Kalven at Kal’s Corner: Keybinds and macros set a foundation for executing a solid rotation, effective cooldown management, pet control, and CC usage. Without effective keybinds, abilities fall out of use. Without macros, actions become slow and cumbersome.
I suspect most players keybinds are somewhat organic, in the sense that they add abilities as they level almost haphazardly. That can lead to very disorganized keybinds. A new expansion is a great time to reorganize keybinds purposefully. Innovating one’s setup, especially after a year or more of playing one particular way, can be a daunting task, but I have occasionally made fundamental changes to my keybinds, and have found that it’s like rearranging furniture, in that the new keybinds quickly become the new normal.
Rotation
A good place to start is with your core rotation. I always put my highest priority ability on 1, so I can be sure to keep it on cooldown. I put second highest priority and/or resource dump abilities on 2, and filler abilities (typically most used) on 3. Special abilities, buffs or procced abilities I put on F1, and short term cooldowns (i.e. Synapse Springs, Bestial Wrath) on F2. I put Serpent Sting on ` since it’s fire and forget nature leaves it mostly unused except at the start, and if it drops. . . . Read full article
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My general keybinds remain the same in the new expac, but after 5.1, I’ll scrap what I have and start from scratch, addressing macros as well. Most notably, I’m considering moving Silencing Shot to ` for quicker, easier interrupts, and Serpent Sting to WD for multi-dotting initially and for switching target to adds (My Serpent Sting macro has @mouseovertarget and /petattack). This would bring these types of actions in line with the rest of my alts.
Also, this was a sort of proto-post, intended as practice article for more posts showing how I keybind all the other classes I play (Priest, DK, Shammy, Rogue, Pally). It can get confusing with so many different abilities to track, but when it’s broken down to the fundamentals (i.e. resource generators, resource spenders, interrupts, cc’s, slows, defensive cooldowns, ect.) all of the class/specs become a blur where teasing out the details becomes the focus.