The Warlocks Den - WoW Warlock Discussions

By Thralock


Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Movement 101
3. Optimising for Movement
   1. The G5 Mouse
   2. Logitech Set point
   3. The WASD position
   4. Bartender 3
   5. Common macros to use on binding
4. Assigning Macros, Spells and Abilities
5. Example of Assignments (using mine)
6. Links to prominent threads with other examples
7. Acronyms used

Introduction
If you want to be the best warlock possible, you’re getting creamed in PVP, or you’re struggling to get the right spells off in the right situations, then this guide might be worth reading. I have spent a considerable amount of time setting up my control, hotkeys and key binds and by sharing these with the community I hope to provide a solid foundation to setting up a good control layout. I also hope to get feedback on other Den experience that can improve my own control.

Although this guide is written for right-handed persons in mind, it can be easily adapted to left-handed persons.

Let me say that there are two pre-requisites to getting good control:

1. Installing an action bar add-on such as Bartender 3; and
2. A good multi-button mouse such as G5 (and program to associate buttons to).

To understand the basis of this guide, some of the fundamental goals of the layout are:

1. Movement centric
2. Speed and efficiency of use
3. Learnability (e.g. intuitive navigation)
4. Memorability
5. Few and no catastrophic errors
6. Subjective satisfaction

Movement 101
When watching videos of successful warlocks in PVP, many aspiring warlocks comment about the warlock’s continual movement and speed. Movement is a critical requirement to surviving in PVP and helpful in many PVE situations.

When looking at the movement of a character in WoW, we have seven basic key-press movements (if keybound, in the case of strafe):

1. Forward;
2. Back;
3. Turn left;
4. Turn right;
5. Strafe left;
6. Strafe right; and
7. Jump.

I can categorically state that anyone relying on 3 & 4 is doomed to die a well deserved death. Why? It takes like 2 seconds just to turn around using this method. A gummy bear druid will always be on your back, outside most spells range, and capitalising on your slow turning. The other 5 movements are somewhat more useful and complement “moving with the mouse”.

What does “moving with the mouse” mean?
This means holding down the right mouse button to lock the control into a FPS (First Person Shooter) style of movement. What happens is that your cursor disappears from the screen and anywhere you move the mouse, your field of view follows. By using any of the keypress movement keys, you are basically free to strafe right whilst turning left whilst moving backwards - or any combination of the above. This allows for the best movement possible.

The benefit of moving with the mouse is speed; the consequence of doing this is that you cannot click on any action bars whilst moving, hence the importance of key bindings.

Is moving with the mouse really that important or that much better?
Yes.


Optimising for movement
There are several different philosophies for optimal position for the left hand movement keys and right hand for mouse. Left handed persons can easily reverse the orientation to suit.

The G5 Mouse (or any multi-button mouse with programmable buttons).
I believe that a gaming mouse is a good investment; my Logitech G5 has seven bondable controls (it’s the limited edition BF2142, the actual G5 has an extra thumb button that I am missing - if I had one, it would be my Push To Talk button in Vent =/):

• MWL – Mouse Wheel Tilt Left
• MWR – Mouse Wheel Tilt Right
• MB3 to MB5 – Mouse buttons 3 to 5. MB 1 & 2 are standard mouse clicks. MB3 is the thumb button, and MB4 and MB5 are the sensitivity change buttons)
• MSF – Mouse Wheel Scroll Forward
• MSB – Mouse Wheel Scroll Back

Each of these can be bound to keyboard presses by the “Setpoint” program that came with the mouse and can updated from Logitech.


Logitech Setpoint
In the Setpoint program, setup a new mouse configuration that loads when wow.exe is loaded.

In this configuration bind the following keys as wow won’t let you bind mouse keys:

• MB3 – F8
• MWL – F9
• MWR – F10
• MB4 – F11
• MB5 – F12
• MSF – these can be bound in wow
• MSB – these can be bound in wow

The WASD position
Traditional FPS games use the WASD position, however moving this to ESDF can open up additional key bind options. For myself, I use WASD because I use this for other games, and my pinky isn’t my strongest finger. Left handed persons could use PL:” or OKL: positions.

I find this the most comfortable position: Ring finger on A, middle finger on S/W, index finger on D, pinky on Shift/Ctrl and thumb on Spacebar or Alt. I am using a G11 keyboard, but any keyboard is ok as I don’t use the G11 buttons that much.

When coming up with keybinds, always keep in mind that moving away from WASD is bad for keeping mobility. That is, you don’t want to bind a heal potion too far away from the WASD, in fact the rest of this guide focuses on positioning binds around the WASD root position based on need for speed, efficiency, accuracy, urgency, learnablilty and memorablility.

