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[Realyn]

Question for the MMO-regulars out there.

I'm starting to get a bit overwhelmed with all my abilities. I'm an MMO noob, and so I went looking on the internet for tips. What I found were people doing all their movement with their mouse, using WASD for hotkey shortcuts, and having layer upon layer of abilites, along with a variety of binds. Basically, all kinds of crazy stuff.

Maybe someday... but for now, there's no way I could handle that. Does that mean I don't/won't have a freaking prayer later in the game, or if I start getting more serious about PvP (rather than treating it like a diversion like a do now)?


Here's what I'm using:

1-7 for my most used abilities, and shorter cooldowns.
Shift + 1-7 for longer cooldowns/less used abilities (except S+1, which I use a lot).

On the right side, I keep all the buffs and stuff I'd use before a battle, so I can just point & click. I use middle mouse for force leap, a mouse button to cycle targets, and a mouse button for auto-run.

Am I even kinda-partially-close to doing this right? Or would people laugh me out of the cantina if they saw this?

You see my interface some posts up. I changed the lower buttons to "1,2,3,4" and so on and the top ones to shift+"1,2,3,4", but thats a personal thing.

I would advice to bind "next ally target"(shift+f for me as healer) and "target of your target"(hope thats the right translation, its f for me) so you can assist someone.

Can´t really help you with your skills, sorry. But everything else does look fine? Sidebars for buffs is just good.

 

[Anticitizen One]

Glad you're enjoying it! But honestly, I feel it's absolutely one of the weakest planets in the game. You're in for a REAL treat if you're already loving it.

I like fighting the flesh raiders and those steampunk looking droids among the ruins. Reminds me of Metroid Prime.

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

You see my interface some posts up. I would change the lower buttons to "1,2,3,4" and so on and the top ones to shift+"1,2,3,4", but thats a personal thing.

I would advice to bind "next ally target"(shift+f for me as healer) and "target of your target"(hope thats the right translation, its f for me) so you can assist someone.

Can´t really help you with your skills, sorry. But everything else does look fine? Sidebars for buffs is just fine.

Awesome, thank you! I just don't want to "learn wrong" if you know what I mean.

 

[bounchfx]

Will it be F2P once you buy it like the first one? I am definitely waiting out on that one. That is the one and only MMO which I ever got into and actually bought.

yep. which is crazy considering GW2 is going to be a full open world mmo instead of completely instanced like gw1

Spoiler

and star wars...

Spoiler

 

[Realyn]

As long as it feels good for you and you are comfortable with it its fine.

You said you have the most used on 1-7 and the less used on shift 1-7. Try to change the most used to 1-4 AND shift 1-4. Also place stuff you use alot near to eachother.

A combo I use often is: 3, shift 4, 4, 3, shift 4, 4 - and so on. Hope you get my point. Its more easy for me than lets say 2 3 7 2 3 7.

 

[dimb]

For key bindings I've taken to using QERF as the base, which also leaves 1234 as easily accessible hotkeys without using shift as a modifier. Changes everything to be honest.

 

[HarryDemeanor]

Once I get back in the game I'm going to try out this guide for keybinds.

http://taugrim.com/2011/04/07/guide-to-strafing-movement-and-keybindings/

I think it would help with my performance in warzones and might make an improvement to the way I PvE.

 

[Ramirez]

For a game with "the biggest budget ever," man does this game lack that last layer of polish I had taken for granted while playing World of Warcraft.

The WoW of today and the WoW that originally launched are like two different games. I feel ToR is pretty awesome considering it's just now really starting, give them some time and I'm sure the polish of WoW will find its way here.

 

[Izayoi]

 

[Kalnos]

The WoW of today and the WoW that originally launched are like two different games.

Honestly, in terms of how polished the game played and felt, not really. WoW changed by removing a lot of the harsh grinding and time-consuming factors (LFD, Cross-realm BGs, etc).

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

As long as it feels good for you and you are comfortable with it its fine.

You said you have the most used on 1-7 and the less used on shift 1-7. Try to change the most used to 1-4 AND shift 1-4. Also place stuff you use alot near to eachother.

A combo I use often is: 3, shift 4, 4, 3, shift 4, 4 - and so on. Hope you get my point. Its more easy for me than lets say 2 3 7 2 3 7.

Spectacular! I'll definitely try that. Thank you!

Also, Dance In My Blood, that seems like it might be worth trying, too. Might be quite a bit harder to get my muscle memory going on, but might be worth it. Thanks!

 

[SpudBud]

The WoW of today and the WoW that originally launched are like two different games. I feel ToR is pretty awesome considering it's just now really starting, give them some time and I'm sure the polish of WoW will find its way here.

