The 5x2 Project for Healing Priests (and Paladins, Shamans and Druids)

Some week ago I read a really interesting post about something called the 5x2 project. When I read that post (and I have of course forgotten who had written it /derp), I didn't realize that it was part of a bigger project, but just thought it was an interesting post by that particular blogger. Then, some day later I stumbled across the name again however, when I was randomly browsing WoWInsider. I decided to dig a little deeper and have since read some other good posts on the subject. I am sure many of you have heard of this already, but here's a run down just in case. Possibly spurred by a post made by ghostcrawler which discusses the nature of spells and when the amount of spells used by a class can become overwhelming, Mathew MacCurley from WoWInsider decided to challenge fellow Twitterers by asking them to map down their class on as few keys as possible. The aim was 5 keys, plus one modifier key, plus middle mouse button, which makes a total of 11 keys (I am also assuming that RMB/LMB and WASD are included) (thanks to Cynwise for helping me out with this). The original idea was mainly aimed at trying to make the game more accessible to disabled players, people who might not be able to reach all across the keyboard or for other reasons are rather limited in their choice of keys. But you don't have to be disabled to see the greatness in exploring this concept, any person basically can benefit from trying to figure out just which keys are the most important and how you can simplify your keying process. Me being one with relatively small hands have always tried to avoid any key beyond the 5th since I started playing. Getting there would actually mean I have to lift my hand and press that key, something that isn't always the best thing to do. A couple of months ago I discussed the problem that I had mapped Prayer of Healing, one of my most important spells, to the 6th key, which really turned into a problem when raiding. Lifting my hand to reach that key meant I couldn't simultaenously move my character, which was bad.

As a healer I happen to have one great advantage over other classes - I target friendly targets rather than hostile ones and that makes a load of difference. Because of game mechanics, Blizzard has allowed us to interact with friendly players without actually having to target them. For some reason (probably counter-bot ones) this isn't possible for most skills used on hostile targets. And even if it was possible, there is no UI (that I know off) that collects all hostile targets into a nice little grid like you can do with your party and raid frames. Come to think of it, that would really be handy for some multi dotting action, but alas. Being able to interact with friendly targets through your party interface means you can use your mouse to do most of the healing by binding a mouse click (left or right) with a modifier key. As a healer, you rarely keep a target up and the press a key, rather you want to execute the skill and press the target at the same time. Because healers have to interact with 5-25 different targets, rather than just a few like a dpser has, it would be extremely time ineffecient to first select your target, and then cast your skill. Doing both at the same time will save you loads of time and work. The only drawback of this system is that you either need an addon or know how to write mouse-over macros to do this. Since I am daft when it comes to writing macros, this post will be around how to bind your keys like this when using an addon. I have used Clique+Grid combo, and currently use Vuhdo which basically is Clique and Grid combined. Clique and Vuhdo work exactly like mouse-over macros, but without you actually having to do anything but tell the addon how you want to map your keys.

Being able to map skills to a modifier + RMB/LMB gives you a lot of "free" space on the keyboard. If you count Shift, Alt and Ctrl as three keys, adding RMB and LMB to those gives 6 possible skills, plus one for unmodified LMB and/or RMB. 7 skills on three keys! The question is really if the mouse should count as a key or not? For this post I have tried not to use more keys than the suggested (aka 5  keys plus modifier plus MMB), assuming that WASD and LMB/RMB are already accounted. But there is of course a huge difference between having a problem say reaching for keys, and therefor wanting to keep it to a minimal, or having a problem with remembering different key setups and therefor wanting to keep it to a minimum. If reach is the only issue (something with which I struggle myself), you could still probably be able to use forward and backward key on your mouse, for example. You could also use keys that are really close to the WASD, like R, F, G, Q and E to mention a few.

The original idea aimed at only using one modifier key, and I definitely see the point. Reaching from Ctrl or Alt to another key on the keyboard isn't easy, and I don't do that myself either. But when using LMB and RMB with a modifier you're actually just pressing one key, which is a lot easier. Because of this I have argued that you could use three modifier keys with RMB and LMB, eventhough you'd maybe only want to use one modifier key for combination pressings, such as Shift + 1. Because of this many could probably use Ctrl, Alt and Shift with the mouse, and then use an added 5 and 5 + mod key skills. But for this particular project that would be bending the rules. That would in fact mean using more keys than allowed! I have therefore decided to use MMB instead, to add an additional 3 skills to the mouse, and I won't add Alt + key/ Ctrl + key because I don't personally think they're good keybinds. To stay within the limit of 6 keys however (5 keys + one modifier = 6 keys), that means I can only use 1, 2 and 3, since the other three is used by Alt, Shift and Ctrl.

As a priest I have two specs to choose from, and personally I love both. Fortunately, most unique heals in one spec has a counter-part in the other which means you can use the same key to use both spells, saving you brain power from having to remember different bindings between the specs. All you have to do is tell your Clique/Vuhdo/other similar addon to do one thing when in Holy and the other when in Disc. For mouse-over macros I think you can just put both spells into the macro, as the macro will only use the one that is available in any case. Here is my suggestion for how to map your keys as a healing priest (and this is actually how I have currently mapped most of my keys).

