Azeroth Advisor is shutting down on February 17th. To be honest I have never used their service so I wouldn’t know what this means, but it’s apparently a pretty popular thing for some WoW players. I guess we’ll see what it becomes when their new MMOG comes out.
Icecrown Citadel now has weekly quests. Not that the daily dungeon quest, the Wintergrasp weekly quests, the weekly raid quests, the cooking/JC/fishing daily quests, and tournament quests weren’t enough for your plate.
Blizzard announced that they will be integrating the Armory with the Auction House. It will involve some kind of premium feature as well. The community is up in arms over Blizzard charging players for certain things that they feel entitled to. Personally, I doubt I’ll use it one way or another, so it won’t really affect me or my gaming experience.
One of the quickest ways for your application to get denied by a large raiding guild is to click skills. Many assume it’s because of an elitist attitude. On the contrary (most of the time, sometimes there really are jerks out there), it’s factually true that clicking skills reduces your overall in-game effectiveness. It takes much longer to move your mouse to a skill and click it then it does to press a button on your keyboard. There is no denying that. Test it yourself. Place you finger on the spacebar and your mouse in the middle of the screen. Now try to click a skill on the bottom right before you can press spacebar down. It’s not happening.
Additionally, your mouse isn’t capable of being useful while it is delegated to clicking skills. Mousewalking is a highly accurate way to move when you need to move with finesse. Targeting, via the mouse, is also easier to do because you don’t need to return to your skill bar once you’ve clicked something. Not to mention its usefulness for healing. You can mouseover heal (where you simply have to hover your mouse over someone’s name) with Clique or macros or simply use the mouse for targeting while you walk and cast with your other hand. Additionally, using Clique you can assign certain click-cast abilities to the raid frame to be able to click for instants and use your keyboard for casting spells.
I’ve heard a lot of excuses, but most of the time it’s because no one has tried it before they talk poorly or say the dreaded “I can’t do it.†Sometimes they say they’re left handed and can’t put their fingers on WSAD (which can be remedied by placing your right hand on JKIL, the alternative to WSAD. KOL: also works for some). So my first request, if any of you out there want to improve but don’t want to give up the mouse is to try it.
If you’re an arrow key user I have another rarely used alternative, especially if you’re left handed. The numpad makes an excellent gaming area. You have 8456 for movement and 79 for strafing. Then you have for skills. It’s not the most efficient and doesn’t give you easy access to modifiers like CTRL, SHIFT, or ALT but it’s something to consider.
So, how do you set things up? Well, place your left hand with your middle finger on W and the other two fingers on A and D. Now, S can be used for backing up but I find it’s better to assign it to a casted ability (because you wouldn’t be moving forward while your hand hits S). Now, Q and E are by default strafe left and right. However, some people prefer to use them for abilities. I do a lot of mousewalking and don’t need them (because A and D are strafe while mousewalking). That leaves all within the reach of your hand. That’s 12 abilities, plus an additional 36 if you count the SHIFT, ALT, and CTRL modifiers.
The real trick to learning is to make sure you remember what your abilities are and keep the abilities you use the most in the most comfortable position for you. For instance, my main attack (Shred) or heal (Rejuv, Flash of Light) is bound to F because my hand can find F very easily. Other main attacks are bound to zxcv with shift-C always being my AoE attack. It can be different for you. Go to a target dummy and practice with what works best for you.
I’d like to also take a moment and talk about click-casting. Click-casting can be REALLY helpful if used as a supplement and not a crutch. For instance, Clique will let you mouseover heal removing the need to click someone before you can heal them. You can also assign right click to dispel a target and target them, so you can do two actions at once. A true timesaver if you need to pull off a debuff and follow up with a big heal.
In conclusion, if you find yourself having difficulties clicking your skills then give hotkeys a try, or if you’d like to see an improvement with how you interact with the game. I’ve known people who have jumped up 400-700 DPS or more in some cases when they finally took the leap. Then again, if you’re having fun clicking your skills and you’re content with that, then keep doing it. Games are all about fun, and in the end, that’s what really matters.
