An in depth look
Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:11 pm
So, hopefully I don't get flamed to oblivion for doing this, but I'd realized that after the other day of complaining that all advice spoke about was class balance and itemization, I'd not long after realize that I'd done nothing myself to stop perpetuating the issue.
Alright, so where do I start? I'm going to assume the worst and start from the beginning. So, in regards to class balance and itemization: focusing too much on these things could not be a bigger waste of your time. The former isn't changing any time soon, or enough to where you will probably deem it suitable, and the latter comes in time regardless of what you do. Look, if you go play Golf and you blame the clubs, blame the course, blame the weather, blame your shoes - it's going to be a long uphill battle for you.
Next, let's go with mouses. So obviously there's two different grips, claw and palm. Realistically, claw is the more ideal method but is terrible for you (ask my hand brace), as it allows for higher APM (actions per minute), however, with a GCD implemented into MMO's it's not even necessary. Therefore, I'd advise you to go with palm. Oh yeah, well, this might be obvious but claw is using your fingers and palm is using your palm to move the mouse.
Keyboard. K. So a lot of people think mechanical keyboards are better because the pros use them. Well, there's two things to this: one, it depends on your hand and two: they're paid to use them. In fact, they're almost always - no, they're always, given the gear to use. In fact, that's the first thing a pro receives in terms of compensation, is their equipment. Alright, the other thing is that it depends on the size of your hand. You can't really key slide on a mechanical keyboard, and the input difference is only going to show live (in tournaments). Keyboard sliding is important, in fact I use default office-type keyboards if possible, or possibly a Razer Lycosa if i am going full tryhard. Next, i'll explain why.
So how does key sliding come into play? It goes hand in hand with what i'm going to address next: movement, the GCD, key sliding, and your rotation. Every. Single. One. Of these things is INCREDIBLY important in playing. I cannot tell you how many players I've beaten just because they couldn't face my direction. So where was - oh yeah, ok, movement. There is a break because of the GCD where you can't actually do anything than move. This is so important that Arena players in WoW at a certain tier of play would use arena target modifier binds so that they never had to use their mouse for anything but movement.
This guide is such a cluster. Anyway, moving on. This movement allows you do things that I'm going to talk about later, but anyway, so how does one move and attack at the same time, or move so fluidly in between attacking? Key binds. Now, I'm assuming most of you bind (I hope), but I propose this because of a lot of jagged movement that I see. Your binds should be as close to your movement keys as possible. And, until you learn to only use it in advanced circumstances, please remove your s key entirely. This will help you mouse turn. They should also be easily accessible in direct relation to the size of your hand.
Unfortunately and kind of fortunately (makes key sliding fast), my hands are small, (inb4 related joke), so I accomplish this by using a lot of shift+letter kinds close to wasd. Now I can attack and move simultaneously with great ease and I'm never reaching too far from my movement keys.
The other thing I'd like to bring up is mouse turning, to go hand in hand with keyboard movement. Many times Destruction side might see me in IC moving around like an idiot - i'm actually practicing movement. I'll give you an example of how this works in real time: a lot of times when i'm running a way, I will jump, left click behind my character, swing my mouse by holding down right click and shift+4 to essence lash my opponent, hoping to cripple them with procs. (edit: I forgot to explain why I even did it this way: it allows me to do that combination without losing speed). It often works, and gives me a sec to get a breather. It seems small, but all these little things add up, I promise.
How do you mouse turn more effectively? Well, first you need to get an actual gaming mouse - this is required, and there's a method to the madness. Typical mice have terrible DPI and use windows accelerator. What this does, is that as you move your mouse right left up or down, the longer to which you do so the faster and farther the mouse moves. That doesn't seem so bad at first, until you realize your mouse movement is never consistent. That makes doing any tricky stuff even more tricky, don't do that to yourself. So you get a gaming mouse, install the software, turn off windows accelerator, and adjust your dots per inch (speed of mouse movement - THAT IS ALL) of your mouse. I stress this because a lot of people misunderstand DPI and think the highest levels make you more accurate. There, you can adjust your acceleration at a consistent basis in your gaming mouse menu in relation to your DPI. I think my acceleration is 2 and my DPI has been 900 for like 10 years or something.
Nameplates. Turn on nameplates. Menu -> Targeting -> Overhead health bars, always on, for all of them. I won't need to explain this one, you'll get it.
Alright so uh, you've got your movement down, you've already got your gear and know your spec and everything because that's all you've talked about for months on end, so.. Um. You have your movement down, your binds fixed. So next is positioning.
Positioning is important because your enemy moves in direct correlation to you. This sounds like a simple enough idea but as you'll see in games like League of Legends or Dota2 that's 99% of what they talk about. I mean, ok, hm. Alright, so in game you'll see me hard engage the back line no matter what. Well, that's because of I have no f's to give and also because both teams never seem to comprehend positioning, anyway, let me get on with my point.