NOTES!

• My suggestion does not include an Archangel/Atonement spec unfortunately!
• You can actually heal by using MMB to scroll up and down on your target. I don't do this, but it does open up the access to two extra skills for those who like.
• I personally think it's a lot easier to reach keys like F, G and R than say 5 or even Shift+3, but there are other reasons you might want to keep the bindings simple and easy to remember. For this I have preferred consistency over efficiency, which isn't the same to say that you'll be a bad healer for using this setup, but that there in some cases could be slightly better mappings. But again, it all depends on what the goal should be, this time I have tried mainly to stay within the limits of the project.

RMB (unmodified) = Renew (Holy) or Power Word: Shield (Disc)
Alt + LMB = Heal
Alt + RMB = Power Word: Shield (Holy) or Renew (Disc)
Alt + MMB = Flash Heal
Ctrl + LMB = Circle of Healing (Holy) or Penance (Disc)
Ctrl + RMB = Greater Heal
Ctrl + MMB = Prayer of Healing
Shift + LMB = Dispel
Shift + RMB = Prayer of Mending
Shift + MMB = Guardian Spirit (Holy) or Pain Supression (Disc)
1 = Holy Word (Holy) or Power Word: Barrier (Disc)
2 = Binding Heal
3 = Leap of Faith
Shift + 1 = Macro to switch between Inner Fire and Inner Will
Shift + 2 = Race Specific skill if you have a useful one (Rocket Jump, Berserker, Stoneform, Arcane Torrent to mention a few) otherwise Mass Dispel
Shift + 3 = Pot/Healthstone

Comments
Various dps skills: Unless your Raid leader shouts "EVERYBODY DPS THEIR PANTS OFF!" because you're dang close to the bosses berserking timer, or you're in p2 of Chimaeron, there is very rarely a reason to dps as a healing priest. My suggestion does unfortunately not include Archangel/atonement (as I already mentioned) or how to proceed if you want to be a questing healing priest (but that's torture, so don't try it).
Out of combat skills like Fortitude, Shadow Protection and Resurrection: Are very rarely used in combat and don't need to be keyd. Resurrection can't even be used in combat, and although you might have to rebuff mid-fight, it doesn't happen often.
Fear Ward: Is actually barely being used in current content, and can also usually be placed well ahead of when it is actually needed, which means it's one of those keys that's safe to keep as a "clicker".
Cure Disease: As Fear Ward, this is barely used in current content (I can't think of a single mob in current raids and heroics that puts up a disease, but I am sure there are some).
Hymn of Hope and Divine Hymn: Because of their long cooldowns they're usually only used once per fight, and don't really deserve their own key unless you have loads to spare.
Trinkets: There aren't that many trinkets with uses, but they do exist and they should be used. Fortunately, you can macro a trinket to be used with a certain skill, and that is by far the best way to make sure it is properly used and never forgotten. The same can go for something like Lifeblood.
Mass Dispel: Most races have a good race specific skill to which they can bind Shift + 2, which means you'll have to click Mass Dispel. The only fight where you'll need to use Mass Dispel regularly currently is Argaloth in Baradin Hold, otherwise it is nearly always to use regular Dispel since you need 4+ targets for Mass Dispel to be mana effective.

BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE!
Just because I am such a generous person, I will throw in a suggestion on how to map your resto shaman, holy paladin and resto druid (all of which I currently also play). I will basically use the same setup as above, and just change the skills.

Holy Paladin
RMB (unmodified) = Word of Glory
Alt + LMB = Holy Light
Alt + RMB = Divine Light
Alt + MMB = Flash of Light
Ctrl + LMB = Hand of Sacrifice
Ctrl + RMB = Hand of Salvation
Ctrl + MMB = Hand of Protecion
Shift + LMB = Cleanse
Shift + RMB = Holy Shock
Shift + MMB = Lay on Hands
1 = Holy Radiance
2 = Light of Dawn
3 = Judgement
Shift + 1 = Divine Shield
Shift + 2 = Potion
Shift + 3 = Divine Protection

Comments
The above setup does leave out some really important skills. I could use my Alt and Ctrl for some of these bindings, but as I mentioned I don't like those combinations myself. Is it better than clicking? Depends on how comfortable you are with the combination bind, to me it's like doing Twister with my fingers. The "problem" about holydins are that they have a lot of self targetted skills, which isn't something you'd want to map to your mouse. I've tried to map the ones I think are the most important to have quick access to during a fight. This is why I've mapped Divine Protection over a skill like Guardian of Ancient Kings, because I feel like eventhough GoAK is a really great spell, I'd rather click that over Divine Protection in a pinch. The same goes with the skills I have left out compared to the skills I've decided to map. Another drawback of this setup is that it doesn't allow you to bind your Rebuke to be able to be a back up interrupter. The same goes with Hammer of the Righteous. On the bright side, most people don't want a healer to focus on much else than healing.
Beacon of Light: Since it has a 5 minute duration, it's hardly necessary to keep on a key bind.
Seal of Insight: Definitely not necessary to keybind.
Divine Plea: Is something I'd ideally bind, but definitely less necessary than the ones I chose instead.
Trinkets and Raid buffs: See priest section above.