Therefore the keys that I bind take this into consideration. If we look at the orientation of WASD we have five general planes of action keys:

• Index finger: 3456ERTFG, CV
• Middle finger: 2, X
• Ring finger: QZ1
• Pinky finger: Shift, Ctrl, Tab, tilda (i.e the ` key).
• Thumb: Spacebar and Alt

Note that these are easily reachable without “breaking” WASD position. Buttons closer to the WASD and unmodified (i.e. with out holding shift) have a greater speed value. For example 1234QERFZX are high value real-estate but we will look into this further.


Bartender 3
This add-on enables you to configure and hide various action bars (up to 10 bars with 12 buttons each).

STEP 1: 6 x Bartender Action Bars – 1 to 6
Start by setting up 6 action bars to start assigning buttons to, how they look will become irrelevant as once you get used to your key binds, first five will be hidden to provide better screen space.

STEP 2: Key binds
Opening your WoW configuration for keybindings (Escape->Key Bindings) and look for the Action Bar Functions and new Bartender 3 entries to start mapping keys (Bartender has its own key bind sections and should be labeled). The keys that I map are:

• Action bar 1: 12345ERQFXZ, Alt-S
• Action bar 2: Shift version of 12345ERQFXZ, Shift+Space
• Action bar 3: Ctrl version of 12345ERQFXZ, Alt+Space
• Action bar 4: “F8”, “F9”, “F10”, “F11”, “F12”, T, G, tilda key, Shift+Tilda, 6, MSF (Mouse Scroll Forward) MSB (Mouse Scroll Back)
• Action bar 5: Shift versions of “F8”, “F9”, “F10”, “F11”, “F12”, T, G, Ctrl versions of “F8”, “F9”, “F10”, “F11”, “F12”
• Action bar 6: Shift+MSF, Shift+MSB, Ctrl+MSF, Ctrl+MSB, Ctrl+Shift MSF, Ctrl+Shift MSB, Alt+Shift+S, Ctrl+Shift+F8, 4xspare for clicking or other binds

Special binds outside of Bartender:

• Any non-used keys for zooming in and out your zoom. I use arrow keys.
• Alt-Shift-W – for Toggle Autorun;
• Y – for Chat Reply (T has been used above);
• Shift+Y - Re-whisper (Shift-T has been used above);

Alt is Special
Alt is a button used in macros from the originating button. It is reserved (in general) for self-targeting, used to do additional spells in a macro, focus targeting or overriding something that is written into a macro. E.g. Alt-Z would self-target me for Devour Magic and/or Spell Stone.

Purposely skipped: C and V. Why? Because I’m in the habit of hitting C for character – and V and Shift V on my druid to swap into healing mode in Battlegrounds (change the hover on head life-bars so I can heal friendlies)


Common macros to use on binding
Whilst I’m not going into many details on macros, I’ll state that macros are important and that you should aim to use them wherever possible. E.g. I use the following types.

Offensive spells auto assisting example
#showtooltip
/cast [harm] Corruption; [target=targettarget] Corruption; [] Corruption

Use a trinket
#showtooltip
/use 13 {you need to have the trinket in the topmost slot, otherwise use 14}
/stopcasting
/cast [harm] Corruption; [target=targettarget] Corruption; [] Corruption


Shadowburn/Conflagrate, but fishing is relaxing too
#showtooltip
/cast [equipped:fishing pole] Fishing
/cast [modifier:alt, harm] Conflagrate; [modifier:alt, target=targettarget] Conflagrate; [modifier:alt] Conflagrate; [harm] Shadowburn; [target=targettarget] Shadowburn; [] Shadowburn

Adding an “Alt” option
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt, harm] Soul Fire; [modifier:alt, target=targettarget] Soul Fire; [modifier:alt] Soul Fire; [harm] Shadow Bolt; [target=targettarget] Shadow Bolt; [] Shadow Bolt
/assist [help]
/startattack

Focus Set Macro for Fear, Banish, Curse of Tongues, Pet abilities
/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/stopmacro [noharm]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead];[harm]
/target [target=focus]

Fear for focus example
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/petattack [target=Tremor Totem]
/cast [modifier:alt,target=focus,exists,nodead] Fear; [harm] Fear; [target=targettarget] Fear; [] Fear
/cackle

Pet Ability 1
/cast [modifier:alt,target=focus,exists,nodead] Seduction; Seduction
/cast [modifier:alt,target=focus,exists,nodead] Spell Lock; Spell Lock
/cast [modifier:alt,target=focus,exists,nodead] Intercept; Intercept
/cast Suffering
/stopattack

