Nostromo, Part IV: Paladin Bindings

After a couple days' break, we're back to the Nostromo series, this time with how Cawti does it. For now, I use two different action bars with her depending on the situation - 1 for soloing/tanking and another one for healing. While I don't have any way of switching between those 2 bars using the Nostromo, I only really switch between them when starting or finishing an instance (if I'm healing it, which there's a good chance I'm not) so doing it with the keyboard is fine.

Healer Mode

For the healing bar, there isn't too much to say. My healing is mostly done using Holy Light: Rank 4, with Rank 3 and Flash of Light also making an appearance (although they are kind of useless - they just don't heal enough at this point to justify using them). So that almost fills up the center row of the Nostromo, which still leaves quite a lot open. So for now, I threw in some helpful stuff like Blessing of Protection, Purify and Divine Protection. I specifically don't have Lay on Hands there, after using it once by mistake and going OOM in the middle of a fight. And that's it - there just isn't anything else worth putting there. Well, maybe Turn Undead, although it's very situational and I dislike using fear in instances. I also gave a brief try to using the Nostromo for targeting the different party members, but that turned out to be way too confusing so I gave it up.

Solo/Tank Mode

Here we have more skills to play with, and it shows. The mappings here are a bit of a mess, although I did try to keep some order to it. The little finger was supposed to be for healing, so it has (from top to bottom) Flash of Light, Holy Light and Purify. The ring finger, originally was supposed to be for bubbling but I don't have room for Blessing of Protection anymore, so now it has Hammer of Justice, Divine Protection and Exorcism. Next finger doesn't really have any theme - it has Righteous Defense, Judgement, and my racial Mana Tap. Finally, the index finger has Seal of the Crusader, Seal of Righteousness and Consecration. As for my other skills, if they're not here, they're either in ClassButtons or my other action bars, and I click 'em with my mouse.

And that's it for Paladins and Nostromos for now. Expect the rest of my Nostromo mappings and some thoughts about playing a Paladin in the near future...


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Posts in this series:

• Nostromo, Part I: Introduction
• Nostromo, Part II: Keymaps
• Nostromo, Part III: Mage Bindings
• Nostromo, Part IV: Paladin Bindings
  

Nostromo, Part III: Mage Bindings

When last we left off, I'd shown how I mapped the Nostromo's keys in a way that I don't need to change it from one alt to another and, more importantly, it's a mapping I'm comfortable with. Today, we'll start with a "simple" example of how it works in-game using my Mage, Enara*.

Where Do I Start?

You've just installed the Nostromo, played around with its editor for a bit and now you're launching WoW. Now, much like when starting your character, you'll have to decide which skills will actually be on your action bar and where. In general, I try to make the skills on my bar be my most often used combat skills - while it's very convenient to have Arcane Intellect in there for easy rebuffing, fact is the action bar is just too small so you'll probably be better off rebuffing using the mouse**.

Next decision you're going to have to make is where to put each of the 12 skills you've just chosen. My advice - put your "basic" skill in the middle row, under your index finger (mapped to '4' in case you're following my setup), with alternates for it in the top and bottom row. Then work your way from there. Also, try to have some logic behind the setup, as (especially when you're just getting started) you will get confused a lot until you get familiar with your bindings.

Enough With The Babble - Where Are The Bindings?

I'm sure by now you're all itching to see how this actually works for Enara, so here it is:

The bindings was designed so that the top row is for Frost spells, the middle row for Fire, and the bottom for Arcane. The index finger is used for "missile" attacks (Pyroblast/Fireball macro, Frostbolt and Arcane Missiles), followed by AoEs (Flamestrike, Blizzard and Arcane Explosion), CC (Frost Nova, Polymorph, and Scorch since I had a free space), and finally some instant-casts (Fire Blast, Counterspell and Blink). Of course, it didn't turn out exactly as planned (with Scorch not being a CC and Counterspell sitting in the Frost spell row), but all in all it's relatively easy to remember and intuitive to use. But, hey, don't take my word for it - I encourage you to experiment and try your own settings. Find what you like and let me know how it goes!