Resto Shaman
RMB (unmodified) = Healing Wave
Alt + LMB = Chain Heal
Alt + RMB = Greater Healing Wave
Alt + MMB = Healing Surge
Shift + LMB = Cleanse Spirit
Shift + RMB = Riptide
Shift + MMB = Earth Shield
1 = Healing Rain
2 = Unleash Elements
3 = Spirit Link Totem
4 = Nature's Swiftness
Shift + 1 = Spiritwalker's Grace
Shift + 2 = Potion
Shift + 3 = Ghost Wolf
Shift + 4 = Water Shield

Comments
As you might have noticed, I switched out the ctrl modifier to a fourth key instead, because shamans don't have as many friendly targetted skills as the other healers. Because of this, it's not as needed to use many mouse keys. Again, interrupt has been left out, simply because eventhough it is a good skill, if you aim at being a good healer, the mapped keys are probably more important. Same goes with Hex, Tremor Totem and Earthbinding Totem. Shamans are arguably the healing class that has the most benefit from occasionally dpsing, but I personally do this very seldom and have therefor decided to leave them out of the mapping.
Totems: Can usually be placed before a fight, and for longer boss fights they only need to be re-cast occasionally.
Longer cooldowns like Earth and Fire elemental, Bloodlust and even Mana Tide won't be used that often in a fight and I have therefor prioritized other skills.

Resto Druid
RMB (unmodified) = Lifebloom
Alt + LMB = Rejuvenation
Alt + RMB = Nourish
Alt + MMB = Regrowth
Ctrl + LMB = Wild Growth
Ctrl + RMB = Healing Touch
Ctrl + MMB = Innervate
Shift + LMB = Remove Corruption
Shift + RMB = Swiftmend
Shift + MMB = Rebirth
1 = Nature's Swiftness
2 = Tree of Life
3 = Racial
Shift + 1 = Tranquility
Shift + 2 = Potion
Shift + 3 = Barkskin

Comments
Druids is possibly the best class to play if you want to have to map as few keys as possible (paladins probably the least good). Even when mapping all the necessary skills I've got room for things like Racials and Potions. What you might want to map that I haven't included is cat form + dash, because it is a good way to get out of trouble fast, but for most fights and most situations that won't be necessary (unless you're into progress raiding).

Pointers for the Altoholic

Leveling alts is one of the things that have really made me stick around with WoW as long as I have. I've always found great enjoyment in trying to find new ways to solve old problems, and it has allowed me to feel a fresh wind in WoW even after playing it for more than 6 years. Some people absolutely hate to level characters and focus everything they've got into one character. It's really two ways to attain the same goal in my view - experiencing everything with one character, or experiencing everything with several characters. Doing the same content isn't what amuses me, it's being able to see it from another perspective - I do feel like it teaches me something new each time. Even if I do SM Cath for the 100th time, it's not the same if I do it as a tank, healer or dps, if I do it as a druid, rogue or priest. Even if Blizzard might've consolidated classes more than ever before, they still have their unique style that make them tackle a situation in a unique way. Seeing it that way, there are really 31 different ways (counting druid feral spec as two) of experiencing the game and considering they change stuff all the time, I've still not experienced them all. I did level an elemental shaman back in BC, but things have changed a lot since then and leveling one now would be quite different from three years ago. Add to that the implementation of some awesome new quest chains and I really recommend you to indulge yourself in a little alt. Try something that differs completely from what you're used to! One added benefit is that it gives you a deeper understanding of your own class and role when you've seen it from another perspective. For instance I always think about standing in line of sight with my tanks, because I know how important it is for the healer. I always try not to throw a heal exactly when the tank charges in, because I know how annoying that is when tanking, and so on. I've also got a lot more patience with other people if I know how easy/difficult something is to handle. I won't yell at the tank to pull more, or at the warlock to do more damage, if I know how difficult it is to do in that situation.

Now that I've hopefully convinced you to try out alting (although I honestly think the vast majority of people have at least one serious alt), I'd like to continue by giving you some pointers on how to make the alting experience as smooth as possible. Here are a couple of things to think about;

• Using BoA gear will definitely make a lot of things easier, and you don't have to rely as much on drops in instances to feel like you do a good job. I usually level alts without BoA gear though, and don't worry, it's no problem at all.
• If you happen to level an alt on an off-server, here's a post on how to earn your first money.
• Leveling with a friend is a double-edged sword, something I've also written a post about.

