Advanced Training (ala "holy shit I CAN'T keyturn!")

If you somehow linked directly to this post, check out part one.


WOW!  It's been a while.

...yeah, the work of a guild master is never done it seems, but more on that another time.  Now, for more on Keybinding and mouse turning.  Welcome to the advanced course.

First, if you haven't done so, I highly recommend downloading and configuring Bartender4.  You can download it here. BT4 makes keybinding much easier, allowing you to add and remove keybinds on the fly, as well as configuring your actionbars to your liking. Much better than the default interface in my opinion, and frees up screen real estate as well.

Ok, now, I know I said this is advanced training, but really, you just need to do something simple.  Pull up your options/escape menu in WoW, go to the key binding section, and for your turning options, by default you'll have the following:

Q - Strafe Left
E - Strafe Right
A - Turn Left
D - Turn Right

What I want you to do is change it to the following:

A - Strafe Left
D - Strafe right

Just leave Q and E unassigned for now, we'll get back to those later.  That said, this will be one of the hardest things you do in your journey to improve your reaction time and learning to mouse turn.  You WILL likely freak out at first when you try to turn.  I did.  What you've done here is forced yourself to mouse turn by removing the ability to key turn.  It's weird at first, but works, and once you're used to it, a mob will never hit you in the back again. When I first made this change, my brain locked whenever I had to turn, sadly.  I was used to Q and E strafing, and losing those two keys frustrated me more than actually losing the A and D keys.  I ended up double mapping the keys at first until I made the mental shift, so A and Q left strafed, and E and D right strafed.

Once you make the shift though, it's a beautiful thing.  Here's some other tricks in no particular order:

• While you can still move forward with the W key, you'll find holding down the left and right mouse buttons together will also run forward.  It's situational, but helps to have the redundancy sometimes.
• Some people like to unmap the S key or assign it to a skill.  My experience has been to leave it alone, there are times when a little backpeddling is needed to position mobs.  Keep it, or reassign it to a side mouse button or something.
• The "jump through." Sometimes you just can't get the damned mobs positioned.  In a pinch, sometimes jumping through them and mouse turning 180 degrees gets it done.
• Sidestep shuffle.  Mob pathing is a bit weird.  They do some kind of latency check and end up just too far to the side or behind when they try to spread out in a semi-circle.  To fix this you can sidestep left and right a tiny bit, just tap back and forth a few times, and then backpeddle a step or two.
• The shockwave lock: If you stun can't get your mobs positioned in front of you, sidestep run so they line up and pop a shockwave.  They'll be stunned for 4 seconds or so, and if you position yourself where you want to be before the stun wears off, they won't move after they wake up from the stun.

 These are just a few tips from what I've learned in my time tanking.  It's a job and a responsibility, but it can be awfully fun, and is by far my favorite role in the game. Tanking is great, but everyone's run into that one tank who just doesn't cut it.  Maybe it's a DPS reroll for a quick Random Dungeon queue, maybe they're mouse turning and getting smashed in the back by the boss, maybe they just can't hold the adds. Don't be that guy. Learn and be the best tank you can be.  Everyone will appreciate it, and you'll gain the respect (and the raids) you deserve. :)

You'll note that I haven't actually mentioned my own key binds.  I find that everyone's style is a bit different, and what works for me won't necessarily work for you. However, in the interest of discovery (who knows, maybe someone can show ME an improvement ^_^ ) I'll list my own key bindings in my next post, as well as (if the binding list doesn't get too long in the tooth) some strategies when to use specific moves, and what emergency situations may arise as you tank and how to deal with them.  Actually, I never got back to it, so along with the keybind list, I'll also go over what to do with those pesky (not really) Q and E keys. :D