Guinea Pigs

A few days ago I had my first proper attempt at heroic CC10 with my guild. After going “Oh my god, why is this happening to me?!” for an hour or so, I started thinking of Blizzards change of heart when it comes to how heroics and hard modes work. And …I never thought I would say this, but I kind of miss hard modes, at least some of them.

What I don’t like about the heroics settings is that the “difficulty slider” now only has two settings. “lulz, I don’t have to healz” and “please, not the face!”. Not only is the gap between the two far too big, being able to choose between several difficulty settings for each fight, depending on your raid set up, is completely gone. Didn’t Blizzard say that this was their intention with hard modes? Now, Blizzard have acknowledged part of the problem and said that you will be able to turn heroic on and off as you go, but you still only have the two difficulties.

Another thing that bothers me is how little the heroic setting changes the fight. Stuff hits harder, has more health and needs to die faster. There are also some additonal adds and some things are made a bit more tricky, like not being able to disarm certain bosses. While it does make the fights more challenging, it doesn’t really change how they feel and how you approach them as much as hard modes did. Take Flame Leviathon (aka. Golf Caddy) for instance. It has four difficulties, and how the fight works with no towers is very different to how it works with four towers up. Northrend Beasts however is not very different, except for a few changes like not being able to disarm the big dude at the start (whose name escapes me) and not getting a speed increase on Icehowl (I’m probably forgetting something here), stuff generally just hits harder and has to die faster. At least give us not two, but four Jormungar Worms!

I get the distinct feeling of being a guinea pig. Looking at the rather drastic changes done to raiding since Wrath launch, I’m starting to wonder if Blizzard sees WoW like nice way to test out new features for whatever MMO they are planning next. Of course MMO’s change over time, but Blizz seems very schizophrenic at the moment, especially when it comes to raiding. Although I would really like their next MMO to be even better than WoW, I’m getting slightly fed up with not knowing what may change next. One week I’m working my arse off to achieve something, the next I get told it was pretty much all for naught. All things considered, I still think the game is better than it ever was, I might not agree with everything, but I have never raided as much as I’ve done in Wrath and I guess that says something.

Chores, Deathtards and Boredom

My approach towards WoW has started to shift slightly lately, as it tends to do. Whenever the game starts to feel like a second job I’ve either taken a break or started doing different things than I was currently doing. Lately I’ve been doing raids (fun) and doing various dailies, including the heroic daily(not so fun), which one of the things I want to talk about.

When Blizzard introduced the dailies they stated that they’re intention was to make making gold easier and get rid of the need of buying gold, and undoubtedly they probably foresaw that people would keep coming online just to do the dailies. Since the launch of Wrath they have been adding more and more dailies. I’m starting to wonder if their efforts to keep coming back might come back and bite them in the ass soon. Previously dailies were ant alternative to doing certain things in game, like earning rep or making money, now it’s partially turned into something you have to do to access certain parts of the game. I remember that they announced that the heirloom chestpieces would be made available to purchase for the tokens you earn at the Tournament. Great, I thought, since I had a bunch of them lying around and nothing to spend them on, that suited me well. Turns out you had to do the dailies over and over for every bloody faction. Not gonna happen.

The other daily that has been annoying me is not one that is a must per se, but you may find yourself gearing up slower than others if you don’t do it. That’s right, the heroic daily. I know I’ve ranted about this before, but I just can’t get over how awful this idea is. Currently I’m running mostly 10-man raids (which is a whole rant in it’s self), specifically Onyxia, CC and progressing in CC-Heroic. That’s a guaranteed 18 badges a week if I can remember correctly. A lot of the gear you get from this tier of raiding is meant to come from badges. Doing the heroic daily for a week straight will earn me another 14 badges, almost half of what I get from raiding. I cannot fathom how Blizzard thought it was a good idea to make players go back to heroics that provide no challenge what so ever to gear up for T9 content. Argh! I’m getting to the point where I’m considering to stop doing it, and just do whatever gear I need for Icecrown Citadel in the new… *drumroll* heroics! Hopefully, they’ll turn out to be a bit more challenging that what we got.