Something I've often seen put people off their alts is their UI. Love has often played some character a couple of levels, but then abandons it with the next big patch, because he just can't be arsed to set the UI straight again. You will probably put a lot less time into your alt (except perhaps initially), which kind of is the definition of it being your alt and not your main. Therefor you want to make your alt as accessible as possible. You might take an hour to get everything right on your mains UI, but you probably won't do that with your alt, and especially not if you have to repeat the procedure with every next alt. This can easily be avoided! Make sure the UI you've got is easily copied. As an example I currently use Vuhdo as part of my UI, and whenever I start a new alt or start up an old one, I can just copy the settings from my main and voila, Vuhdo is set up. This takes one second. Even UIs that might be very customized like Dominos and Xperl have these features that will allow you to exactly copy the profile you have on another char. Fortunately most addons actually have these kind of features, so that usually isn't a problem.

You might use 100 addons on your main, but you rarely need that many on your alt. To not scare you off the first time you log in, by having the entire screen cluttered with addons that needs to be set up, you could turn all your addons off and then tick those you actually think you'll use. It also saves you loads of RAM to not load DBM on your level 35 hunter. Unless that is the purpose of your alt, you probably won't need addons that are specficially to facilitate crafting and/or auction housing. Alts tend to have a specific purpose - pvping, instancing, questing, herbing etc - try to only use addons that are aimed at helping you in those areas. It might sound troublesome to have to go through all your addons for your new alt, but on the other hand it is a one time thing and you'll be thankful you did afterwards.

Another really important thing when you get into the habit of switching between characters, is to keep your setups fairly equal among chars. I don't mean that your UI looks exactly the same from one character to the next, ultimately the UI has to fit the role you're playing. For instance I used different UI setups depending on whether I was on a tank/melee or healer/caster. This mainly meant I had the bars in different places and different settings for showing debuffs and party frames for example. But even if your UI looks different from one character to the next, your keybinding don't have to. There is nothing more dangerous than having completely arbitrary key setups on different characters. One good example is when I decided to use T as my autorun on some characters (so that I could use my old autorun, middle mouse, as ptt instead). T is otherwise my Mount button. So suddenly I had a couple of characters where T was autorun, and a couple where it was Mount. It did have me fall to my death plenty of times before I decided to fix it. I did write a post on how I've decided to set up my buttons, but the general idea is to have similar functions on the same key. Same things go with clique-bindings and mouse over macros of course.

For instance I've tried to have trinkets on my function keys on all my characters, also mitigation cooldowns like Shield Wall, Divine Protection, Barkskin and Icebound Fortitude to name a few. A is nearly always an interrupt, except for the classes that don't have it (on my priests A is Chakra or Smite). D are utility skills - I've got Leap of Faith and Death Grip on D. Similar bindings are more important on some skills than others of course - you want your reflexes to guide you to the right skill when you don't have the time to think and look down on your UI. It really sucks if you accidentally throw bubble on the tank just because that is the key for Guardian Spirit on your main. It really sucks if you shift out of bear form when tanking just because that key usually is your taunt button. It really sucks when you press dismount 100 yards up in the air just because that key is your autorun on other characters. Some things can't be helped though, like habitually dismounting midair because you're used to playing a druid. Having similar key structures will also allow you to faster get into the loop of things if you've been away from your alt for some time. Even if I don't play my resto shaman that often, I always know that my core heals are on the same bindings as they are on my holydin and priest which means I don't have to do much warm up before I can throw myself into action - that is really what you want to aim at with your alts. 

If you really get into this alting thing (like me) there are more specific addons aimed at helping you sort out your alts. When you've got some 8 serious alts like me, it will become a hassle trying to keep track of who has done which instances, has got what materials, has how many emblems/points/tokens, has how much money and a ton of other things. Here are a couple of good addons to use if you like playing many different characters;

• SavedInstances: Allows you to see which instances your characters are saved to without having to relogg. I used this a lot back in Wrath when pugging raids became as common as doing heroic dungeons. When someone asked for last spot to VoA, I could just mouse-over SavedInstances to immediately know which character was already saved for it. Before I got SI I had to relogg each character manually going "oh no, shaman is saved... oh, warrior too... let's see the paladin". In Cata raid pugging hasn't become very prevalent, in fact I can't recall anyone pugging an entire raid yet, only guild runs who pug some last member. But there is BH, and with the 4.2 nerfs I am sure that raid pugging will be back again (which I think is good).
• Friends With Benefits: If you happen to be the social type, unlike me, and have loads of people you like to talk to on your friends list, it's quite the hassle having to add them on your friends list for every new alt you make. FWB saves you the trouble by simply copying your friends list from one character to the next. RealID has made this less of a problem since it already does this, but we don't always want the RealID of every nice guy we meet, eventhough we might add them to our friends list.
• ArkInventory: I can't believe I haven't made a post on this amazing addon already - I'll definitely get to that some day. ArkInventory allows you to set up the perfect bag for yourself, sorting out items exactly like you want it. It's mainly a bag-addon, but for alting purposes it quickly and easy shows you what's in the bags of other chars, what they are currently wearing, how much of an item you've got across your characters and just but everything else connected to your bag, money and gear.
•  ACP (Addon Control Panel): Allows you to switch addons off and on in game, without having to relogg. This is useful because it can be difficult to exactly predict how your alts will need and use different addons.
• Altoholic: The name is pretty self explanatory. It does just about everything you could need when trying to coordinate a lot of alts, for example it can show you what mail your alts have waiting (which an addon like ArkIventory doesn't).
• Daily To-Do's: Commenter Hagu asked for an addon that would help him track dailies across different alts. Since I don't do dailies, I had completely forgotten about this little nuisance and how troublesome it can be to keep track of them all across varying chars, quite like with Saved Instances above. Commenter Eldhorn (Love) suggests Daily To-Do's, which will do exactly this - help you keep track of all your dailies across your different alts.