Pet Utility 1
#showtooltip
/use [modifier:alt] Master Spellstone
/cast [target=player, modifier:alt,pet:felhunter] Devour Magic
/stopmacro [modifier]
/click PetActionButton5 {pet dependent e.g. map Consume Shadows, Devour Magic to this button (you can change pet abilities in the pet bar}
/petautocasttoggle Cleave

Pet Utility 2
#showtooltip
/use [modifier:alt] Master Spellstone
/cast [target=player, modifier:alt,pet:felhunter] Devour Magic
/stopmacro [modifier]
/click PetActionButton6 {pet dependent e.g. Sacrifice, Imp Phase, Anguish}
/petautocasttoggle Anguish

Mount Macro
#showtooltip
/stopmacro [flying]
/use [flyable, nomounted] Swift Purple Windrider; [noflyable, nomounted] Green Skeletal Warhorse
/dismount [mounted, noflying]

Pet attack, or totem stomp when Alt held
/petattack
/stopmacro [nomodifier]
/petattack [target=Mana Tide Totem]
/petattack [target=Fire Nova Totem]
/petattack [target=Tremor Totem]
/petattack [target=Earthbind Totem]
/petattack [target=Windfury Totem]

Pet follow, or stay when Alt held
/petfollow
/petpassive
/petdefensive [nomodifier, nocombat]
/stopmacro [nomodifier:alt]
/petstay

Fel Domination and dismiss pet
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/script PetDismiss()
/stopcasting
/cast [modifier:alt] Fel Domination; [combat] Fel Domination

Soul Link, Dark Pact, CoEx
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt] Soul Link
/cast [modifier:alt] Dark Pact
/stopmacro [modifier:alt]
/cast [harm] Curse of Exhaustion; [target=targettarget] Curse of Exhaustion; [] Curse of Exhaustion

Bandage, HS and health pot
/stopcasting
/cast [modifier:alt,target=player] Heavy Netherweave Bandage
/stopmacro [modifier]
/use Master Healthstone
/use Super Healing Potion
/use Major Healing Potion

And others...


Assigning Macros, Spells and Abilities
Assigning your abilities will be dependent on what talents spec you are playing.

The critical principles to remember when assigning your abilities are:

1. Movement centric
2. Speed and efficiency of use
3. Learnability (e.g. intuitive navigation)
4. Memorability
5. Few and no catastrophic errors
6. Subjective satisfaction

Movement centric
We’ve already discussed how we try to maintain a WASD position. To further support movement, I recommend assigning instant abilities to the mouse buttons. This includes spells such as corruption, shadowburn.

Speed and efficiency of use
In this setup, the further the distance from WASD or the more modifiers you need to add (Shift, Ctrl, Alt) the slower your reactions will be. Therefore, I recommend assigning time critical/reflex abilities to the high value positions. These positions are 1234QERFZX or the mouse buttons. Abilities with long cast time can afford to be further from WASD as you can’t move and cast at the same time.

Learnability
Generally, I group offensive abilities onto the index finger, and defensive abilities on the others. This make learning them more intuitive, however given the complexity I found it important to spend time getting used to the binding so that they are second nature.

Memorability
The assignment should be easy to remember, for example group similar themed abilities to make it easier to remember. For example, Fear and Curse of Recklessnes (Rank 1) are associated with fear. Drain Life and Drain Mana are also similar.

If changing talent spec a lot or playing different characters, it might be an idea to not assign abilities in some slots that you use so that you don’t become confused. For examply, MB3 was my Curse of Exhaustion for affliction, it is also Hamstring on my warrior. I am currently FG spec, so I won’t use MB3 as it will be confusing. MB3 for me is associated with slowing someone down.

Few and no catastrophic errors
After playing with the same bindings for some time, I am now in a position to correct and fine turn some things. For example, Shift modifiers can sometimes cause errors, especially when moving fast and at one point I have had Shift-Space as Soul Shatter, because I jump a lot and I hit this too frequently blowing a 4min CD and GCD. Conclusion, keep an eye on your errors so that necessary adjustments can be made.

Subjective satisfaction
Finally, you need to be satisfied with your layout. If you don’t agree or like something, then it is up to you to modify and change it to suit your needs.