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Posts in this series:

• Nostromo, Part I: Introduction
• Nostromo, Part II: Keymaps
• Nostromo, Part III: Mage Bindings
• Nostromo, Part IV: Paladin Bindings
  

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* I am not saying playing a Mage is easy or simple. However, a Mage only has 1 main action bar which is what we're looking at here. A rogue has 2 (1 main, 1 for Stealth) and a Warrior has 3 (one for each stance), so in comparison a mage is "simple".

** Note that I'm only talking about the "main" action bar here. I heartily recommend you turn on at least one other action bar and use that space for the rest of your skills.

Nostromo, Part II: Keymaps

Hello, and welcome to the second part of my Nostromo series. This time we'll cover the way I set up my key maps, and some of the changes I plan to make to them to better fit classes that have "stances" (Warrior stances, Druid forms and Paladin auras). So, let's get started.


Common Bindings

First, some things that I try to keep constant across all mappings:

• DPad is mapped to the directional keys, with the left and right keys mapped to strafe. It's a bit of a hassle to use the mouse exclusively for rotating the camera, but them's the breaks*.
• The little round key next to it is mapped to auto-run, which is one of my favorite keys in the game.
• The flat key under the DPad is left with the default mapping for jumping. I don't jump that often, but when I have to it's very convenient to have a key for it.
• The scroll wheel is used to toggle between the different keymaps.
• The key directly above the scroll wheel is mapped to Ctrl+Shift+2, which is bound in WoW to my bottom right action bar. There I put either Shoot (for wanding with relevant classes) or Attack (to be able to turn it off easily).

These bindings are common to all 3 keymaps, although other than the scroll wheel the reason they're the same is mostly because I can't find any use that makes sense for the other keys, so I just leave them the same as my default keymap.

Default Keymap - "Blue"

For my "default" keymap, I chose to map the 3 rows of 4 buttons to to my action bar. It looks like the idea was to map some of these to WASD (in fact, there are little arrows drawn on the actual buttons), but I really didn't see any use in that, since I already have the DPad which wouldn't be very useful for other things. That gives me access to my entire action bar, without having to move my hand - just move the relevant finger up/down 1 key, and press. Of course, that can get pretty confusing, so I recommend placing your skills on the action bar in some order that "makes sense" for you (we'll see some examples for this in the next posts, covering the actual in-game bindings for my different classes).

The last key in the default keymap is the rightmost key on the top row. That one is for targeting. While currently I have 2 keymaps which are exactly similar except for mapping this key to "Tab" in one and "Assist" in the other, I am changing that to use a macro that Assists if relevant (I'm grouped and have a friendly target) and tab-target otherwise. That should free up a whole keymap which I have other plans for.

Second Keymap - "Green"

For my second keymap, I bound macros that press the action bar buttons with the "Alt" key. This is designed for macros that use "[modifier:alt]" clauses in them, since there's no good way of hitting the Alt on the keyboard. The "targeting" key here is currently mapped to "Tab", but isn't actually used.

Future Changes

As I already mentioned, I'm unhappy about having to use the mouse to switch stances. However, once I make that targeting macro, that'll free up an entire keymap for me to use, which is more than enough for switching between them. The problem, however, is that toggling between the keymaps means I have to switch back to the previous one. While I can switch "momentarily" to one keymap (by pressing the scroll wheel), it doesn't look like the up and down scroll motions will work very well (they're more instantaneous - you can't keep them pressed). I thought about making the macros in the other keymaps automatically switch back to the default keymap, but can't find any way of doing that (guess there is one thing that macros can't do).

The last "solution" I have at the moment, is mapping 1 or 2 keys to modifiers (alt and/or shift). Problem with that is that if it's not mapped to one of the thumb keys it will be hard to find a key for it that doesn't involve giving up action bar buttons, and which I can still use with all the action bar keys**. Now that I think about it, I might be able to pull that off - map the "jump" key to alt, freeing up the entire second keymap, use the center scroller as a momentary shift to the "stance-switching" keymap, and use the scroll up/down for jumping. That takes care of everything, doesn't it? Well, good to see this blog is good for something. *grin*

Join me next time as I pick out an alt in random and dissect how his/her/its*** action bars are bound and why.