My UI - March 2011

Readers who have been following this blog for a while might remember that I completely redid my UI when 4.0 was released. That wasn't because I was unhappy with my old one, but simply because nothing of it worked anymore. I trashed it entirely. Since I, at the time, couldn't be arsed to redo my UI from scratch all over again, I decided to go with a ready-set one instead. I chose Tukui. Also, I replaced Clique and Grid with Vuhdo. Let's take a look.

This is what my UI looked like towards the end of Wrath. I liked it. Grid is nice and small compared to vuhdo which is alot bulkier. I used Xperl as unit frames and Dominos as bar mod. Dominos was nice because you could customize your bars pretty much the way you liked, moving the around the screen placing them where it fit you. The above was my healing layout, but I used another for tanking.

Here I chose to keep my main skills closer to my char, in the middle of the screen. This way I could easily see which skills were on cooldown. But then I had to change it all.

Messy eh? What is wrong in this picture? First of all, I feel like Vuhdo is taking too much space. Secondly. although Tukui is really neat and clean, it actually bothers me that I can't move the bars around. It forces me to place all my skills cluttered on the bars, and that's just not good. Target is at the bottom of the screen, which is ok, but I actually prefer it on top because the more thing I have at the bottom of the screen, the tougher it gets to target stuff behind me and move around. You will also notice that some bars are currently obscuring eachother, also bad (although not entirely difficult to fix).

I tried moving Vuhdo to the left part of my screen. It still doesn't feel completely right.

Then I realized I could just size down Vuhdo to be more minimalistic like Grid. This worked fairly well but I noticed one huge issue. Icons and things were still ok and visible enough, so was hp, but on the other hand the addon didn't always notice which character I was clicking on. Several times did it think I was clicking the character next to the one I was clicking on, which turned out to be quite dangerous before I understood what was the problem. I had to broaden the bars somewhat for it to work better.

Right now I am considering taking a couple of hours to rebuild my old Wrath-ui. Problem is, there are alot of things about Vuhdo that I really like. It is alot easier to use than Grid for one thing. Grid comes pretty "naked" which means you have to get extra features for just about everything if you want Grid to do that. That means Grid is small in itself, but also alot trickier to get to do what you want. Also it is basically like Grid and Clique in one, as the "clique" function is part of Vuhdo, saving up an addon (it wouldn't suprise me if Vuhdo takes more memory than Grid and Clique combined though, so this isn't a huge benefit). Vuhdo is very easily customizable, it also has a couple of smart-cast functions (like ressing out of combat). Oh the dilemma...

Review - Steelseries Ikari

Being the gamer that I am, there are a couple of things around me that I use alot. Like alot alot. Two of those things are a mouse and a keyboard. Because of this I put rather high demands on my mice and keyboards, and I'm rather specific in what I like. Add to that that I don't have the average big american hands, and the choice of nice fitting mice that also suit my gaming style actually become rather slim.

I have been using up mice and keyboards left and right. My keyboards mostly break because I soak them in tea *ahem*, and I don't actually spend much money on them. Unless you count buying many cheap keyboards alot of money. I don't need them to have cool macro-buttons and whatnot, I just want them to have a nice touch with the buttons since I write alot. I'm a little more picky with my mice however. I want my mouse to fit my girly hand, so it can't be too bulky or wide, like many gaming mice are for some reason. The buttons can't sit too far apart. I also want a scroll-button that feels nice and most importantly, two side-buttons that I use for various skills in games. This was all in my mind when I set out to buy myself a new gaming mouse two years ago. The one I had before that had a really iffy optical sensor, so that my cursor could fly around wildly on the screen. Imagine that in WoW! Yes it got me into really interesting situations and as you might have realized, it quickly became un-usable for anything but internet-surfing. So I went and bought a Steelseries Ikari, a rather costly (at least in my world and compared to what I had bought earlier) mouse that I hoped would last me longer than my last one had. Today I thought I'd share my experiences with this mouse - Steelseries Ikari (optical).