Doing less of the daily grind has left me with time to do things I actually enjoy doing. Like leveling even more alts, more specifically, I rolled a Deathtard. Oh yes, it only took me about a year to get around to doing it. My first impression? Blizzard took the whole easy to get into, hard to master a bit too far, at least the first part. Ignoring the fact that the game makes you pretty much invincible during your first 3 levels, it’s impossible not to kill stuff as a DK and it’s incredibly easy to do so. No wonder DK’s are the new hunters, you simply don’t have to invest any time or effort into your play style to be able to level. And if you should invest some time and effort into learning about the class, holy kodo droppings this class is overpowered, at least for the first 6-7 levels (which is as far as I’ve gotten). It’s not all bad however. They are also tons of fun, quite possibly related to mentioned OP-ness. It’s very refreshing to play a completely new class (to me), with a resource system that’s entirely different to anything I’ve played before. I get the feeling of being  a noob again, and it doesn’t feel to bad. It’s uncertain how long I will continue to play my Deathtard,  but at the moment Kifo is a strong contender to become my tanking alt.

I, Death Tard - With sidekick

To round things off with something less serious, I’ve done some exploration lately. Knowing that Azeroth will be changed forever come Cataclysm, I’ve spent more and more time faffing about in the old world. While discussing cake, volleyball and history in guild chat (yes, all at once somehow), I decided to look for this island off the coast of Silithus I’d heard about long ago, but never really gotten around to looking for. This is what I found.

I happened to be in Tanaris, playing around with my Dino, so I swam/ran from the eastern coast, along Un’goro and finally came to this place on the south western tip of Kalimdor. Since there is no flight path going over this place, my guess is that it was meant to be a quest hub or something, but was rejected and the developers found it easier to leave it than remove it. Either way, it was fun to see a new place in a world I’ve spent several years in. It’s inspired me to consider doing something like a weekly photo-walk of each zone, where I’ll try to see if I can discover some new places and snap some pictures of the zone’s signature landmarks and most known sub-zones.

A Sense of Belonging

After having a visitors from a land far, far away (disguised as level 1 shamalamas) I started thinking about guilds. Yet another of those MMO phenomenons (although I guess there are similar things around, like CS-clans and such) that might be hard to understand for the non MMO-er. I think I’m going to call them nomps from now on.

I was a nomp coming into WoW and never thought much about guilds when I started playing, apart from what I’ve read in the manual. The first guild I was ever part of mainly consisted of RL friends and was only created to have a chat channel for our selves (not know you could make custom ones) and of course, as you see so many brilliant guilds advertise about, being able to wear a tabard. Later on, when I was starting to close in on 60, it also became obvious that if you wanted to get anywhere in the in the sense of gear and progression, you needed a guild. A big one. When I approached a member of my first raiding guild, who’s name escapes me, I had a nomp-moment. I was told that I needed to apply and write an application if I was going to get to join. What? I have to write an application? Like for… a job? That’s weird… Later I would learn about the importance of guild applications.

How to spot a bad guild - please spell check and don't write it all in caps? Each time you forget a murloc is born!

Chances are that many others, at least those who also used to be nomps, have found them selves in a similar situation. The thought of having to write an application and possibly going through a trial period to be able to play with others can seem both elitist and absurd. Guilds are created for different reasons. Some just want people to chat with, someone to level with, do instances with, raid with, PvP etc. Either way, applications are a good way to increase the chances of both parts finding what they’re looking for. Guild’s who invite anyone without any questions at all tend to either be plain bad, fall apart quickly or have people come and go constantly, never really having a core group that will achieve anything.

Guild chat - guaranteed comic relief

My biggest issue when it has come to guilds has been to find the “perfect fit”. The perfect fit being a group of people who’s company you enjoy and that lets you do what you what in game. For the first two or three years I ended up in guilds that had nice, like minded and skilled people, but never all at once.  I’m my self partly responsible for this. I’ve always felt naked without a guild, it just doesn’t feel right and you’ll get constantly spammed with random guild invites. Because of this I usually ended up rushing to find a new one, or perhaps even trying find a better one when things got rough. What I learned from this is that when/if the day comes that I will have to search for a new guild, I’m going to spend a long time looking for one before even applying. After having played together with the same people for 2 years I know how much fun you can have if you find a guild that really fits you.

For reference, Kal is Zer's boyfriend - she was disturbed, badly

If you’re lucky, the planets will all align, the moons spin backwards and Sargeras will let out a great cosmic fart, and you will find the perfect guild that is just right for you.  What you’ll end up with is a group of people you’ll consider “more than just a guild”, no matter how clichè that may sound. This crazy bunch you see in the screenies aren’t just people I need for bashing Yoggy’s brains in, they are people I genuinely enjoy spending time online with. Idling in Dalaran while chatting on vent or in guild chat will become a way to pass time. You might even meet up with some of them in real life, I haven’t been lucky enough to yet, but I know several have who have. I would not at all be surprised to see another <Absolution> in whatever game turns out to be the next big thing (my bets are on whatever Blizz is thinking of).