Yeah, game seems pretty polished for a mmo that just launched. Hell, launch week went really well from a stability standpoint.

 

[Choc]

Level 8 still on Tythoon. This planet is so much fun I don't even want to leave.

you shouldn't leave until level 10 anyway =)

 

[eznark]

What are these dailies that people are talking about?

 

[Choc]

What are these dailies that people are talking about?

as you progress through the game you get the emerging conflicts 1 2 and 3 quests

you need to do a flashpoint daily and they are worth good XP


there is also the PVP daily where you need to win 1 PVP match and then hand in the quest

thats accessible from the fleet of either side in the combat training area.

 

[Angelus Errare]

Crap, I wanted to edit my old post and quoted it.

Edit: I mean I simple dont get it. For one, why do you roll a Sage if you dont want to heal. On the other side he has only 25k more dmg. The real great thing for me is, I play solo. None of my friends are really into SWToR and my old DAoC and WoW guildis are 50 - and on another server.

You know what makes me mad all the time as well? Lvl 15 guys screaming in the /1 chat "LFG DD FOR XX". JEEZ CHRIST. It doesn´t matter what your group comp is at that level, just take the next best guy. And is it so hard to write"Does someone want to do ..." or smth ? I feel like I´m only playing with 15 years old who use "xDDD ^^^^ omg WTF" all the time. I really need to find an adult guild.

Because they wanted to roll a DPS caster?

 

[Won]

Opened a ticket earlier today, now I see it's closed and all I got was an automated response. Great service right there.....
I hope there is an follow up on this.

 

[Carm]

I haven't actually tried it myself, but from everything I've read the light armor will have less armor than the heavy one, given the same armoring mod.

And that pisses me off. Found this out this morning wasting money on the light armor suit on CE vendor. It came out to something like 40 armor less than the blue I had previously, using the best mods I could on the current planet I was on.

 

[Jira]

Will it be F2P once you buy it like the first one? I am definitely waiting out on that one. That is the one and only MMO which I ever got into and actually bought.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=440171

You're welcome.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Game really is gorgeous at times. Wish they put more of the world stuff going on in more places, such as low flying ships, battles in back ground, and other little details. Liked the parts on Balmorra where it always seemed to be an ongoing war going on, nice little touches. Some planets have this kind of stuff near space ports but not so much outside.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

Question for the MMO-regulars out there.

I'm starting to get a bit overwhelmed with all my abilities. I'm an MMO noob, and so I went looking on the internet for tips. What I found were people doing all their movement with their mouse, using WASD for hotkey shortcuts, and having layer upon layer of abilites, along with a variety of binds. Basically, all kinds of crazy stuff.

Maybe someday... but for now, there's no way I could handle that. Does that mean I don't/won't have a freaking prayer later in the game, or if I start getting more serious about PvP (rather than treating it like a diversion like a do now)?


Here's what I'm using:

1-7 for my most used abilities, and shorter cooldowns.
Shift + 1-7 for longer cooldowns/less used abilities (except S+1, which I use a lot).

On the right side, I keep all the buffs and stuff I'd use before a battle, so I can just point & click. I use middle mouse for force leap, a mouse button to cycle targets, and a mouse button for auto-run.

Am I even kinda-partially-close to doing this right? Or would people laugh me out of the cantina if they saw this?

That's probably all right for the most part.

What I do (and what you probably will want to do) is bind A and D to strafing - turning is useless. You can turn with the mouse. This frees up Q and E for abilities.

The other thing is that you probably don't want any "core" rotational abilities beyond 5 or 6 at the most or you'll be stretching far or moving your hand to reach them. You want to have everything you need and more frequently used cooldowns on 1-5, Q, E, R, T, F, G, X, and Z. There's a few other keys around there you can use as well, but I like to have quick access to the character pane and the like. You'll use Shift primarily, but also Control and Alt to modify all these keys that are in reach, and that should cover everything you need to react to quickly.

Long buffs, or big cooldowns (e.g. Bloodlust in WoW) don't need to be keybound as you won't be using them that often. In the case of something like Bloodlust, it's probably better not to have it bound so you don't accidentally hit it at the wrong time - or make it a keybind that's more unusual and doesn't overlap with other commands - something you couldn't mistakenly hit.

As others have said though, it's what you feel most comfortable with. But what I've described is mostly what I have gotten used to and is generally the most efficient. You already have a few other things on the mouse which is what I do as well - taunts are a good ability to bind there, for example.

Still, I often don't bother to customize too much until hitting a certain threshold of skills, and having a specific setup usually isn't too important until max level or close to it - when you have everything you're going to get. Until then, you might be shuffling things around as some skills might become obsolete for a certain spec.

