Heya guys!!  So people have asked a few times about the N52 and how I use it.  And that’s a fairly detailed deal.  As it turns out I once helped out some guildies a while back with my settings and I found that post.

The following is literally a copy/past job with minimal editing.  So it’s not going to be up to my usual post standards.  But, it gets the job done and allows me to have some /laziness with regard to a detailed post for once, so I’m taking it!!

This was written…before ICC came out.  I think?  Maybe right when it came out, I see a Nighttime in my bags on the SS.

N52 Guild Forum Post Guide (old or something…)

OK, here is a pic of my UI. It’s really not a solid one as I was doing a screen shot for my Blog showing the DPS with an Aesir’s, but it shows the action bars which is all that is important. Look at the bars.

Now you’ll see that there are 5 action bars in place. You could use whatever mod or interface to create them. I personally use CT Mod since I’ve been using it since day 1 of playing WoW.

Now the bottom two action bars are filler. I put things on there I would never really need to click in combat, but click often enough I want them handy. So you can ignore those two.

So the 3 bars that matter. Top action bar, and then the 2 secondary action bars under it which are side by side.

Defining the Bars

The first button of the primary action bar is a purple sword with numeric 1 in the upper right hand corner. The last button of the primary action bar is a greyed out red fist.

The first button of the second action bar is a downturned sword adjacent to a skull saying Leap… The last button of the second action bar is a stack of 15 Frostweave bandages.

The first button of the third action bar is bubbling blood (Blood Boil icon) which is adjacent to a Rose (DnD). The last button of the third action bar is a upreaching claw coming out of the ground greyed out (Raid Dead) adjacent the blue skull (Frost Presence).

Buttons for the Bars

You go into the key bindings of WoW and remap the action bars. The key thing to remember here is that you will never be pressing your keyboard again. Whatever you are used to DOES NOT MATTER anymore. Not Shift + this or that, or any other combination of buttons. FORGET THEM.

• First action bar is keyed from 1 through = sign on the keyboard.
• Second action bar is keyed from Q through \ on the keyboard (I omit “O” however because I’m too used to using to open the social window).
• Third action bar is keyed from F1 through F12.

Now if you notice I simply chose to designate three lines of keys on the keyboard to these actions bars. I didn’t want to designate random keys because it’d be harder to understand and remap if needed.

Experience/Exception: I recently played Borderlands which is a FPS with RPG background. And it made me realize the potential for in game movement. I’m a MUCH better player now because of it. Due to this I removed 5 and 8 from the primary action bar and remapped 5/8 to “Strafe Left/Right”.

Mouse: So now you know how the keys are mapped except for the mouse. I use a mouse that has two thumb buttons on the left side. I use one of them to activate auto run and the other to run backwards. By holding down both mouse left/right buttons I can also simply run without autorunning. To turn I mouse move. So excepting Strafe, I do all movement though the mouse.

N52TE

Look at this picture first.

Ignoring the keypad buttons themselves you have a few in front of you.
1) Wheel (like a mouse wheel) – I currently have no use for it. It’s difficult to reach.
2) Button directly above the directional keypad – I currently have no use for it. It’s difficult to reach.
3) Directional keypad – I use this, more in a second.
4) Thumb button directly over the LED light (blue in pic) – I use this as my Spacebar button. It’s how I jump.

OK, so basically we now have the 14 keypad buttons, the thumb button (jump/spacebar), and the directional keypad.

When you set up your N52 there are three color selections to choose to map buttons to. Blue, Red, and Green. Next to the Thumb Button you can see a small blue LED light on. So were you to press a button, it’d activate whatever you mapped into the N52 settings for the blue buttons. If you swap to another color (say Red for now) then if you pushed a button you could have it do something totally different.

For example: If you have the N52 “1″ button set to press 1 for you on Blue it will do so. But under the Red mapping you could have it set to press F1. So by swapping the color setting you could have the “1″ button on the N52 activate either 1 or F1 in game.

How do you swap colors? You can do it however you like, but I personally chose to use the directional keypad to do it. Ignoring the N52 settings for what I’m about to say, when I “pull back” on the directional keypad it swaps everything to the Green settings. When I push up on the directional keypad it swaps everything to the Red settings. At any time where the directional keypad is released it is set to the Blue settings.

So when I press “1″ on the N52 it pushes 1 in game on my primary action bar. When I hold the directional keypad up and press “1″ on the N52 it pushes the Q button on my second action bar. When I hold the direction keypad back and press “1″ on the N52 it pushes the F1 button on my third action bar. Understand?

Exception/Experience: You need an easily accesible key to quickly talk in Vent. I personally set my push to talk button to L-Cntl. On the N52 I have the “5″ button set to L-Cntl, it is my push to talk button. I just skip “5″ on the N52 for all action bars.

So what does that do for you?

Well the fact of the matter is that I never have to move my two hands crazily across a keyboard. I have all forms of movement in game EASILY accessible at all times (run, autorun, move backwards, turn, and strafe) and can easily talk in vent.

In addition to that I have 3 total action bars easily tied into my N52 to where I can press any of those buttons without ever having to mouse click (which is retardedly slow). Also without having to reach my hand/move my hand to key a certain button.

It took me 2 weeks just to get used to it. It took me about 2 months to actually get really really good with it, let alone master it. It has 100% made me a better player. I can do things now I could NEVER do before in game and I can react far faster than the vast majority of players in game.

Oddball buttons: I also have a few weird ones as well in odd places. I’ve got an auto focus button (no macro or anything). I’ve also got a N52 macro that can auto repeat any button press. So by pressing it it can repeat press something for you, whether that’s Lightning Bolt spam *OR* more importantly Prospect/Milling spam. I have an in game macro combined with an N52 macro that will litterally auto prosect ore for me. I can put 100 stacks of ore in my bags, press a button, and go walk into another room. When I come back it’s all done. Yes, the N52 does love me!!

So that’s it. For my setup anyways. All of my performance in game isn’t just skill/talent/studying. A good bit of it is this N52/Mouse setup. I highly recommend it.

Caveat: Melee will get more out of this setup than a Caster ever will due to the complexity of being a melee toon. I played Elemental Shaman for 2 years guys, I know what I’m talking about here. It is still amazingly useful for casters, but melee toons get far more benefit.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

Tags: DPS, Improve Your Game by SJ, Things you didn't know about WoW