So the tanks don't move the team, contrary to what apparently everyone is thinking. The DPS moves the team. If the tanks don't engage/push, the DPS never follow suit, or one tank might slither through and the DPS are too scared to follow. This is a problem. The way the game is designed and the way that the people-un-grouped population plays, there is actually pretty much nothing to be afraid of. Do you think if you all engage that every BW/Sorc/SH/SW is just going to hard swap you and 100-0 you? Sure, they might. I highly doubt it. I run blindly into the backline every game and half the time no one realizes i'm even there. In T4 this has been mostly because I hit like a towel right now but I digress..
Anyways, so we mentioned there's a direct response from what you do to what the team does, why is this important: well, just like chess, you can actually kill the other team based purely on movement. Baiting, cutting, hard swapping, (edit: forgot crossing), disengaging correctly, it's all extremely relevant. (edit: i'm going add something about cross disengaging, and just simply state for now that you cannot just run away from the other team in a direct line without doing anything or you are just chopping your legs off, i'll devote more time to that later). (Edit AGAIN: I forgot splitting, which is wicked important and i'd like to talk about but i'm hungover). Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, ok so um. In many instances I'll see both teams tanks fighting each other, the RDPS assisting the tanks, so on and so forth. Why?
What is to stop you from running past the tanks straight to the back line. Try it sometime. Works like a charm! (lol shameless Bill Burr quote). A few of you may die, you might get punted, kd'd, whatever. But the RDPS is running for their lives doing nigh zero damage, the tanks are still hitting your tanks/melee, and your back line is free to assault whomever the hell they want. It is extremely effective, as essentially their dps is hitting your heaviest targets while your heaviest targets alongside your heaviest dps is hitting their squishiest targets. Make sense? Good.
Now, of course, this isn't always the best option as goes for everything else, but it's usually the correct option. If you don't do this, you are stalemating your team based on which team has the best gear and does the best rotations for their healers/backline. That is an awful idea as it essentially chooses who wins for you before the game even starts.
Why don't good players ever talk about balance? Because you can't change balance yourself. But you can change you. Why waste time over things that aren't under your control?
Okay, that's all i'm gonna input on this for now. If anyone actually reads this and doesn't cringe at me, I might throw something more detailed together in terms of positioning and strategies as well as meta and counter meta, which I cba to do right now.
<3ya
p.s. oh, and if anyone has confirmed whether or not GCD clipping works here, please let me know.
Alright, so where do I start? I'm going to assume the worst and start from the beginning. So, in regards to class balance and itemization: focusing too much on these things could not be a bigger waste of your time. The former isn't changing any time soon, or enough to where you will probably deem it suitable, and the latter comes in time regardless of what you do. Look, if you go play Golf and you blame the clubs, blame the course, blame the weather, blame your shoes - it's going to be a long uphill battle for you.
Next, let's go with mouses. So obviously there's two different grips, claw and palm. Realistically, claw is the more ideal method but is terrible for you (ask my hand brace), as it allows for higher APM (actions per minute), however, with a GCD implemented into MMO's it's not even necessary. Therefore, I'd advise you to go with palm. Oh yeah, well, this might be obvious but claw is using your fingers and palm is using your palm to move the mouse.
Keyboard. K. So a lot of people think mechanical keyboards are better because the pros use them. Well, there's two things to this: one, it depends on your hand and two: they're paid to use them. In fact, they're almost always - no, they're always, given the gear to use. In fact, that's the first thing a pro receives in terms of compensation, is their equipment. Alright, the other thing is that it depends on the size of your hand. You can't really key slide on a mechanical keyboard, and the input difference is only going to show live (in tournaments). Keyboard sliding is important, in fact I use default office-type keyboards if possible, or possibly a Razer Lycosa if i am going full tryhard. Next, i'll explain why.
So how does key sliding come into play? It goes hand in hand with what i'm going to address next: movement, the GCD, key sliding, and your rotation. Every. Single. One. Of these things is INCREDIBLY important in playing. I cannot tell you how many players I've beaten just because they couldn't face my direction. So where was - oh yeah, ok, movement. There is a break because of the GCD where you can't actually do anything than move. This is so important that Arena players in WoW at a certain tier of play would use arena target modifier binds so that they never had to use their mouse for anything but movement.
This guide is such a cluster. Anyway, moving on. This movement allows you do things that I'm going to talk about later, but anyway, so how does one move and attack at the same time, or move so fluidly in between attacking? Key binds. Now, I'm assuming most of you bind (I hope), but I propose this because of a lot of jagged movement that I see. Your binds should be as close to your movement keys as possible. And, until you learn to only use it in advanced circumstances, please remove your s key entirely. This will help you mouse turn. They should also be easily accessible in direct relation to the size of your hand.
