Episode 11 – To Click or Not to Click, That Is the Question

You’re listening to the Star Forge podcast with Scya and Mal, two nerds who  have a lot to say about Star Wars: The Old Republic and all its ‘features’ – rest assured, the podcast is working as intended.

⚠️ This podcast is rated E.S. for extremely silly and may contain bad words bad jokes and other bad content that is not suitable for children maybe it is we don’t know we’re not their parents.

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Episode 11

  • ⭐ Group & Solo Topic: Playing Effectively vs What You Want
  • ⭐ Can’t Make This Sith Up: Too Busy to Cleanse

Banter

To click or not to click, that is the question

Whether ’tis easier for the hand to suffer

The many clickings of the left mouse button

Or to bind thy skills to hot keys on the keyboard

For by clicking slowly your parse will dwindle

No more, a gaming mouse will end

The hand-ache and the sorrow you will feel

To bind, to click, ah there’s the rub

For binding brings 40-55 APM and good numbers will come

Disappointing Other People

Mal: Alright today we are going to tackle two topics that, in my opinion, go hand in hand: Making the SWTOR UI work for you and Keybinding vs Clicking. Lets talk about the UI first, Scya tell me a little bit about what your screen looks like. 

Scya: 

  • My screen is so boring! 
  • I’ve seen some realy creative ones or re-create from other games
  • I use default with MINOR differences – big one is turning on target of target
  • Mal what do you use?

Mal: Now let me ask you this– do you have different UIs for different classes and by that I mean heal/tank/dps or are they all the same?

Scya: 

  • Tank/DPS the same but…
  • HEALING is almost the same except I make the healthbars and debuffs HUGE
  • Like you can’t even see my screen if we have a full team of 24 LOl
  • People make fun of me
  • It helps me. It’s bad for situational awareness but helps me focus on healing my team
  • I know you play a little of everything, what do you do?

Mal’s UI Tips

Mal: Points to hit about the UI that I think will really help you out:

  1. Click in the Operations frame in the UI. Scroll to the bottom and make sure “Show Only Removable Debuffs” is never ever ever checked. Ever. It does not work right, it is a piece of crap. If you check it sometimes debuffs that you need to cleanse don’t show up! 
  2. In the Operations frame, my debuff size is .7 and my buff size is .1. Debuffs big, buffs miniscule, because why the fuck do I care about the buffs other people have? I care about what debuffs they have so I know who needs attention. 
  3. The biggest debate I have with people is I don’t show the health text. Why? Because I can eyeball it and what do I care if you have 157,000 health or 50,000 health. One your bar looks nice and red and long and healthy. The other you have a super short red bar. To me the numbers and % are just clutter I don’t need to look at. What I do instead is bump the Health Width to 144 and the height to 20.
    SCYA: As a tank, I don’t actually care if you’re low on health, because if you’re dying I am either actively the one killing you or it’s not my problem.
  4. I have my own debuff tray completely off my bar and it is smack in the middle of the screen and it’s scale is 1.1, Icon Scale is .9. This really helps you watch yourself and know what you have, I find this incredibly useful. Especially on fights like Tyrans so it’s super obvious you have Simplification.
    SCYA: That’s smart. For my healer I did something similar, stuck it right in the middle. For my tank, I’m so used to just looking for the little debuff near my portrait, but it’s probably notthe best way to do it.
  5. I also like to put my cool downs on a separate bar in the middle of my screen so I know what I have to work with in moments when I need DCDs. I’ll talk about how I keybind them later, but on every class I have all my cool downs, adrenals, and relics up on that bar so I know what I have– and that bring me to WHEN will I have these cool downs
    SCYA: Yeah! This is a great tip for new players – group your defensive abilities together in the same area somehow. So you alway know where your emergency buttons are!
  6. Under Preferences, User Interface, there is something called “Cooldown Settings” I have checked off Show Ready Flash, Show Global Cooldown Ready Flash, and Show Cooldown Text. The Cooldown Text is the most important bit, when you use a skill it will show a countdown clock that tells you when it will be up again. I can glance at my bar and know I have my adrenal coming off Cool Down in 5 seconds or my Saber Ward will be up in 10 seconds. This is all SUCH USEFUL STUFF for you and to tell your group so that everyone can be prepared; in the same screen is a box you check for Buffs and Debuffs to Highlight Triggered Abilities which brings me to the next point
  7. Turn on Target of Target ESPECIALLY if you are a dps. Preferences – Controls – in the first box “General” check off “Enable Focus Target” Then you can adjust your focus target settings to help you help yourself stay on top of all your dots. For example, my focus target has the Enabled box checked, boss debuffs at .85, buffs at .65. I check off Show Information Text and also check off HIghlight Buffs for Any Duration and Debuffs Any Duration, Sort Options check off Personal Buffs, Buff Sort Type: Apply Time, Personal Debuffs Check, Debuff Sort Type Apply Time. What this is going to do is highlight any dots you have on the focus target and highlight them in a yellow box and also they will be sorted so that you see yours first among all the clutter. This is great for many many classes to know when you need to refresh dots, what you have running on the boss, if an important dot has fallen off etc.
  8. Turn off shit you don’t need or make it tiny. My menu bar? Tiny. Max level? XP bar and Legacy bar disabled. Alignment button? Couldn’t care less, I pick a side and disable it. [[ALIGNMENT BUTTON GOING AWAY – SCYA]]