As usual, this ended up as yet another rant post. Starting with some thoughts on guilds, some thoughts on what makes a good guild  and ending up as nothing less than a love declaration. Oh well. Geeky as it may be, being an Abso makes my WoW-life a lot more fun!

Sheeping Noobs

I’m really starting to love the mage class. After having played three different mains, two of which have been hybrids, it feels good to play a “pure” class again.  And of all the classes I’ve played so far mages easily has some of most fun spells and abilities, and if applied correctly, useful as well.

Imagine this scenario. Some lonely gnome is guarding the stables in Arathi Basin. I sneak up out of line of sight, then just before I get within his line of sight, I pop invisibility. Then I will run up to the flag and use mirror images and my water elemental. At this point the poor gnome is running around like a headless chicken, trying to figure out which target is the right one. Usually, the gnome will be dead before it realizes he should be looking for the one with ice barrier (little tip if you play against a mage who uses mirror images in PvP). I once used this technique against a slightly tipsy friend in a duel. Poor thing thought she had completely lost it and decided it was best to head for bed.

There is also a lot of silly uses for various mage spells. Take slow fall for example. I’ve turned several heads by using slow fall and jumping down on summoning stones (in Azeroth of course) and removing the spell at just as you’re floating over the stone.

My fellow mage, Vorla, over at The Echo Isles-blog has been slacking recently. You might remember him talking about doing an interview with his noob friend, about how he was experiencing the game while leveling up his first character. Well, Mr. Noob dinged 80 last night. We ran him through Trial of the Crusader (heroic, then normal with a 79 priest who never had jousted before either) and Culling of Stratholme (heroic), leaving him baffled and confused, and with a shiny new necklace. The plan is, if Vorla doesn’t get off his blue arse soon, I’m gonna nick his noob and do a Q &A with him. I’ve got a few ideas on what to ask him, but I would love it if you would pitch in with some questions and/or ideas!

Stables - We got it covered

As for my plan to PvP. It’s going alright. I’ve managed to pick up both some decent PvE and PvP epics, and started to see my self like a threat. That was until I tried arenas. Me and a rogue in the guild decided to try some skirmishes. The guildy is a PvP-nut. With his main being a mage with a 2000+ 2v2 team and over 1500(!) matches, it’s fair to say I was afraid too feel like a noob. The first thing that struck me is the amount of reaction and awareness needed in arenas. There is a very small margin for error, and the matches usually last until either teams makes a mistake. Panick and confusion are the first words to pop into my head when thinking about the first two or three matches. After some input from PvP-nut we managed to win our fourth game against a DK and a shaman (perhaps not the best combo?). After that we went up against a series of 800+resi teams, among them a Disc Priest/Resto Druid team which were just impossible to take down. We eventually decided to take a break, and try again another day.

In other news, 3.2.2 hit today. As you may or may not know, arcane got a serious buff. Although, not in the way I would have liked. Still I’m glad that I won’t have to specc fire to be viable in raids. Rather than making the mana management of arcane (which is the fun part of it in my opinion), they boosted the damage and made it more mana efficient instead. Previously you had to time your potions, gems and evocations perfectly or else you would find your self out of mana. If you tried to play it safe and preserve your mana, your DPS would suck. I was hoping for these tools to be change/buffed somehow to make this more manageable and less dependant on RNG (random AOE or something during evocation… ARGH!). Perhaps make the improved evocation similar to a shadow priests disperse? Making them immune to damage while channeling, this would also make arcane a more viable in PvP.

With 3.2.2 we also got to visit an old friend. Onyxia. As expected she was a loot piniata. Since she was added to celebrate WoW’s 5th anniversary I think it’s fair that everyone should be able to have a shot at her. What I didn’t expect was that she would drop   232 and 245 loot. Nevertheless, it was fun seeing old content tuned for level 80. I’m already looking forward to giving Ragnaros a visit when Cataclysm hits. Lastly, please leave any questions you may have for the noob in your comment.

A New Path

First of all I would just like to say this. BALLS! *cough* Sorry ’bout that. WordPress decided to screw up the first draft of this post, only leaving two random words out of the whole thing behind.  Anyhoo, on with the show.