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Posts in this series:

• Nostromo, Part I: Introduction
• Nostromo, Part II: Keymaps
• Nostromo, Part III: Mage Bindings
• Nostromo, Part IV: Paladin Bindings
  

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* No, I'm not one of those keyboard turners, it's just convenient when you're running long distances and don't have your other hand on the mouse.

** If I'm using my index finger for pressing the modifier key, I can't use it with any of the other keys that are usually pressed with the index finger. Not nice...

*** It's a sad sad day when an expression of the form aa/bb/cc makes one think of regular expressions. I wonder if there's any cure for that that doesn't involve a lobotomy.

Nostromo, Part I: Introduction

Alright, so following up on my idea from yesterday, I'm going to start a series of posts about the Nostromo (or Belkin SpeedPad n52), and today we're starting with an introduction: what it is, what it does, how it does it, and what you shouldn't do with it. This post is mostly for those of you who have heard lots of people talking about it, but still don't know what it is.

Let's Talk Hardware

So, this is what it looks like, here on the left (image courtesy of Google Images - mine is actually a different color). As you can see it has a keypad with 14-keys on it and a scroll wheel (that black thing where a 15th key would have been) where you can conveniently reach them with your fingers, and for the thumb we have a D-pad, a small round key above it, and a big "flat" key underneath. It also has 3 color LEDs just under the "flat" key, whose purpose will be explained later on.

When playing, you rest your palm on the big black surface (which can be adjusted between 2 states, depending on the size of your hand) and gives you easy access to all the Nostromo's keys. And, as you can see, it's intended to be used with the left hand. If you're one of those "freaks" who use the moust with their left hand, the Nostromo may not be right for you.

That's it. Nothing too complicated, not too many buttons (at least compared to a regular keyboard), and if that was what it's all about it wouldn't be worth wasting our time with...





The Software - Where All The Magic Happens


The real power of the Nostromo, is not just having keys where they're easily accessible, but rather that those keys can be mapped to do just about anything (for a given definition of anything). That's where the software comes in, letting you configure and tweak the Nostromo to your heart's content.

In the center of the screen you'll see a wireframe drawing of the Nostromo, surrounded by all the different keys and their mapping. For ease, whenever you mouse over one of the key mappings, the relevant key position in the wireframe lights up, and vice-versa.

And, if you look near the top there are 3 "colored" tabs, labelled "Map 1" through "Map 3". This gives you the ability to have 3 different sets of keymappings for every Nostromo configuration. That's where the 3 LEDs on the Nostromo come in - they show you which keymap you're currently using.

Clicking one of the button mappings opens up a menu letting you choose what to map the button to. The mappings you can select fall into several categories, each with its own uses:

• Single key - Most of the buttons on the left part in the image above are mapped to single key presses on the keyboard. Basically, this is just like going into the interface menu in WoW and changing the key bindings.
• Macro - Macros come in a lot of variations and can do just about anything with a single key press. They can press buttons, wait for delays, run several times or even indefinitely once started, you name it. However, when playing WoW using most of those features can get you banned. So as far as we're concerned, macros are just key combinations - you want to press Shift+5? That's the way to do it. Of course, being such complicated things, macros have their own editor where you can (relatively easily) manage them.
• Keymap - These bindings give you the ability to switch between the different colored keymaps. You can cycle between them, switch to a specific one, or switch to one "momentarily" (only as long as the key is pressed).
• Mouse Button - Pretty self-explanatory, isn't it?
• Direct Input - Uhmm, yeah. I'm not sure I understand what those are, so I don't use them. If any of you know, feel free to put up a comment.
• Clipboard/Windows/Media - Other features for switching windows, copy+pasting, starting and stopping playback, etc. Not very useful for WoW, but might be helpful for other stuff. Well, OK, maybe, if you have a spare keymap, using it to control the music playing in the background would be handy. Since I usually stick with WoW's music or no music at all that's irrelevant for me.

