Introduction
This is a really short guide on customizing your hotkeys. There are some recurring woes on how unpleasant it feels to recast Blood of Dreeg and that it should had been an aura instead, also plenty of pleas for builds that could be played one handed. I feel like a lot of that can be easily alleviated by adjusting your hotkeys a bit.
Main Skillbar – The Four Main Hotkeys
A skillbar has 10 slots. The default 1-2-3-…-9-0 skillbar has half the keys essentially unusable unless you’re an alien or a mutant, you have to adjust it in a way that you could use all 10 slots in tight combat environment.
I’m a long time MOBA player so I use Q-W-E-R instead of 1-2-3-4. It’s a matter of preference, you can stick with 1-2-3-4 if you feel like it. What matters is there are four “main” hotkeys on your keyboard. That’s more or less the number of keyboard buttons an average player can use efficiently. No sarcasm here.
The game has separate hotkeys for health and energy potions so you don’t need to have them on skillbar. They default to E and R, so if you’re using MOBA-like Q-W-E-R hotkeys you obviously would need to bind potion hotkeys to something else. I’m using D and F keys for them. Yes, it’s basically shifting stuff one row down on your keyboard.
Main Skillbar – Mouse Buttons
Until now it was just a warmup, now’s the real deal.
So far we covered 4 out of 10 skill slots, so we have 6 left. Two of them should be bound to wheelup and wheeldown. Yes, you can bind skill slots to that. Wheelup and wheeldown are camera zoom controls by default, but that’s super wasteful to use wheel for that because naturally you’ll want to play with camera zoomed out to maximum. You can, for example, use Page Up and Page Down for that.
Ofcourse wheelup and wheeldown isn’t great for the majority of skills in the game, but there’s a certain type of skills it’s super convenient for – skills that neither require target nor have a cast time. For example, Blood of Dreeg, Word of Renewal and Pneumatic Burst. Using W-UP and W-Down for them absolutely trivializes recasting them while still allows you to use them for their intended use – an on-demand heal.
Next two slots are also bound to mouse buttons, one to Middle Mouse button and the other one to Mouse 4 (also known as “thumb button” or “side button”). Middle Mouse has it’s uses, but admittingly it’s not something I’m using on every single character. Mouse 4 though is a default mobility rune hotkey for me, on every build.
With hotkeys mapped in such a way you basically have enough slots for six skills – left mouse button, right mouse button, middle mouse button, wheel up, wheel down and mouse 4. People been asking about builds that can be played with just a mouse as if it’s something exotic. It really isn’t, just takes proper hotkey mapping.
Main Skillbar – The Last Two
For the two remaining skill slots I’m using 1 and Spacebar. Spacebar just feels good for things that do not require targeting, like OH SHIT buttons similar to Mirror of Ereoctes or Blade Barrier, or AoE skills like War Cry or Olexra’s Flash Freeze. Spacebar defaults to pause but if you need to pause the game you can just use Esc instead.
The 1 is my potion button, typically aether cluster.
Honestly it isn’t very important, last two slots are leftovers and most builds don’t need them, even the most pianey ones. Only exception that comes to mind is some pet builds.
Second Skillbar
There’s a second skillbar you can activate by pressing a hotkey (default: Y). It’s broadly used for keeping all the auras and toggleable buffs out of your main skillbar to allow more active skills there.
Yeah, it’s widely known since there’s even a loading screen tooltip, but just in case you missed that.
Pickup
Last but not least – there’s a Pickup hotkey in settings that is unmapped by default, which does exactly what it says on the tin – orders your character to pickup a nearby item. It’s more convenient to spam it instead of spamming left mouse button when picking up a large amount of loot.
I have it bound to ` (or ~, tilde key). Can’t say it’s optimal but it works for me.
Conclusion
As always, it’s just my approach. Do post yours in the comments!