Over the last couple of weeks life decided to throw me a series of curve balls. Due to these balls (you might have guessed my favorite curse word by now?) I haven’t been able to play as much and as consistently as I’d like to. That means that I can pretty much forget about my plans of ignoring alts until Cataclysm and completely focusing on raiding. At least for the next couple of months. Still not too fussed about alting, I needed to start looking for something else to do while playing. What I needed was something that didn’t require a lot of time, could be done at level 80 and was still challenging and fun. The answer? PvP of course!

Not being particularly fond of PvPing as a druid, Blizzard could not have chosen a better time to finally release faction changes in the EU. You might remember my rant a couple of weeks back where I was contemplating what race I would turn my gnome into if I should decide to do so. At the time the choice was between an undead and a troll since, as a guildy so nicely put it; “There are no such thing as male blood elves”. However, I’ve had a change of heart since then. I realized that I spent the majority of vanilla and a large part of TBC staring at a troll’s backside, then probably as much staring at various boney arses while leveling alts after TBC.  It was time for something new and fresh. So, then, without further adu, let me introduce, Eruantiel!

Eruantiel, the mage formerly known as Adustum (TMFNAA? Perhaps not the same ring to it as TAFKAP…), currently got a measly 1461 SP and 282 resilience and a player who’s forgotten the difference between invisibility and polymorph (yes, I actually mixed them up once).  I’m really enjoy mage PvP so far, which much be obvious by the 49k honour I got yesterday… Though, it’s still obvious that there is a lot of room for improvement both when it comes to gear and skill.

The plan for the next few weeks is to PvP my arse off whenever I got time for it, and hopefully getting the skill and geared required to do some arenas as well. Eventually. I’ll leave it at that for now and report back with thoughts, experience and probably various cursing and frustrations later.

A Bitter Sweet Victory

Last night my guild cleared Trial of the Crusader 10-man, in fact, we one-shot Anub’arak. You may expect a “Whooop!”, but my first reaction was rather a disappointed “Meh…”. I’m really starting to get worried about the way raids seems to be heading. By know you’re probably realizing this is going to be yet another rant/QQ-post, but bear with me.

As far as I’m aware, CC was supposed to be the next raid tier. Then why on earth is every single boss in there, perhaps with the Faction Chumps as the exception, easier than pretty much all bosses in Ulduar? “Oy, you’re forgetting about the Heroic version!”, yes, yes, I know, heroic. But heroic is supposed to be comparable to hard modes, isn’t it? I guess in way they are. From what I’ve heard they’re plenty challenging. My only problem is the lack of variation. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but the heroic mode just slightly changes some parts of the boss-fights, and adds a ton of DPS and HP to the bosses? I’ve always thought of hard-modes to be “Ok”, but nothing more. At least they changed the way the fight worked and you had to some degree change your tactics. With CC-10 I’m afraid it’s gonna feel like the old TBC-grind where you had to do the normals over and over, then the heroics over and over if you wanted to progress.

Blizzard did say that this would be smaller patch raid-wise compared to Ulduar, which was the biggest instance they’ve ever made. This was mostly due to the new BG, Isle of Conquest. I’ve would have been completely fine with the PvP-ers getting a bit more love for once if it weren’t for one thing. The changes to badges. I’ve ranted (whined if you like) about this before, but now after having experienced it, I like it even less. There are several reasons why I don’t like. I’ll start with the ones that effect me the most. I’m “forced” (of course not literally, but I’ll quickly fall faaar behind if I don’t) to run heroics over again, completely fucking the gearing process sideways, which I’ll get to later. It all feels like I’m playing a game where  the publishers tell me that if I play the gamer over and over, but this time on the easiest difficulty, I’ll be able to play their new game faster!  C’mon, Blizzard! I used to like gearing up, now you have made it feel like a chore! It used to go Heroics>Naxx>Maly/Sarth. A clear and simple progression path letting (and forcing) everyone to play through the content. Which is why you made it in the first place right? Blizzard have stated several times that they don’t like to see content dying. Well, the completely killed Naxx (with badge farm runs as the exception), no one does Sartharion or Malygos anymore, and large parts of Ulduar is obsolete. My other problem with it, the same one I have with VoA, is being rewarded for very little effort. But since I’ve mentioned that in a previous post, I’ll let it rest.