Scya: Okay, enough out the UI, lets move on to keybinding. 

Mal: Scya, I hear you are renowned across the land for your clicking. Tell me, how many mice do you go through in a year?

Scya:

  • I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m a clicker!
  • Well actually a hybrid
  • I understand it’s not fastest, but it’s what I like
  • Not super interested in learning to fully keybind – I might buy a gamer mouse and do it as a challenge one day just for fun, but I enjoy the hybrid a lot more, and it seems to be a lot easier for me when switching between many characters who I am still learning to play and haven’t memorized everything yet

Mal: For me, I keybind everything. I upgraded to a Logitech G600 and I haven’t looked back. I also bind a lot on the keyboard to things that are easy for me to reach. I also find that the key is consistency across characters. I can log onto any character I have and interrupt is always 5, cleanse is always shift+d (even on my tanks, shift+D is the cooldown I have that can also cleanse), knockback is always Shift +6, Adrenal is always G, movement speed buff is mouse wheel to the right etc. To me this prevents a LOT of confusion if you play multiple classes and it can make learning new ones much much easier. I also try to keep things in similar spots per spec. For example, kolto Bomb and salvation are both 6. Roaming mend and successive treatment (the hopping heals) are mouse wheel click. This can differ for dps and tanking, but I try to keep those mostly the same as well. Taunt is 1 on any tank I play. AOE taunt, always 6. 

SCYA: 

  • I do the same thing by overlapping abilities that are similar for different classes. 
  • F for fast. 
  • E for Enterupt. 
  • X for stun.
  • And they go in the same place in the bars every time. 
  • It helps SO MUCH when you are trying new classes, the learning time gets cut almost in half!

MAL: And for the love of everything unholy and holy save your keybind settings so that you can use it easily across all your characters if you have duplicates or mirrors on the other side! 

SCYA: 

  • Keybind settings are awesome!!! 
  • ESC > PREFERENCES > KEYBINDS, then look for the Keybinding Import/Export tab on the bottom. 
  • Every time I start a new character I import my “default” for them
  • And as I get new abilities, I put them in their pre-designated spot… once I get Force speed it goes in F for Fast!

MAL: I also read a great piece of advice from somewhere– I forget where but this is not my own original idea. If you are learning a new spec, set up your first quickbar as the entire rotation even if you wind up binding the same ability multiple times.

WHERE ARE YOUR INTERFACE AND KEYBINDINGS SAVED?

In a hidden folder:

Keybindings

 C:\Users\Swtorista\AppData\Local\SWTOR\swtor\settings\Keybindings

Interface

 C:\Users\Swtorista\AppData\Local\SWTOR\swtor\settings\GUIProfiles

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS SITH UP

People who are “too busy” to do more than one thing. An epidemic has been sweeping the galaxy– no, not the Rakghoul plague, we’ve pretty much cured that. I mean people who do group content with other people and do not or will not help. A long time ago in a galaxy far away a young healer took to a trip to the Valley of the Machine Gods– as a dps. The group she was with was tackling Tyth, the robot of rage. In certain phases of this boss several ads appear, some of which need to be interrupted. At some point a dps, who will remain nameless due to licencing restrictions, expressed the need for an extra interrupt to be thrown out on an ad by one of the healers. To this request both healers responded that they could not, in fact, use their interrupt at all in this fight because they were “too busy”. As a heal main herself, this made the dps particularly cranky and after a quick check of the healers numbers in the parser, she felt even grumpier. After several more failed attempts, the group ended for the evening. Perhaps these healers did not know what an interrupt was. Perhaps they were also baking desserts while raiding and that was why they were “too busy” to help. Or, in this reporter’s opinion, they need to fucking get good.

YOU HEARD IT HERE LAST – NEWS

  • Relics of the Gree Date: November 30 – December 7, 2021
  • Expansion! December 14, 2021

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