Feel & Design
The Ikari looks good in my opinion, with the sleek black and gray colors matching eachother nicely without overdoing it (like I think some Razer mice do sometimes). The gray part feels somewhat plastic, but the black part has a matte finish that I just love. This is a common combination in mice and can be found in some of the Logitech MG series mice as well. Many Razer mice are made mostly of this matte black finish.
The buttons have a nice resistance, I liked all of them actually. Sometimes in mice there are one or two buttons that feel too hard, in that they do a loud click, or feel too loose in that you hardly notice that you're pushing the button at all. The Ikari will give a gentle resistance that feels just right. I really liked the scroll-button and side-buttons actually, they had a really nice push and were well placed.
I did initially feel like it was a little too big, but remember that I probably have smaller hands than the average gamer. I quickly got used to the size and shape of it though, and I must say it worked really well for me. I had no problems what so ever with reaching all the buttons, they side buttons are very well sized and using the mouse alot didn't cause me any pains.
The Ikari has what feels like a cord made out of some sort of fabric instead of the regular plastic cord. This is good because it prevents cord-curling, it is bad in that it collects alot of dust! Overall I liked the cord though, and if you carry your mouse around alot it really works wonders with keeping it from getting entangled everywhere.
I never had any trouble at all with the optical sensor of the mouse. I don't use a mouse-pad, and eventhough my "mousing-area" can become dirty at times (dirt seemed to collect under the mouse) it very rarely had any trouble giving me a smooth cursor.
The biggest drawback of the Feel & Design of this mouse, is that the plastic (the gray area) covering the left and right buttons is phenomenal at collecting dirt. I don't want to have to wash my hands every hour to prevent my mouse from dirting up, and when my mouse gets dirty I don't want it to be such a hassle to clean it. Dirt will easily get stuck along the rim between the gray and black areas and if you're not careful the dirt will fall into the mouse between those areas. Another issue, that is really minor however, is that the left and right button felt a little plastic and could've had a little more resistance than they had. But this was definitely not something that bothered me in the long run. The design of the Ikari is pretty standard and one you can see in many gaming mice today. Because of that the good and bad of the Ikari mouse Designs & Feel aren't exclusive or unique to this model or series.

I will give the Ikaris Design & Feel a 4 out of 5, because I would have made it a little smaller (even when not taking into account that my hands are small, it feels just a little too big) and made the left and right buttons feel a little less plastic, but overall it's a greatly designed mouse.

Features
I've honestly not played around that much with my Ikari (pun intended), but pretty much used it the way it came, plug and play ready. It does have a button on top to quickly be able to set dpi, which might be interesting for people who want to switch between fast cursor to steady cursor in fps games. I've never had any problems with making the various buttons work with different bindings in game and it has always done what I wanted it to without having to use any special drivers and such.
For my usage it the Features get a 5/5.

Quality
The problems with the Ikari actually arise when we look at the quality of it. I don't think I use my mouse more time or more abusively than the average gamer, therefore I was rather sad when it after only 1,5 years or maybe even a little less, started to show signs of being worn. One can expect a mouse to lose some color and the buttons becoming less responsive after a while, but the Ikari actually stopped working partially. Or maybe I should call it "over-working". It started with the scroll mouse double-clicking. Then it just became more and more loose until it actually started 10-clicking. Yes you read me right. When using my scroll mouse to bring up tabs in my internet browser I would usually get 3-10 tabs through one click. If the scroll was used for anything in game the same result would be had. If you'd need a turbo button that sure would've made a good job. For a long time it was only the scroll mouse, and it wasn't that annoying since I mostly use it when browsing in my internet, as mentioned. But then the left mouse button started doing the same thing, double-clicking. It hasn't become as bad as the scroll yet but it's probably only a matter of time. This can become really annoying since it will double click icons when you only want to mark them, it will unmark text you're trying to mark and etcetera. At first I thought this might just be my model, but when reading up on the internet about the Ikari it seems this is an issue several other users have had as well. The Ikari is prone to wear down on the buttons and they will start multi-clicking. Unfortunately this happens rather fast, and that makes this mouse a bad investment in my eyes.

Because of this rather big issue I will have to give the Ikari a 2/5 in quality. The only reason I don't give it a 1 is because it's hopefully not doomed to fail, like a really low budget mouse would do. But it has a high prevalense of breaking down early and you should be warned of this.

Total
A regular total would combine all the points into one big point, but I see the quality point as the most important one. It doesn't matter how pretty or cool a mouse is, if it doesn't hold for average gamer usage, it just isn't good. This seems unfortunately to be the case with the Steelseries Ikari and I have after only 2 years of usage had to buy a new one to replace it.
My total on the Steelseries Ikari will therefore be a 2/5. It will be great while it holds, but it is prone to early wearing. If you buy one, pray you get one that won't suffer from the problems this model seems to have.

My keybindings

It happens from time to time. I write a post on something and a few days later it turns up somewhere else, in the form of someone elses thought on the same subject. Most recently I wrote a post on daily chores and two days later wow.com has a Breakfast Topic about daily chores - not my post per se, but the very same subject. Or the other way around, I have a thought on writing about a certain subject, and while surfing the bloggosphere I find someone who's recently written a post about that. I don't think people copy eachother much in the blog-world, and a decent amount of borrowed inspiration it was makes blogging interesting imo. In fact I think it's just coincidences. Condering how many bloggers about WoW there are out there it is bound to happen quite often that two bloggers get the same idea at about the same time. Especially if you like me write posts fairly often and about anything.