Example of Assignments (using mine)

MOUSE

MB3: CoEx
Alt+MB3: Dark Pack or Soul Link (can't have both)
Shift+MB3: Life Tap
Ctrl+MB3: Macro /script DismissPet() and Fel Domination if in combat
Ctrl+Alt+MB3: Fel Domination forced
Ctrl+Shift+MB3: Demonic Sacrifice

MB4: Fel Armor
Shift+MB4: Demon Armor
Ctrl+MB4: Manna Biscuit...yum
MB5: Unending Breath
Shift+MB5: Detect Invisibility
Ctrl+MB5: Reserved

MWL: Shadowburn (fishing if my rod is equipped =P)
Alt+MWL: Conflagrate
Shift+MWL: Curse of Agony
Shift+Alt+MWL: Curse of Doom
Ctrl+MWL: Curse of Elements (Curse of Shadows obsolete)
Ctrl+Alt+MWL: reserved

MWR: instant Corruption
Alt+MWR: Siphon Life
Shift+MWR: Seed of Corruption
Ctrl+MWR: Curse of Recklessness (full rank)

MSF – Macro pet attack alt totem stomps
Alt+MSF – Totem stomp

MSB - Pet passive/pet follow macro with alt for stay
Alt+MSB - Pet stay/passive

Shift+MSF – Summon Succubus
Shift+MSB – Summon Felguard

Ctrl+MSF – Summon Felhunter
Ctrl+MSB – Summon Voidwalker

Ctrl+Shift-MSF – Summon Infernal – never used
Ctrl+Shift MSB – Summon Imp


KEYBOARD

1 – Medallion of the Horde (use/equip)
Alt+1 - Trinket 2
Shift+1 - Will of the Forsaken
Ctrl+1 – Reserved

2 - Shadow Ward
Alt+2 - Reserved
Shift+2 - reserved for defensive consumables (protection pots etc)
Ctrl+2 – Rain of Fire Rank 1 (Stealth buster)

3 - Searing Pain (location is easy reach to say "taunt" a mob off healer before seducing/draintanking, or spammable in PVP)
Alt+3 - Unstable Affiction
Shift+3 - Immolate
Ctrl+3 – Rain of Fire (full rank)

4 - Shadowbolt (can be instant so no modifier on this themed to slow casting spells)
Alt+4 – Macro with Shadowbolt/Soul Fire
Shift+4 - Incinerate
Ctrl+4 – Hellfire (rank 1) (stealth buster)

5 - Curse of Weakness (for pets)
Alt+5 - is too difficult for me to reach from WASD position
Shift+5 - Reserved
Ctrl+5 – Hellfire (full rank)

6 – Equip wand and shoot macro

E - Pet ability macro 1 (seduce/spell lock/AoE taunt/intercept)
Alt+E – Pet abilities macro 1 on the Focus target
Shift+E - Enslave Demon
Ctrl+E – Reserved

R - Curse of Tongues
Alt+R – CoT on the focus target
Shift+R - Banish Demon (with focus target macros for an Alt-Shift version)
Crtl+R – Reserved

F – Fear
Alt+F – Fear on the Focus target
Shift+F - Curse of Recklessness (rank1 only) (antifear) for fear bouncing
Ctrl+F – Set and clear focus target

G - Soul drain (rank 1) of course don’t bother with anything else
Shift G - Health funnel

T - Drain Life (Y - is now my chat)
Shift T - Drain Mana

Q – Death Coil
Shift Q - Howl of Terror (instant or otherwise)
Alt Q – Freedom of Movement Pot

` - Main Assist macro (I edit the name manually)
Alt ` - Second Assist macro (I edit the name manually)
Shift ` - Target exact macro

Z - Pet utility macro 1 (Consume shadows, devour magic, toggle cleave etc)
Alt Z - "Dispelling" self targeted devour magic, or use Spellstone
Shift Z - Pet utility macro 2 (Sacrifice, toggle anguish etc)
Ctrl Z – Macro to devour magic on party1/partner for Arena

X - Heal Potion and Healthstone (together) macro
Alt X – Macro self targeted Bandage
Shift X - Mana potion
Ctrl X - Bandage for others
Alt S – Cannabilise

Shift Space - Swiftness pot/swim speed pot on a macro
Alt Space - Soul shatter

Alt-Shift-S – Macro for mount
Alt-Shift-W - Autorun


Links to prominent threads with other examples

• So Many Buttons... - The Warlocks Den Forums
• Do you click or bind to cast - The Warlocks Den Forums
• Too many buttons? - The Warlocks Den Forums
• Nostromo N52 - The Warlocks Den Forums
• HOt key set up - The Warlocks Den Forums
• Hotkey Suggestions - The Warlocks Den Forums

Acronyms used
FPS – First Person Shooter
WASD – Is the position on the keyboard for movement.
MWL – Mouse Wheel Tilt Left
MWR – Mouse Wheel Tilt Right
MB3 to MB5 – Mouse buttons 3 to 5. MB 1 & 2 are standard mouse clicks.
MSF – Mouse Wheel Scroll Forward
MSB – Mouse Wheel Scroll Back
CoEx – Curse of Exhaustion