Unfortunately and kind of fortunately (makes key sliding fast), my hands are small, (inb4 related joke), so I accomplish this by using a lot of shift+letter kinds close to wasd. Now I can attack and move simultaneously with great ease and I'm never reaching too far from my movement keys.
The other thing I'd like to bring up is mouse turning, to go hand in hand with keyboard movement. Many times Destruction side might see me in IC moving around like an idiot - i'm actually practicing movement. I'll give you an example of how this works in real time: a lot of times when i'm running a way, I will jump, left click behind my character, swing my mouse by holding down right click and shift+4 to essence lash my opponent, hoping to cripple them with procs. (edit: I forgot to explain why I even did it this way: it allows me to do that combination without losing speed). It often works, and gives me a sec to get a breather. It seems small, but all these little things add up, I promise.
How do you mouse turn more effectively? Well, first you need to get an actual gaming mouse - this is required, and there's a method to the madness. Typical mice have terrible DPI and use windows accelerator. What this does, is that as you move your mouse right left up or down, the longer to which you do so the faster and farther the mouse moves. That doesn't seem so bad at first, until you realize your mouse movement is never consistent. That makes doing any tricky stuff even more tricky, don't do that to yourself. So you get a gaming mouse, install the software, turn off windows accelerator, and adjust your dots per inch (speed of mouse movement - THAT IS ALL) of your mouse. I stress this because a lot of people misunderstand DPI and think the highest levels make you more accurate. There, you can adjust your acceleration at a consistent basis in your gaming mouse menu in relation to your DPI. I think my acceleration is 2 and my DPI has been 900 for like 10 years or something.
Nameplates. Turn on nameplates. Menu -> Targeting -> Overhead health bars, always on, for all of them. I won't need to explain this one, you'll get it.
Alright so uh, you've got your movement down, you've already got your gear and know your spec and everything because that's all you've talked about for months on end, so.. Um. You have your movement down, your binds fixed. So next is positioning.
Positioning is important because your enemy moves in direct correlation to you. This sounds like a simple enough idea but as you'll see in games like League of Legends or Dota2 that's 99% of what they talk about. I mean, ok, hm. Alright, so in game you'll see me hard engage the back line no matter what. Well, that's because of I have no f's to give and also because both teams never seem to comprehend positioning, anyway, let me get on with my point.
So the tanks don't move the team, contrary to what apparently everyone is thinking. The DPS moves the team. If the tanks don't engage/push, the DPS never follow suit, or one tank might slither through and the DPS are too scared to follow. This is a problem. The way the game is designed and the way that the people-un-grouped population plays, there is actually pretty much nothing to be afraid of. Do you think if you all engage that every BW/Sorc/SH/SW is just going to hard swap you and 100-0 you? Sure, they might. I highly doubt it. I run blindly into the backline every game and half the time no one realizes i'm even there. In T4 this has been mostly because I hit like a towel right now but I digress..
Anyways, so we mentioned there's a direct response from what you do to what the team does, why is this important: well, just like chess, you can actually kill the other team based purely on movement. Baiting, cutting, hard swapping, (edit: forgot crossing), disengaging correctly, it's all extremely relevant. (edit: i'm going add something about cross disengaging, and just simply state for now that you cannot just run away from the other team in a direct line without doing anything or you are just chopping your legs off, i'll devote more time to that later). (Edit AGAIN: I forgot splitting, which is wicked important and i'd like to talk about but i'm hungover). Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, ok so um. In many instances I'll see both teams tanks fighting each other, the RDPS assisting the tanks, so on and so forth. Why?
What is to stop you from running past the tanks straight to the back line. Try it sometime. Works like a charm! (lol shameless Bill Burr quote). A few of you may die, you might get punted, kd'd, whatever. But the RDPS is running for their lives doing nigh zero damage, the tanks are still hitting your tanks/melee, and your back line is free to assault whomever the hell they want. It is extremely effective, as essentially their dps is hitting your heaviest targets while your heaviest targets alongside your heaviest dps is hitting their squishiest targets. Make sense? Good.
Now, of course, this isn't always the best option as goes for everything else, but it's usually the correct option. If you don't do this, you are stalemating your team based on which team has the best gear and does the best rotations for their healers/backline. That is an awful idea as it essentially chooses who wins for you before the game even starts.
Why don't good players ever talk about balance? Because you can't change balance yourself. But you can change you. Why waste time over things that aren't under your control?
Okay, that's all i'm gonna input on this for now. If anyone actually reads this and doesn't cringe at me, I might throw something more detailed together in terms of positioning and strategies as well as meta and counter meta, which I cba to do right now.
<3ya
p.s. oh, and if anyone has confirmed whether or not GCD clipping works here, please let me know.
The stuff about the mechanics of hand movement on kb/m is cool I guess, because few people talk about (it all gets assumed everyone knows it all, I guess, which is definitely not the case), as is the stuff about movement/positioning in game.