And that's it... You have a lot of keys, which are arranged in a pretty convenient way and you get to choose what each of them does (and they can do alot). That's what the Nostromo is all about.

Botting FTW

So, this thing is pretty impressive. I mean, if you consider macros with delays and stuff, you can set it up to Hunter's Mark, send in your pet, and fire off an Arcane Shot whenever it's off cooldown, with just 1 keypress. Who needs to be around the computer for a fight? Pressing one key per fight should be more than enough, no?

Well, NO. As we all know, Blizzard doesn't like botting (and for that matter, neither do most players who don't bot), and bans anyone they catch in the act. Using something like the Nostromo is fairly easy to catch, as when you're using programmatic delays they are always exactly the same delay, making it pretty obvious it's not a real person doing the pressing. In fact, this was one of my biggest worries before getting the Nostromo - won't the software running in the background be detected by the WoW launcher and get me banned?

The good news is that, no, it won't get you banned. As long as you follow the "spirit" of Blizzard's macro law - one physical key press for one in-game action. So as long as you only bind keys to a single keypress, or several buttons simultaneously (the macro recorder has the option to ignore delays in key presses, thus creating macros that are fine to use with WoW), you should be fine.


That's it for the introduction. In the next posts of this series I will tell you how I bind my keys, and then how they're mapped in-game for the different classes I play. If I remember, I'll even update this post with links to the next ones. *grin*


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Posts in this series:

• Nostromo, Part I: Introduction
• Nostromo, Part II: Keymaps
• Nostromo, Part III: Mage Bindings
• Nostromo, Part IV: Paladin Bindings
  

Nostromo First Impressions

I've been seeing the Nostromo mentioned in a lot of places, usually with good "reviews", so I decided to get one and see what it was all about. I went down to my neighborhood electronics shop (a mere 10-floors of anything you could ever think of), and after getting a little lost I finally had my hands on one of them.

The Setup

Of course, I first spent half the night configuring the thing instead of actually using it, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? For now, I started with a fairly simple configuration to try out with Enara:

• D-pad remains mostly untouched, except for changing the right/left mappings to 'E'/'Q' for strafing. I still haven't quite decided if I prefer it as strafe or turn, so for now I have one map for each...
• "Jump" button stayed the jump button.
• The small round thumb button was mapped to 'R' (my auto-run binding).
• Scroll wheel switches between the different mappings (red/green/blue) - I already have a scroll wheel on my mouse, I don't need another one to do exactly the same thing.
• The button directly above the scroll wheel was mapped to Ctrl+Shift+'2', which I bound in WoW to my (hidden) bottom right action bar where I put Shoot.
• The button above that is mapped to Tab - yes, I use tab-targetting most of the time, sue me.
• Finally, that left me with 12 buttons - conveniently the same as the number of buttons on the action bar. The middle row is mapped to the '1'-'4' keys, since that's where my fingers usually are. Top row gets '5'-'8' and bottom row '9'-'='. Then I moved stuff around the action bar to find something that suits me. In Enara's case, I finally settled on a scheme that I hope I can remember: Top row for Frost spells, Middle for Fire, Bottom for Arcane. Then, index finger for "main damage spell", big finger for AoE, ring finger for CC and little finger for "utility".
• For Fire spells that gives us (from index finger to little finger) Pyroblast/Fireball macro, followed by Flamestrike, an empty button*, and finally Fire Blast.
• For Frost spells we have Frostbolt, Blizzard, Frost Nova and an empty spot (will probably put Cone of Cold there when I get it).
• For Arcane it's Arcane Missiles, Arcane Explosion (will probably be replaced by a macro that casts Rank 1 when not in combat soonish), Polymorph and Blink.

