Well, my old UI wasn’t cutting it any more. I’ve ignored it as long as possible, and when 3.1 hit, I could ignore it no longer. 6 abilities that need to be woven around each other does not lend itself well to my old 1-2-3-4 SV keybindings. I’m also not willing to install any new addons! What’s a hunter to do?
Well, to start with, I took inventory of the addons I could use. I have bartender4 for action bars, and power auras. That should be enough, right? Well, what I wanted was a heads up display that allowed me to see what shots were off cooldown without having to stare at the bottom left of my screen.
Like most (lazy) people, I have just about every trained ability somewhere in the massive bloat of action bars I keep attached to the bottom and sides of my UI. I know I almost never use feed pet, but when I do, it’s sorta close to the top right. I know that I’ll almost never have to use tame pet, but I have it in the same bar I keep my alchemy and blacksmithing buttons. Well, burying explosive shot somewhere in that mess will no longer do for me. Additionally, I wanted to optimize my key bindings.
Action bars
I have 6 abilities that need to be tracked and easily used. In order of frequency, it’s steady shot, explosive shot, aimed shot, serpent sting, black arrow, and then kill shot. The priority is completely different (see my rotation post for details). I put all 6 on a new action bar (without taking them off my old one), and made it click through and only visible in combat with bartender. I moved it about an inch higher than the head of my character when I’m zoomed out, and that way I can always stare at the cooldowns while using my peripheral vision to track other stuff going on (like adds, fire, void zones, etc).
Now that I’m staring at that, I figured I would reconfigure power auras to display my debuff tracking visual queues closer to the “center of action”. I use some of the strings that BigRedKitty posted when he first started survival, slightly modified. Specifically, I use his aspect of the viper, serpent sting, hunter’s mark, low mana, and lock and load auras. I added an aura of my own that tells me when black arrow is available, even if it’s in the middle of a global cooldown.
I moved all my notification auras up a few inches to surround my new action bar of 6 abilities. Since only my viper aura is visible out of combat, my screen is clear unless I’m fighting something. When I am, I can see my cooldowns and auras without having to look at the bottom left action bar and the top middle boss debuffs.
Key Bindings
As for key bindings, I have surprisingly little real estate. I can’t easily move while pressing shift-4, for example. This means that any abilities I bind with a shift have to be only used while standing still, like steady shot. But, like I said, I fire steady shot a lot and adding a shift for it doesn’t make ergonomic sense. So, not counting shift and control key combos, my real estate was pretty slim. I use W, A, S, and D to move, Q and E to turn (if my mouse is otherwise occupied), R to reply, C to open my character screen, which leaves precious little else. Also, I am unwilling to unlearn various muscle memory tasks like aspect switching with Z and pet attacking with F.
My solution was to put my most commonly fired shots on 1, 2, 3, and 4, and then my least commonly fired (but very important) shots, black arrow and kill shot, onto shift-F and X, respectively. It took some getting used to, but I’m glad I did it. Some of you won’t already have an affinity for the Z and F buttons that you don’t want to unlearn, so you’ll have a little more flexibility than me.
That’s it for now folks- until next time!
It sounds like I’m doing something similar. It’s hard to describe w/out a screen shot, but here goes.
I use Dominos for my action bar. I created a bar w/my Survival shots and have it centered beneath my toon. The buttons are bit larger in size too. I use PowerAuras to track my cooldowns and have the auras positioned above each button (e.g., my Black Arrow aura is right above my Black Arrow button). I also use OmniCC which places a cooldown time on each button.
That probably makes little sense, but I agree that for Survival, PowerAuras and a bar addon are a must.
Yeah, and the goal is to have to unlearn and relearn as few things as possible. So I usually suggest that people work with the addons they have. Tellmewhen is a possible alternative to power auras, and there are any number of action bar mods that would work :)
What a waste of C and R! Bringing up the character screen and replying to a chat should be done out-of-combat (so then you can take the time to click the button/name) so don’t waste key real-estate that you could be using for something more time-critical in combat.