 

[Izayoi]

Opened a ticket earlier today, now I see it's closed and all I got was an automated response. Great service right there.....
I hope there is an follow up on this.

There won't be. I submitted a ticket a couple days after launch and they didn't get back to me with an automated response for over a week. Said that the issue was marked as "under investigation" and have yet to get back to me about it again. :|

 

[Kalnos]

1-6 (or 7+ if you're crazy) + Q + E + R + T+ F + G + V+ C + B + ~.
Need more binds? Shift + 1, Shift + 2.. etc.

If you run out of shift binds you could move to ctrl or alt. I prefer alt which is where I usually put long buffs, mounts, that sort of thing.

 

[antiquegamer]

How's that possible when bioware said they're coming out in spring?

I got them for my son for Christmas. May be it's spring in Bioware world.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

Once I get back in the game I'm going to try out this guide for keybinds.

http://taugrim.com/2011/04/07/guide-to-strafing-movement-and-keybindings/

I think it would help with my performance in warzones and might make an improvement to the way I PvE.

I still like to have WASD for movement though. At the very least when tanking. You can't move backwards with a mouse (unless you had some wacky keybinds), and having the mouse free to click on spawning adds while also moving is pretty important. Hell, for any spec, being able to move while also precisely selecting targets is important. For DPS or PvP, I could see giving it up though. Healers play a different game, especially if you're using mousover macros to heal (even if macros aren't in SWTOR yet), so keeping the mouse free to heal while moving out of fire with the other hand is important there.

 

[Realyn]

So, just did Hammer-Station with my 19 sage and a lvl 21 jedi tank and it was simple as fuck :/. The last boss was kinda hard because our companions died to grenade spamm without dodging. Will the next flashpoint be more challenging ?

I really liked Esseles story wise, but Station sucked balls.

 

[KaYotiX]

So, just did Hammer-Station with my 19 sage and a lvl 21 jedi tank and it was simple as fuck :/. The last boss was kinda hard because our companions died to grenade spamm without dodging. Will the next flashpoint be more challenging ?

I really liked Esseles story wise, but Station sucked balls.

yes they get harder, you didnt expect them to just toss new players into hard flashpoints did ya?

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

That's probably all right for the most part.

What I do (and what you probably will want to do) is bind A and D to strafing - turning is useless. You can turn with the mouse. This frees up Q and E for abilities.

The other thing is that you probably don't want any "core" rotational abilities beyond 5 or 6 at the most or you'll be stretching far or moving your hand to reach them. You want to have everything you need and more frequently used cooldowns on 1-5, Q, E, R, T, F, G, X, and Z. There's a few other keys around there you can use as well, but I like to have quick access to the character pane and the like. You'll use Shift primarily, but also Control and Alt to modify all these keys that are in reach, and that should cover everything you need to react to quickly.

Long buffs, or big cooldowns (e.g. Bloodlust in WoW) don't need to be keybound as you won't be using them that often. In the case of something like Bloodlust, it's probably better not to have it bound so you don't accidentally hit it at the wrong time - or make it a keybind that's more unusual and doesn't overlap with other commands - something you couldn't mistakenly hit.

As others have said though, it's what you feel most comfortable with. But what I've described is mostly what I have gotten used to and is generally the most efficient. You already have a few other things on the mouse which is what I do as well - taunts are a good ability to bind there, for example.

Still, I often don't bother to customize too much until hitting a certain threshold of skills, and having a specific setup usually isn't too important until max level or close to it - when you have everything you're going to get. Until then, you might be shuffling things around as some skills might become obsolete for a certain spec.

Thank you for the detailed breakdown, I really appreciate it!

I'll fiddle a bit over the next couple days, and take all the advice into account. Hopefully I can settle on something after a few hours. Thank you.

 

[Realyn]

yes they get harder, you didnt expect them to just toss new players into hard flashpoints did ya?

Well I´m 25 hours in right now, thats quite a bit. I´m just dissapointed because Station was a real step backwards compared to Esseles for me.

Edit: for the luls. I have autorun on Mouse3(wheel)

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

Gotta admit... I laughed pretty hard:

 

[HarryDemeanor]

I still like to have WASD for movement though. At the very least when tanking. You can't move backwards with a mouse (unless you had some wacky keybinds), and having the mouse free to click on spawning adds while also moving is pretty important. Hell, for any spec, being able to move while also precisely selecting targets is important. For DPS or PvP, I could see giving it up though. Healers play a different game, especially if you're using mousover macros to heal (even if macros aren't in SWTOR yet), so keeping the mouse free to heal while moving out of fire with the other hand is important there.

That's true. I'm going to tweak it a bit though and see how it works. If it doesn't go right I'll just do what everyone else does.

