with the part of my hand just below the pinky finger. .

You know, I never thought of that. I don't use CTRL modifiers because my to get good press on it I have to move my hand down, whereas shift is just high enough I can do shift+3 for example without moving anything.

There was this video by a russian guy I think on keybindings, he had the whole keyboard mapped out and colorized, taking into account hand sizes and positioning. If you could get over the accent and broken english he was really onto something. It was geared towards good keybindings for 3v3 but he had it all setup in such a way with modifiers that your hand never has to float around and everything was always within reach.

[Ualaa]

At one point, I looked as the ESDF instead of the WASD keys.

The benefit seems to be, an extra set of keys to the left...
Having shifted the hand over, there are more binds within reach of the left hand.

I never thought of using CTRL with the palm of my hand; that's an extra benefit too.

It felt awkward, the time I tried it...
And the muscle memory felt right to be WASD.
I type fairly quickly with my index fingers on F and J, with the tabs, and the other fingers naturally on the keys that typing/keyboarding classes taught.

Then again, going from a G5/G7 to a G600 mouse, the 12 thumb buttons were awkward initially.
As opposed to two thumb buttons.
Also the third mouse button, under the ring finger took a while to get used to.
The mouse didn't feel right for a few weeks, but after a few days the binds were easy enough to use but I had to think about them.
Within a month, probably less time, the binds had been learnt.

If you stick with it, you'll adjust over time.

[MiRai]

Just a quick update: It's actually feeling pretty good at this point.

I setup a random character with their own specific key bindings and was just using them to gather herbs and fight off random low-level mobs, but the basic movement keys are setting in fairly quickly. I keep bouncing back and forth between my AH character (who is still set to WASD) and I'm quickly finding that my fingers just want to keep going to ESDF -- WASD is now feeling foreign.

Tab and Shift are both feeling good. Alt is still good for me, as well.

Personally, I use WER for strafing/movement

I used to use Q/E for strafing (I think they're default strafe keys when using WASD for movement), but I stripped left/right turn from A/D, put the strafe keys there, and then used Q/E for regular key bindings.

with Follow typically bound to D (I don't backpedal).

I've heard of using D as a non-movement key binding (from the video link below), but I do like to keep it set to backpedal since I've found it useful while tanking (have played a tank as my main for 5-6 years now).

Z X C V B N (all of these can be reached with your thumb)

I'm not sure if it's the size of my hand, but at the moment I cannot accurately hit those with my thumb.

Z, X, and C feel much more natural when using ESDF. V has always felt weird, but I think it'll be easier with ESDF since my finger is closer to it now.

The beauty of shifting the hand over to WER, I find, is that it allows me to hit CTRL with the part of my hand just below the pinky finger. This acts like a 6th finger and doesn't require me to move my other fingers out of position--effectively doubling the number of easy-to-reach keybinds. This trick is entirely awkward to use in a WASD-setup from my experience.

This is interesting and I'm going to have to play more with this. I was thinking of just re-mapping CapsLock to CTRL and then throwing CapsLock down on the Menu Key button (left of LCTRL).

I have key up/key down IWT on F1-F4 because I noticed slight runaways when I was say, using AMS while in combat, so in this case they'll AMS and continue another IWT towards my target, giving me time to move back down to 1-5 which are DPS keys. I ended up doing the same for a lot of things, like fear break (lichborne/tremor/etc.) - IWT on key up so when they break fear they start running back right away.

I've been using the mouse wheel button as my Assist/IWT while multiboxing (I keep mine separate from rotations), but I wanted to move it off of there because that's the button I use for OPie while playing solo.

I really dislike having things differ drastically for my solo/multibox setup (key binding-wise), so I wanted to free it up, but I wasn't sure where to put it. I thought about putting it on a keyboard key that I could hit while also moving/DPS'ing, but I couldn't reliably put it anywhere and, to me, it feels so natural on the mouse.

So... I'm currently stuck with how I'm going to work this.

I never get big into modifiers and I don't know how long that takes to string.. I have I think shift 3, 4, and 5 and that's about it. I supposed shift could work well with R, T, Y, F, G, H, V also.

Every time I try to think back how I played my original WoW characters in Vanilla/TBC it's all a big blur, so I can't honestly say when I got into using modifiers, but I can say that they are crucial to my playstyle these days.

I never quite find a perfect keybind setup, and sometimes I settle for less than optimal ones and just get used to it and when I try to change to something else, things get sloppy. I used G for D&D and H for Unholy Blight 9 months ago and I still accidentally hit those and end up blowing tons of cooldowns. Those are now shift+3 and shift+4.

That's why I'm trying this new stuff out. I know that I've gotten too comfortable with a less-than-optimal setup and I know that I can do better.

There was this video by a russian guy I think on keybindings, he had the whole keyboard mapped out and colorized, taking into account hand sizes and positioning. If you could get over the accent and broken english he was really onto something. It was geared towards good keybindings for 3v3 but he had it all setup in such a way with modifiers that your hand never has to float around and everything was always within reach.

Pretty sure that you're referring to this video, which is great.

Then again, going from a G5/G7 to a G600 mouse, the 12 thumb buttons were awkward initially.
As opposed to two thumb buttons.
Also the third mouse button, under the ring finger took a while to get used to.
The mouse didn't feel right for a few weeks, but after a few days the binds were easy enough to use but I had to think about them.
Within a month, probably less time, the binds had been learnt.

If you stick with it, you'll adjust over time.

I personally find fancy mice and gamepads like that difficult to buy into because I fear that I'm going to become so comfortable with a very custom mouse or keypad and then it's going to become EOL and no longer be sold. Then I'll be scrambling to find something to replace it.

Take the Cyborg MMO7 mouse for example... This thing looks like it can get the job done. It has some buttons on it that fit my hand perfect, but I find it incredibly difficult to adapt to over the typical standard mouse.

I'm afraid that if I become too dependent on that mouse's super special button placement, that I'll be screwed if I ever have to move to another mouse that won't have a similar layout. I guess I could just buy 10 of them and hope they last me for 20 years. -_-

The same thing goes for the Razer Orbweaver. I want to try one out so f'ing bad, but I find it difficult to spend $130 on something that might just be a complete waste of my time. I used to use a Razer Lachesis before I moved onto my Logitech G700 (non -s model), and I would say that both of these are very standard mice (regardless that the G700 has a lot of buttons on it that I don't actually use).

Maybe I'm just worrying about it too much.

[Multibocks]

I really really want to do this for my single gamer play lately. I'm trying to get really good at rogue in Random BG play. I want to be that guy that everyone hates because he rarely dies. I'm finding that most classes have just TOO many f"king buttons though. Druids are insane in the number of abilities you can use. I find rogues to be somewhat lower, but with 1-4, Shift 1-4, a, s, d, f, g, z, x, c, and shift d, f, g - I just can't get every ability hotkeyed. I think when you have 20 abilities hot keyed and still find the need for 10 more the game has gotten a little too complicated.

edit: MiRai you don't like the Razer Nostromo?