For me, C is wing clip and R holds a modifier intense macro for my aspects (not saying that my keys are the most efficient, but I am getting there), default being Dragonhawk. Your results may vary, but the character screen does not need to be bound to a key, let alone one that is so close to WASD! You WANT to click to bring up menus and dialogs, save the keys for skills, the closer to WASD (assuming you use those to move) the more precious they are.
THANK YOU for rebinding Z and X, at the least (default is sheath weapon and sit, 100% useless). Q and E are still inefficient, but tollerable if you seriously find yourself in situations where for whatever reason you can’t turn with the mouse. (Damn that soda pop!)
Also, not saying that this is the case, but if your computer beeps when you’re strafing right and trying to press C or something, you can get keyboards that will register the keypresses and save you headache.
If you must have R bound to reply, at least make it something like ALT+R so you can save unmodified R for a skill (obviously not a macro that uses modifiers, in that case).
There’s my two Q’s, other than that (which made me cringe), thanks for the great guide.
I have to weigh the cost of unlearning muscle memory against the value of using C and R ;)
The ideal would be having keybinds that knew whether I waa in combat and acted appropriately…
A bit tardy to say so, but don’t forget to use the space bar!
“The space bar?” you ask. “The space bar,” I reply. Don’t bind it away from jump (unless you’re never ever going to do ledgeboss again…), but shift+space and ctrl+space are both easy to hit “panic buttons”. Wing Clip and Disengage are there for me (the latter being incredibly useful in pretty much every raid I’ve ever done). Bind tab away from next target, use ~ for cooldowns or aspects… there are more buttons near WSAD than many realize!
Thank you! I hadn’t though of that… in fact, shift space would be a perfect place for my disengage!
Except you usually want to jump and disengage at the higest point. You’ll go further and you’re more likely to get over lumpy terrain.
mouse4 = aimed
shift mouse4 = multi
mouse5 = expl shot/hand rocket macro
shift mouse5 = steady
shift scrollup = vipersting
shift scrolldwn = Black.A / serpent macro
F = FD,shadowmeld maacro
Shift F = killshot
shift e = rapid fire and crap pet cds
V = aspect of dragonhawk
Shift V = .. of Viper
W AD = walking
R = detterence
1,2,3,4,5 = traps
6 = revive pet
PVP
mouse3 = scatter
shift mouse3 = wyvern
scrollup = melee macro( raptor,mongoose, wingclip)
scrolldwn = conq shot
G = flare / pet autoattack macro
Q = hunters mark
E = target enemy
Z = bandages
X = call pet/dismiss macro
C = Mend pet
B = Aspect of the cheetah
S = disengage
shift spacebar = masters call
Ctrl spacebar = notro boosts + freeze trap macro
Tab = tranq shot
Ctrl scrolldwn = Scorpid sting
:P i aint no clicker
forgot
H = character pane
J = pvp pane
shift b = all bags ( i ue only this for bags)
ctrl b = keyring
All the keys near my movement keys are bound. The most valuable are 12345, ZXCVB, RFTG, YH. There’s no reason to have these do in-town UI things like look at your character pane. You can click for that.
My personal choices (PvP oriented):
1 = steady shot
2 = raptor strike, mongoose bite, startattack
3 = aimed shot
4 = serpent sting
5 = black arrow
6 = conc shot
Z = pet special ability (e.g. web)
shift+Z = other pet special (e.g. roar of sacrifice)
X = hunter’s mark
shift+X = hunter’s mark + send pet etc.
C = wing clip
V = wyvern sting (mouseover, focus, etc.)
R = disengage (with wing clip)
F = explosive shot (with stuff macro’d in)
T = PvP trinket
G = kill shot
When I’m kiting I’m generally holding down Q, and hitting space, and you can figure out the rest.
Good info man thanks, but I was wondering if you can kindly take a screenshot of your UI and posting a link so we can all see and get an idea of how we can set up our UIs.
Im pretty sure we would all appreciate it :D.