 

[Data West]

So far I'm digging the Trooper class story more than the Agent's

Agent was kind of boring to me with

Spoiler

ok go here and deal with miniboss. see hologram of eagle. repeat

just felt like desk work

Spoiler

The Trooper's betrayal start makes me feel a lot more invested in seeing where this goes. Also, Aric's pretty cool

 

[Jugendstil]

I gotta say, getting my key binds and mouse organized properly has really made huge difference. My Sniper is steam rolling through Nar Shadda for the most part because I've now got my timing down for most battles. I had trouble with a boss battle on Balmorra and it forced me to really think about my setup and how I was approaching things. After getting hosed by the boss 4-5 times, I came back in with my new setup and breezed through the fight. Felt good!

Also, whoever recommended putting strafe on A and D, that sounds brilliant, I'll try it tomorrow.

 

[Ken]

Oof, Mandalorian Raiders is tough.

 

[Meicyn]

I am amazing.

 

[oneils]

Just finished Tatooine. Here are some shots.

 

[kayos90]

Glad you're enjoying it! But honestly, I feel it's absolutely one of the weakest planets in the game. You're in for a REAL treat if you're already loving it.

Alderaan is the weakest so far for me. My favorite was Balmorra and Nar Shadaa

 

[BurningNad]

So, I leveled a Marauder to 32. Meh. Started another character.

Got a Sith Assassin to 25. More fun that the Marauder, but still, not feeling it.

Created an Imperial Agent. I'm in love. He is now level 20. I love this class. Operative ftw.

 

[Sigfodr]

So, I leveled a Marauder to 32. Meh. Started another character.

Got a Sith Assassin to 25. More fun that the Marauder, but still, not feeling it.

Created an Imperial Agent. I'm in love. He is now level 20. I love this class. Operative ftw.

I'm loving the gameplay on Scoundrel (mirror of operative). I've made a couple other classes, but they bore me.

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

Alderaan is the weakest so far for me. My favorite was Balmorra and Nar Shadaa

I could agree with that. So far in my opinion:

Nar Shadda > Coruscant > Tatooine > Tython & Alderaan

 

[Azzurri]

So I'm pvping on my Sage, and all I see is Lighting and more lighting, haha

 

[TheYanger]

I highly recommend retaining all of your movement keys, yes I even like keeping Q and E as strafes, while tanking or trying to target things on the move it is invaluable to have mouse control while turning, it's not hard to circle strafe and things with those keys while still clicking on things in the game world AND hitting your basic hotkeys.

As for binds, those are highly personal. But you seem to have the general idea. A lot of high end MMO players will bind stuff all over by WSAD, like Q E R F C V g X Z etc. I don't care for that, but it's an option for a lot of extra binds, plus modifiers.

I personally have 2 thumb buttons on my mouse, which I map to alt and shift in my mouse software, and then bind things to 1-7, alt 1-7, shift 1-7, and then F1 through F5. I use the farther keys for things I don't need to use in a pinch, mounting etc.

 

[Cystm]

http://www.abload.de/img/swtor2011-12-2801-31-4n4cp.png
http://www.abload.de/img/swtor2011-12-2803-07-dd6tj.png
http://www.abload.de/img/swtor2011-12-2821-49-lu6er.png
http://www.abload.de/img/swtor2011-12-3101-01-hc5vx.png

Nice shots.

 

[vitaminwateryum]

Downed Bonethrasher in 8-man hardmode tonight

 

[reggieandTFE]

Well I´m 25 hours in right now, thats quite a bit. I´m just dissapointed because Station was a real step backwards compared to Esseles for me.

Edit: for the luls. I have autorun on Mouse3(wheel)

The next couple for you are kind of weak. They really pick up again with Taral V and Maelstrom Prison. There's also some awesome KOTR story connections in the later flashpoints.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

So far I'm digging the Trooper class story more than the Agent's

Agent was kind of boring to me with

Spoiler

ok go here and deal with miniboss. see hologram of eagle. repeat

just felt like desk work

The end of Act 1 will more than make up for it.

 

[Alex]

How are the GAF (US) guilds doing? I'm thinking of making an alt, checking to see if it didn't all fall apart like all the WoW guilds did pretty quickly over the years :lol

 

[Jakeh111]

So far Empire is holding strong, not sure what will happen when we all cap out tho.

 

[Alex]

So far Empire is holding strong, not sure what will happen when we all cap out tho.

Anyone on who could toss me an invite? Making a character named Serenade.

 

[Angelus Errare]

So far I'm digging the Trooper class story more than the Agent's

Agent was kind of boring to me with

Spoiler

ok go here and deal with miniboss. see hologram of eagle. repeat

just felt like desk work

Spoiler

That is nothing more than a tease to the real story