Tamarind over at Righteos Orbs wrote a post about reaching level 80 and starting to gear up. While reading I realized that people who are a few months behind are unlikely to get to see Naxxramas, Sartharion and Malygos. At best they’ll steam roll through with even less effort than other people did back when Wrath was launched. Rather, most of the time they’ll be stuck farming heroics and TotC normal until they are ready for Ulduar (where a lot of the loot will be useless) and CC. They are missing out on a lot of content in most ways a lot more fun and challenging than heroics. Except for utter boredom, another possible effect is that these players will get bitch slapped, badly, when they go into Ulduar and CC. The leap in difficulty might be too big. We all remember the face-roll days of Naxx, then going to Ulduar which made a lot of people, including my self, how rusty were had become since TBC raiding. Now imagine going from heroics in T8,5 to Ulduar. Without experience from more complex boss fights like Malygos, some bosses in Naxx and Sartharion with drakes, they are likely to struggle. A lot. It might be doable for someone who raided in TBC, but it might prove to steep a learning curve for those who have never raided before.

The only reason I still raid is my guild. Chatting with 4, 14 or 24 other people as crazy as my self while playing WoW will never grow old, no matter how daft the content is. To those Abso’s who’s reading this. I’ll see you for more Faesrol-heroics-grind in a few days!

Cataclysm lull …or not?

My last few months in WoW have been spent raiding and leveling alts for the new expansion. Then the expansion news hit, and we’re told that the entire leveling experience will be improved. Suddenly I don’t feel like leveling alts that are below 60 since I’d rather wait until the expansion hits, which may be as much as a year from now.  I suddenly found my self playing a lot less after this. There would be the occasional  Ulduar (of which I’m getting bored, with Yogg as the exception since we’ve not gotten him/her/it? down yet), and the new Trial of the Crusader, which is alright, but seems to get old really quickly. The boss fights in there were fun, but the scenery gets old really fast, so much for lazy design, or perhaps they’re just prioritizing other stuff?

Deathwing - Possible the most awesome looking dragon ever

Anyhoo, since I decided to not level alts below 60 I’ve been playing less and less, and when I’ve been playing I’ve been focusing on stuff that didn’t interest me before, like reputation, achievements, mounts etc. That was until these news hit. Apparently the faction change feature has been made available in the U.S, hope fully we’ll be getting it in the EU any day now. This means that I’m finally going to get to make my gnome mage into a Hordie. The only question is, which race am I going to make him? I’ve already got a troll at 75 which I’ve got over 35+ days played on, so a troll is out of the question. That leaves the deaders and the belfers. At first I was leaning towards an undead, but since I already got two undead casters I’ve been thinking more and more of turning him into a blood elf. There is only one problem. I usually prefer male characters. It seems it’s completely impossible to make a male blood elf who’s even close to being just  a bit masculine. I’m not saying I want a burly orc, I’ve always thought they fit melee classes better because of how they look. But I don’t know of I want to place a race that looks like they’ll scream “NOT THE FACE!” as soon as anything comes near them. So, all of you belfers out there, is it possible to make a male blood elf that isn’t girly looking?

Too make sure this post isn’t all about me and how I play, I’d like some thoughts on how you are approaching the game after the recent news about the expansion and the faction change. I’ve seen other fellow bloggers who are in the same situation as me. With the expansion on the horizon, Wrath suddenly becomes a lot less appealing. Sure, there’s raids, dailies and a new battleground. But it still feels like the same old content. Just the few sneak peeks we’ve gotten at Cataclysm makes Wrath look very dull, doesn’t it?

To be continued…

Due to WoW crashing all the time I’m now on a involuntary break. I’ll get back to bloging as soon as I get WoW up and running again.

N00b Boyfriend

Funniest WoW-related video I’ve seen in a long time!

Pimp Dat UI and Various Other Tidbits

Seeing as lot of people are sharing their UI’s and the fact that I’ve been lacking any imagination lately, I decided to share mine and some thoughts on UI’s as well.

