Job action combos one button

[Saimeren]

I'm out of easy reached keys as is. I know I could better utilize my off gcd ability if I wasn't having to find my mouse cruiser only to click there set to alt or ctl

Let's say you use 1,2,3,4,q,e,z,x,c,v,f,r,t

That's 13 buttons directly around your left hand. Then you have ALT, Shift and Control. So that's 39 keys. You can also make a macro to switch to a hidden bar behind your main bar for an extra 12 slots on the same keybinds.

You have access to 51 different keybinds with just those few buttons.

You're not out of keybinds.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

Let's say you use 1,2,3,4,q,e,z,x,c,v,f,r,t

That's 13 buttons directly around your left hand. Then you have ALT, Shift and Control. So that's 39 keys. You can also make a macro to switch to a hidden bar behind your main bar for an extra 12 slots on the same keybinds.

You have access to 51 different keybinds with just those few buttons.

You're not out of keybinds.

I have very large hands, pressing alt and another key at the same time every 10 or 20 seconds is really painful if I play for more than 20 or thirty minutes. Imagine if you have arthritis, sclerosis, or whatever.

I see no way pressing ctrl + something is not hurtful after some time, be it for my hands, or for people with smaller hands. So that's 26. Take into account that, because of my hands, pressing x or c while moving will be hurtful after some time, that's 22, and that's more than most classes have.

I still have no issue because I have a keyboard that enables me to use f-keys easily, but what works for you may not work for others. And then again, it's an option, it doesn't take anything from you.

[Saimeren]

I have very large hands, pressing alt and another key at the same time every 10 or 20 seconds is really painful if I play for more than 20 or thirty minutes. Imagine if you have arthritis, sclerosis, or whatever.

I see no way pressing ctrl + something is not hurtful after some time, be it for my hands, or for people with smaller hands. So that's 26. Take into account that, because of my hands, pressing x or c while moving will be hurtful after some time, that's 22, and that's more than most classes have.

I still have no issue because I have a keyboard that enables me to use f-keys easily, but what works for you may not work for others. And then again, it's an option, it doesn't take anything from you.

If you have small hands you have the alt and ctrl keys. If you have big hands you have the function keys.

You also have a hidden bar behind your main bar that shares your main bars keybinds. Making a small macro to switch to that bar isn't difficult.

Heck, if I'm not mistaken you can do that with any hidden bar and any displayed bar. The macro takes up a slot on each bar, but instead of having 12 active keybinds for spells you now have 22 on one bar with only 11 keybinds.

Do that with your shift hot bar as well and you now have 44 open slots on 22 keybinds.

This is what I do. I have a bar set up with normal keybinds that feel good for me to use. I then have a second hidden bar behind it that I switch to using Caps Lock. (Mind you, I had to macro my keyboard to change caps to one of my NumLock keys because the game doesn't allow you to bind to Caps for some reason.)

And then I have a third hot bar next to my main one with all of my primary keybinds with shift modifiers.

And then a fourth bar with misc keybinds that aren't used every minute.

I have 34 active slots on 23 keybinds. (Half of which are just shift modifiers.) Plus a few misc keybinds on top of that.

It's not all that hard to find room if you get creative.

[Shurrikhan]

If you have small hands you have the alt and ctrl keys. If you have big hands you have the function keys.

The function keys, on most keyboards I've seen, are either inside the alt key (thus not preferable over Alt for larger hands anyways) or are --typically smaller-- on the far end of the keyboard...
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I agree that the use of mod and thumb keys allow for a great many accessible binds, but what a player has access to, even then, is still within particular thresholded limits based on hand size and degree of mobility, even when ignoring any difficulty in adjusting muscle memory to a new layout.

The last time I injured my hand (and wrist), the only mod key I could reliably use without pain, especially if playing more than some dozen minutes, sessions was my CAPS, which I had rebound to Alt. Adding Shift allowed me another 10 keys (QWERASFZXC) but required moving my palm down from a neutral WASD position.

That's not to say we should build the game around that degree of injury, but "just get creative" isn't particularly useful advice; there are certain movements that become unusable, unusable without pain, or unusable without pain over longer spans, whether that be stretching laterally, vertically, twisting the wrist inwardly, outwardly, or translation (due to needing to rest the weight of the hand).

To assume that anyone having problems just hasn't remotely tried to think their way out of their situation is... not great.

[Saimeren]

That's not to say we should build the game around that degree of injury, but "just get creative" isn't particularly useful advice; there are certain movements that become unusable, unusable without pain, or unusable without pain over longer spans, whether that be stretching laterally, vertically, twisting the wrist inwardly, outwardly, or translation (due to needing to rest the weight of the hand).

To assume that anyone having problems just hasn't remotely tried to think their way out of their situation is... not great.

Getting creative is good advice though. I've mentioned it twice now and not a single person who's replied to me has bothered to consider it. Use a macro that allows your primary hotbar to switch to a secondary hidden hotbar that lies directly behind your primary one that uses the exact same keybinds as your primary hotbar.

If you have 12 keys that you can use comfortably with your main hotbar, then you automatically have a second hotbar that can use those exact same keys.