The Good

After a whole night of playing around with it and trying to get used to it, I liked it quite a bit. Of course, I still get my buttons confused occasionally, but that's to be expected - I assume I'll get over that with time. Other than that, not too many good things to say about it. That's not a complaint, mind you - it does what it's supposed to and it does it well.

The Bad

Maybe it's just my physical environment, but the way my hand rests on the Nostromo, using the D-pad and "Jump" button is a little awkward. My thumb's "natural" position is around the NW D-pad, so I have to change my hand position to get to the East, South or Jump buttons. For the directional buttons it's not such a big problem - when I want to move right I push the D-pad from the left, causing it to "press" the right button, and same trick for when I need to back-up. Jumping is still a bit of a problem, though. Good thing I don't jump that much. :)

Another thing that bothers me (though this is very likely just a lack of familiarity with exactly what I can do and how) is that I can't figure out a way to use modifiers in macros. For example, my Pyro/Fireball macro is set-up to override the Pyroblast when a modifier key is pressed (Alt, as the case may be), but I don't have a spare button for the modifier key and it pretty much defeats the purpose if I have to press it on my keyboard. I'm gonna try to work something out with the "momentary" map changes - we'll see how that works.

The Ugly

First, I need somewhere to put the Nostromo when I'm not using it. My "environment" is set-up kind of weird, with me sitting on the floor next to my laptop and the mouse and the Nostromo are on either side of that (or on a low table I have near my left hand where I can put the Nostromo). But once I leave home and take my laptop with me, that leaves the Nostromo on the floor in the middle of the room, which I really don't like.

Second, and probably another thing that stems from only getting it yesterday, it seemed to me that in order to get a button combination (Ctrl+Shift+'2', for example) I have to make a macro for it. That macro sends both the button presses and releases when you press the Nostromo button, instead of the "usual" way that single buttons work.

What The Future Holds

As a geek, you give me something that can be messed around with and configured, I'll most probably be my settings for a long time...

First order of business is taking care of the macro modifier problem. I'll probably end up with a key map that casts all the action bar items with a modifier, and map something to temporarily switch to that map. I'm not sure yet if that temporary means as long as the button is pressed or that it switches maps for one button press. The first option would seem to make more sense, except that I plan on putting that functionality on the scroll wheel where it wouldn't really work. I guess I'll just have to check and see what it does...

I'm also considering remapping all the buttons to a different action bar that I don't use - the Left side bar, for example. That would have the advantage of not making me move stuff around on my main action bar, which is good in case I want to use the keyboard. However, that'll be a real problem for my Warriors/Druids/Rogues, where the main action bar changes according to "stance" but the other bars don't. I could change the Nostromo's mappings to fit the current locations of spells on my action bar, but then I'd have to remap them for every alt separately and I really don't want to do that.

And speaking of Warriors/Druids/Rogues (and, to a lesser extent, Paladin auras and Hunter aspects), where do I map buttons to switch "stances"? On the action bar? That'll work, but will be a terrible waste. A related problem, though not exactly the same is Hunter/Warlock pets. My current thinking is to use the 3rd mapping for all these commands, with another "temporary" mapping switch.

Whatever I decide, I'm sure I'll get a lot of fun out of simply customizing my settings for this thing, so it's all good. :)

Bottom Line

I guess it's pretty obvious I rather liked the Nostromo. Like anything in life, however, it costs money. While I have no problem shelling out money for whatever catches my eye at the moment**, I've heard that some people actually have to think before spending money. While the Nostromo definitely seems to be a welcome addition to my WoW experience, I don't know if I'd have bought it back in the days when I was a poor student in University...



* OK, so that's a lie. For now, I use that button as a plain Fireball for cases where I don't want to Pyroblast, but that's temporary. In the future, I'll probably put Scorch in there.

** I once bought an HDTV "on a whim" while walking through an electronics store and seeing a TV I liked. I wasn't planning on getting a TV. In fact, I wasn't planning on buying anything - I was only there with a friend of mine who wanted to buy some USB/PS-2 adapters...