So I had a thought about sharing my keybindings with you. Mostly because I think it would be fun to explain my way of thinking when binding keys, and hey maybe I learn something about it in along the way. But also because it might be the source of some keybinding inspiration for some of you out there. In the end I always write about things I would find interesting to read about. So I noticed, while thinking about doing this, that some other bloggers have done this quite recently too, and I'm not trying to get a certain point with this, just sharing an anecdote about the bloggosphere!

So, my keybindings then. Maybe I actually can give a new take on this, since I play all classes and so have to find keybindings that suit all classes without it messing up in my head each time I go from healing to tanking to dpsing. I know plenty of people who play one class alot and when switching to their alt they try to do stuff they can't. A tankadin friend of mine usually forgets to stealth on his rogue alt for example. Love sometimes tries to go into flight form after jumping off a cliff on his mage alt (which has killed him a couple of times, because he's then too chocked about not shapeshifting to remember he can Slow Fall instead). I do mistakes like this too, but some skills are easier mixed up than others, for instance I always try to life tap after playing my warlock. It's just something you do all the time so it kinda gets stuck.

First of all, I've got nearly the entire keyboard, next to my left hand, keybound. There are the default buttons of course, but I have re-bound plenty of them to skills instead. Then there are the shift-combinations, which I use some too. I don't use ctrl-combinations though, since ctrl is my PTT button :P I did have it bound to totems before, but people could hear me say hilarious stuff when talking to myself and dropping totems at the same time. Once I apparently said "Mother fucker!" just like that during a fight. So that keybinding had to go ^^ Alt is only bound to my Clique addon, and I won't talk about that addon here (probably another time though!).
I'll try to give one example per class to give you a general idea of what kind of skills are used for each keybinding.

The numbers:
1 through 5 - My core abilities, the ones I use the most. Healer classes are special, for my main heals on each class I use the Clique-addon. Examples: Devastate, Hemorrhage, Stormstrike, Fireball, Shadowbolt, Steady Shot, Mind Flay, Icy touch, Holy Shield.
6 through 8 - Skills I use more rarely, but still in combat, are usually bound to these buttons. Some classes don't have that type of skills. Examples: Shadowfiend, Entangling Roots, Cone of Cold, Tranq shot, Death Strike, Expose Armor, Frost Shock, Holy Wrath, Drain Life, Mocking Blow

The shift combinations:
Shift 1 through 5 - Also for skills I use in combat, more seldom than my core abilities but generally more often than the 6 through 8 skills. Lifeblood is often bound to shift+1 if I have it on a char. Examples: Mass Dispel, Nature's Grasp, Spellsteal, Aspect of the Cheetah, Sprint, Stoneclaw Totem, Arcane Torrent on my paladin, Health Funnel, Commanding Shout
Shift+E - For skills I don't use as often as my core abilities, but generally have to get to very fast when I need it (not all classes have this). Examples: Crazy Alchemist's Potion on my priest, Hunters Mark, Pestilence, Cloak of Shadows, Totemic Recall, Divine Shield, Soulshatter, Intervene.
Shift+T - Ground Mount
Shift+F - Spare skills, used occasionally. Examples: Inner Focus, Mark of the Wild, Counterspell, Autoshot, Chains of Ice, Vanish, War Stomp on my shaman and warrior, Rain of Fire.

The function buttons:
F1 through 5: Longer cooldowns and trinkets. Examples: Mirror Image, Rapid Shot, Icebound Fortitude, Evasion, Shamanistic Rage, Lay on Hands, Metamorphosis, Shield Wall.

The letters:
T - Flying Mount
H - If the class has an aoe this is generally where I put it.
F - Core abilities, to complement the 1 through 5 buttons. Examples: Fade, Faerie Fire, Blink, Kill Shot, Death & Decay, Stealth, Water/Lightning Shield, Judgements, Life Tap, Concussion Blow.X, Z and J - skills not used often, but that I don't want to click when I need them, or skills that didn't fit where I usually put them. Examples: Bloodfury, Throwings, Offspec skills (like dmg skills on healers), Evocation, Ghost Wolf, Blessing of Protection, Curse of Elements, Challenging Shout.
A - Core abilities, usually interrupts if the class has it (not all classes has this binding): Bash, Feign Death, Mind Freeze, Kick, Shield Bash.
D - Utility skills (not all classes have this). Examples: Disengage, Death Grip, Heroic Throw

The symbols:
§ - Core abilities, to complement the 1 through 5 buttons. Often skills of a more buff like nature. Examples: Power Infusion/Circle of Healing, Enrage, Mana Gem, Misdirect, Blood Tap, Shadowdance, Spirit Wolves, Healthstone on my warlock, Berserker Rage.
Also I use a key that I can't show here since Blogger tries to read it as part of a code which might screw up the entire post. It's the key next to Z on swedish keyboards.

The mouse:
I use the two buttons usually bound to forward and back, they're called B4 and B5 in my interface. They're usually also for core skills or other skills I need to get to fast. Examples: Self-target, Maul, Iceblock, Petattack/follow, Rune Strike, Slice and Dice, Wind Shear, Divine Plea, Seed of Corruption, Heroic Strike.