/hotbar change 5

That's it. Make a macro for that and plop it on your hotbar. (yes it'll take up a slot. But doing so opens up 11 more slots.) Just change the 5 to whatever hotbar you have open that you're not using.

And then on the new hotbar you make a second macro that's the exact same.

/hotbar change 1


That's creative. That's all there is to it. You can have several hotbars share the same keybinds without any modifiers or mods/addons Ect..

Bind that one specific keybind to something easy to reach (I did Caps Lock) and every time you hit Caps lock you'll switch to a new bar full of spells that you can use with your normal keybinds.

That opens you up from having 12 hotbar slots to 22.

If you have enough mobility to comfortably reach and use any of the modifiers, then you can have a second hotbar with that modifier.

If you still need more space, make more macros for more hidden bars.

If you're able to use shift comfortably, then you can also make a hidden bar behind your shift modifier hotbar by doing the exact same thing.

Edit: You can place things like raid CD's, defensive CD's, personal heals, resurrect stuns Ect.. on the hidden bar if you don't like the thought of having to constantly switch between them to check CD's.

On my Dragoon for example, that's where I put my two heals, all my jumps, Mirage dive and Geirskogul.

It's for out of the way abilities that I don't need every few seconds, but have access to if I need them quickly.

[Shurrikhan]

Getting creative is good advice though. I've mentioned it twice now and not a single person who's replied to me has bothered to consider it. Use a macro that allows your primary hotbar to switch to a secondary hidden hotbar that lies directly behind your primary one that uses the exact same keybinds as your primary hotbar.

Such is a worthwhile way to go about it, but it assumes that those with mobility issues are nonetheless willing to toggle hotbar changes back and forth any time they want to reach a key beyond their original 10-11, doubling the button-presses of accessing other hotbars.

Moreover, using "hidden bars" prevents one from tracking any CDs on said bar. (The more reasonable, if one is fine with toggling each time they need a bar beyond the first, is typically to have your active bar faded and off screen and show all one needs to track in whatever configuration is most visible and intuitive, across however many unbound hotbars.)

Finally, you only get 10 bars. The average player uses, what, 6 of those as shared bars just for their job-swaps, quick menu items, emotes, gyshal greens, food, etc., leaving them with, if macroed, 4 bars of 9 with much awkward bar-hopping or 3 bars of 10 (more reasonable, imo)? 30 keys is typically enough, but would someone struggling with mobility really want to effectively stance-dance for every third action or so?

Yes, there are ways to deal with it, but are those so convenient and accessible that we'd want to forever preclude any option of rational consolidation for those who want it? There is no reason to believe that consolidation would necessitate that new actions be added in place of the buttons spared, ultimately changing consolidation from an option to a requirement; we've seen only the opposite over the course of expansions since HW.

[Ransu]

The function keys, on most keyboards I've seen, are either inside the alt key (thus not preferable over Alt for larger hands anyways) or are --typically smaller-- on the far end of the keyboard...

The function keys are the F1-F12 keys. What you're thinking of is the FN key is just a modifier key that tells a key to do a different input than its default input.

[ASkellington]

And then again, it's an option, it doesn't take anything from you.

Its not going to be an option, please stop saying that it is.

It isn't an option in pvp to opt out and it wasn't an option in EW update with the Gnashing Fang combo as I mentioned in an earlier post.

In the grand scheme of things is this a minor complaint for me? Yes. Which is why changing it isn't a hill I will die on.

Will I still be cursing SE out for messing with my muscle memory? Yes I will. I did when EW hit and I do so every role play quest.

[hagare]

,z,x,c,v

the rest are good, these ones I avoid xD

[Izar_Chillen]

Let's say you use 1,2,3,4,q,e,z,x,c,v,f,r,t

That's 13 buttons directly around your left hand. Then you have ALT, Shift and Control. So that's 39 keys. You can also make a macro to switch to a hidden bar behind your main bar for an extra 12 slots on the same keybinds.

You have access to 51 different keybinds with just those few buttons.

You're not out of keybinds.

I can manage 23/24 keybinds (2 x 12 row bars)

anything more than that means i have to lift my hand of of my wasd position or mouse and years of PVP in WoW (early years) and SWTOR meant that taking a hand off of wasd for movement meant i was a duck in the water

so all mine are around wasd , then shift or alt modifiers

q, a, capslock(if a game allows it), f, x, Shft+Xx, MMb, shft+MMB , shft+d , shift+spce , c , shift+c ,r - makes up my hotbar 1

1, 2, 3, 4, shift+q , shft+e. shft+f alt+1, alt+2, alt+3 ,shft+r make up my second hotbar . Ideally a class has no more than 23-24 spells to place on the hotbars , if they do ill have a few on extra hotbars in a north east direction where my mouse pointer naturally floats when im idling on the mouse

on occasion ill use f1=4 for things but i have to lift off of wasd and i dont like that.

My muscle memory and my age wont allow me to get used to more ,as i just fall over when it comes to trying to re write 15 years of mmo key bind muscle memory