New to keyboard - set up tips?

[Rongway]

Let's call the difficulty of pressing a key lg(D/W + 1) where D is the distance of your finger from the target key and W is the size of the target key (Fitts's Law).

So if we're talking strictly about a one handed keyboard setup, CTRL is not a good modifier because

• if you use your thumb, it's a difficult key to hit because you have to cross under your entire palm, which will have the side effect of moving your index finger away from 4-5-6, making them harder to hit as well.
• if you use your pinky, shift is closer to resting position and larger than ctrl, and will be easier to press. With shift, the remaining fingers will not have to reach as far to hit their assigned keys.

If we allow a two handed setup, the right hand over the arrow keys places the thumb over right control for PTT; index finger on shift and in range of left arrow, ins, del; and pinky on num0 for quick interaction with mechanical objects. Having movement bound to both QWES and arrow keys will mean that if one hand is busy doing complex chords and scales, the other hand will quickly be able to execute dodges.

A bit of chord complexity isn't something to avoid if it reduces the distance your fingers need to move. alt-shift-3 is easier to hit than 7 any day, especially when those three keys just happen to be the resting positions for the three fingers involved.



Something I forgot to mention in my earlier post...set your two Face Target binds to something simple for each hand, like [`] and [\] so you can keep your target in front of you without having to wait for the GCD.

[Galactimus]

If you have buttons on the side of your mouse IE:

[1] [2] [3]
[4] [5] [6]
[7] [8] [9]

Then I recommend the following with my highest recommendation multiplied by bacon:


[1]: F11 - Targets mobs from right to left
[2]: TAB - Targets mobs from left to right

Pressing Tab on the keyboard, hitting it one too many times, and having to cycle through the entire enemy list over and over is simply annoying and unnecessary. Make your Tanking life incredibly easy by having F11 and TAB macro'd to the side of your mouse. It gives you instantaneous target acquisition and let's you back track on the enemy list just as easily. It feels so good, you'll wonder why the opposite sex was even created. (Disclaimer: Clive Hawkins does not endorse the uncreation of the opposite sex.)


[3]: Shield Lob / Tomahawk.

Having your long-range aggro attack on a button your thumb is always on prevents a ton of clumsy aggro moments as you try to fiddle with a macro bar icon in a pinch. Seriously. These are complete game changers when you have these three options placed right underneath your unused thumb.

[repoe]

I'm not a big on using ctr modifier so I use mouse for all movement and strafing with sidekeys, qwerty are my main abilitjes, aSDf are my lob vote overpowed junk, zxcv for defensive, ~ thru 5 for my weavING n stuff, shift 1 thru 5 for the rest