Those are all my key bindings. Over the years I have bound more and more buttons as I have noticed that clicking them just doesn't work good enough for me. I remember when I started healing I used to mark a target and then click the heal of choice. Wow... I do click plenty of skills however, usually non-combat skills like buffs, portals or summon stone and the like.
Here are some examples of UI's. I won't show you how the UI looks of all my 80's, since that would just be too many pictures. Also my tanks, healers, melee and casters usually share layout style of their UI.

The UI of my priest main. Love has called it the "most fucked up UI in Azeroth", because he is an UI gourmet and has spent way too much time making his UI perfect. I just want it functional. The keybindings are in the corner, and not really important since I know them by heart. I have them displayed just in case. Any skill without a letter/number/symbol bound to it is a skill I click.

The UI of my most well geared tank (the only warrior tank I've raided with). It is the standard for all my tanks. The difference to my healing UI is that my core abilities are closer to the centre of the screen, this is so it's easier for me to see short cooldowns like on Thunder Clap and Revenge. On my healing UI I have grid in the centre instead. The bigger buttons in the lower half of both screens are spare buttons. Anything from rarely used skills to macros to items I put there. I throw anything there that I don't know where to put anywhere else.

Comments on this? ^^

Confusing tooltips

Reminiscing about the times when I didn't know so much about the game (that I tell myself that I do now) and most things actually were rather tricky made me think about some rather funny errors I've made when trying to learn different classes and skills. Now we have to jump far back into my wow-gaming history, but this still happens to new players around me.

Before you know how the devs at Blizzard generally think when they design something, trying to understand a skill solely based on its tooltip can lead to funny misunderstandings on how a skill actually works. Anyone who's ever played a TCG, like Magic the Gathering, knows about the quarrels that can ensue due to people understanding tooltips differently. Only in WoW one doesn't have to wait long to find out how Blizzard meant it to work.

I remember really far back, I think this might've even been my first char ever. That too was an undead priest, although not the same as I now play as a main. Back then the tooltip of Fade said something like "Will temporarily make you fade out, making the enemy less likely to attack you". You may call me an imbecile (I dare you), but I interpreted this as working like Mind Soothe does, ergo out of combat if I wanted to. I thought it would work like a semi-stealth, meaning I could get a little closer to mobs than otherwise before they would attack me. I had to find out the hard way that Fade didn't work anything like that, and when I eventually turned level 20 and got Mind Soothe I realized there had to be a difference between the skills. Fade clearly didn't do what Mind Soothe was doing. Apparently I wasn't the only one who had trouble understanding the Fade tooltip since it has been changed and nowadays reads "Fade out, temporarily reducing all your threat for 10 sec". Hopefully newbie priests won't have to be as confused and dead as I turned out to be because of this mistake.

But I am not alone. Love told me he once encountered a rogue who used Feint in solo-pve (and it feels like I've told you about this already) because he "noticed a difference". The tooltip of Feint reads "(...) lowering your threat by a small amount, making the enemy less likely to attack you". Anyone who knows anything about WoW quickly understands what this is all about. But imagine someone completely new to the WoW-terminology? How would they understand it? This rogue had apparently understood it to mean that the enemy would be less likely to get a hit on him. Feint would in WoW-terms lower the mobs hit chance on him. And I understand the confusion. Threat really isn't anything about "likelyhoods" at all, so using this kind of wording could make you think it's about something else, like "likelyhood to attack" = "chance to hit".

When inspecting one of my guilds warrior tanks the other day I noticed that he hadn't specced into Last Stand. If you're only into doing heroics I understand if you don't feel the necessity for that talent, but this guy tanks us all the way to Lich King. I'd say Last Stand is a crucial talent if you're into endgame raid tanking and I told him so. He explained to me he didn't like it because he felt it "hard to use". I didn't understand that argument at all, at first. Just use it when you would otherwise use Shield Wall, I said. Combine it with Enraged Regen for extra awesomeness. He asked me why Last Stand would affect Enraged Regen and I explained that since Last Stand increases max hp, and Enraged is affected by max hp these two synch well together. My guildie was confused. Increases max hp? The tooltip doesn't state that at all. It says "(...) temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum health for 20 seconds, after the effect expires the health is lost". Reading it like that my guildie had understood it to work like a big pot. 15000 hp if you're around 50k, so a damn nice pot of course. But he felt that a temporary pot wouldn't be very usable, the situations in which it could be used safely too extreme, since the hp is lost afterwards. And I understand him, what you're after is really the hp -and- the increased max hp, something the tooltip fails to mention in a clear way.

There are many examples like this. Sometimes people just fail to read the tooltip properly, like all those shadowpriests out there that didn't read that Mind Sear doesn't affect the current target, and the like. But sometimes one has to admit that you really tried to understand a tooltip but it just doesn't really tell you the whole truth.

Can you think of any more examples of misleading tooltips?