As most people, I started off with the basic Blizzard UI. It wasn’t until I saw a friend play with these additional action bars that I started to fiddle around with addons. In the years that I’ve played I’ve gone from curious to being an addon-junkie. My UI is constantly being improved, and I usually end up completely changing it every few months. With each change making it slightly better (at least hopefully)than it used to be. My first ever modified UI, still very basic (and notice guild chat), looked like this:

Before I start showing off, I’d like to share few tips to those new to UI customization and to those struggling with it. Making an UI reminds me of running an instance. It’s frustrating, you need to be focused, it’s time consuming and doesn’t always go as planned, but in the end it’s worth it. My first attempts at making my own UI usually went like this: I would get several addons I thought looked funky, enabled them all, (later learned to enable them one by one) threw them around trying not to clutter my screen too badly, then eventually gave up. If you recognize yourself in this, I recommend to instead getting a UI package/compilation, which basically is a bunch of addons with preset settings. Spend a few minutes getting to know it, perhaps do some instances to see how it works in a group setting, then start tweaking to fit you. The end result will be miles better. My first attempt at doing this resulted in this UI:

Full resolution: http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j167/Zeeon/RaidUI.jpg

Eventually you’ll become comfortable enough to start making bigger and bigger changes.  This is the time where most people start thinking about making a complete new UI from scratch, usually with a significantly better end result than the first time they tried it. Not only did I learn to enable addons a few at a time, I also planned ahead. Before even starting to download the addons, I would have a rough image in my head of how my UI would look. From there I would browse the addons I needed to fulfill those visions, comparing similar ones to find the one those who fit my purpose. After all of this I would set up it up the way I had imagined it, play with it, improve it. Then rinse and repeat until I was happy with the outcome. Here’s my first self made UI. It’s not the prettiest, but it was functional and I loved it as a healer.

Full resolution: http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j167/Zeeon/Adus.jpg

During raids I would move recount and open Omen where the map currently is, making room for 25-player Grid. The open space to the bottom right is for tracking HOT’s and DOT’s(invaluable for a resto druid).  The quest tracker also had a show/hide functionality.

What I tried to do with this, and had done with previous UI’s, was to seperate the game and non-game part of my UI. I was happy with this for quite a while, but later discovered that it wasn’t optimal, especially not while DPS-ing or tanking. The way to make your UI as efficent as possible is to have everything that requires immediate attention (player and target frames, procs, raid frames if you are a healer etc.)  in the center of the screen, while the stuff you only need to look at occasionally (maps, buffs, chat, damage meters, action bars etc.) off to the edges of the screen. This will allow you keep an eye on everything that is going on around you, like standing the fire, while still not having to move your vision to look at non-game world stuff.

My attempts at doing this previously might have resulted in efficent UI’s, but rarely good looking ones. So I decided to go with the old approach of finding a UI package, then modifying it. Here’s the result.

Full resolution: http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j167/Zeeon/UI-7.jpg

Your first reaction looking at this is more than likely “What the bloody hell am I looking at?”. The answer, is LUI. This screen shot is from when I was playing chicken in Ulduar. As mentioned above, everything that I would want to look at without having to move my eyes from what’s going on, is close by. If I’m running around as a tree, my CD-timer and action bars swap places with the raid frames. On top of all of this, it’s peeerdy! I can’t deny that it took me a good while to get used to (and set up *shudder*), but I’ve fallen utterly in love with it. It’s got everything I want in an UI. Looks, functionality and not that high memory usuage that it makes my computer cry.

To finish of this rather long rant I’d like to add a couple of thoughts related to UI’s. First up is key-bindings. I used to click every single spell I had on my action bars, later I would use my keyboard for 1-5 then click the rest. Now I’ve got every single spell I might have to use in combat keybound and memorized. It took me a while to get used to and memorize them all, but I ended up improving my healing vastly. Just not being dependant on having too look down at your action bars makes a huge difference. You might even come across some UI’s with no action bars whatsoever, just hidden ones with keybindings the player knows by heart. To not have to move your left hand all over your keyboard, remember that you can use Control and Shift on the 1-6 keys (and all other for that matter) for additional bindings, in addtion to letters like: Q, E (I’ll come to that later), F, G, C, X and Z.

“Keybind Q and E? But then I can’t strafe!”  Oh yes you can, you just have to get rid of an old habit. Keyboard turning. Hearing this you’re now either thinking “What’s wrong with that?”, or “Eeewwwww!”. Keyboard turning is the act of turning with A and D. It’s slow and unresponsive, and it takes up 2 keys you could be using for key bindings. This might not seem like a great deal, but upon forcing my self to learn to turn by using the mouse, I felt like I had been playing the game the wrong way for four years. The simplest way to force yourself to learn this is to bind your strafing keys to A and D, and bind Q and E to spells. You’ll find your self doing a lot of weird stuff, possibly causing some wipes, but eventually it will feel as natural as A an D turning did.