Gaming/speed pad - Do you use one? wolfking or n52

[midnitemyst]

Ive been using my keyboard and mouse ever since i started playing games and it just never occured to me to swap out the keyboard for something designed more for gaming.

Ive decided to buy one because of pvp and raid situations where you gotta be quick and accurate without having to find and click it on the bars making you that much quicker and better. now on with the decision...

Ive researched it quite a bit and ive decided on 2.
Wolfking Warrior (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1926424,00.asp) $30
and
Belkin Nostromo n52 (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2034221,00.asp) $30

Both look good although i have to say the wolfking looks a lot more appealing with the arc numbers making it very easy to access my main spells fast and easy without having to find and click them with the mouse which is often a bad delay in arena. but i also have a friend who swears by the n52 for its ease of use but with so many spells in wow used in pvp, will it simply have enough buttons? of course i know that some maintenance things like arcane intellect dont deserve a spot on the pad, im talking about pvp/pve spells that are used often in combats.

Maybe you guys can point out something I overlooked. So I need some input!
Do you guys use one? if so, which one? if not, which one would you choose?

Thanks :D
Maybe ill even convince a few to buy a speed pad by the end of this thread :tongue:

[Stigg]

I used one. Key word past tense. The only difference between a claw pad and a keyboard is the roundness. Sure, you may have straght access to a few more keys, but why on earth would you ever need all those keys?

Furthermore, why not learn keybidnings and use the regular keyboard? I quit using mine for WoW when I started getting annoyed having to switch between it and my regular keyboard to actually type words.

And if you are already using your mouse to click spells then even after you get the claw you will still be using your mouse to click buttons. They were designed for FPS where you need incredibly quick and detailed movements and no need for an actual type written communication. And no matter how much people say WoW PVP is fast paced, its not. At all. It is slow, filled with cooldowns and global cooldowns, distance paramenters, etc.

[det]

I suck at WASD movement. So I bought a Merc2 Zboard. Which has a seperate number / arrow pad on the left side. Love it :)

http://www.ideazon.com/de/products/mercgamingkeyboard.asp

[Stigg]

Now that is a hawt keyboard!

[Kugan]

Nostromo N52. I can’t play without it.

The nice thing is the directional pad. After advice on this forum, I set the DPad to move forward and strive left/right. This means that I move only by using my thumb on mouse, effectively freeing up two more fingers for spellcasting.

I probably only win about half a second due to the fact that I don’t have to move my fingers from the movement keys, but in PvP, every second counts.

[midnitemyst]

For kugan,

Do you find that the buttons on the n52 is enough for all your spells during pvp to not have to rely on clicking?

[thedirty]

For kugan,

Do you find that the buttons on the n52 is enough for all your spells during pvp to not have to rely on clicking?

I use a regular keyboard, and there are more than enough buttons for all spells during pvp to not have to rely on clicking.

For example, you can use shift, control, and alt as modifiers, so the button '1' does one spell, shift+1 does another spell, control+1 yet another, and alt+1 yet another still. Even if you only use the buttons ` to 5, that is essentially 24 buttons that you can press at a moments notice that are close to your hand, and then there are the 6 to = buttons that you can map other less used or out of combat skills to.

Also, some people remap their keyboard to use keys like q, e, z, x, c, f, v, or r so they have access to even more buttons at a moments notice (not myself, except I took r off from reply because I kept hitting it during combat, and moved reply over to the - sign on numberpad where I wouldn't accidentally hit it during combat)!

If you are wondering how I use the modifiers at the same time, what I do is normally have my hand positioned with middle finger on the w key, index on d, ring on a, and pinky on shift, using my middle to click on 2 or 3 when needed, my ring on ` or 1 when needed, and my index to click on 4 or 5, using my pinky to move from shift to ctrl at a moments notice, and my thumb for space and alt when needed. For movement, I use a combination of mouse and keyboard. I also have a 5 button mouse that I have mapped keys to 3 of the keys using the shift, alt, and ctrl modifiers as well, for even more easily accessible goodness.

Sounds complicated I know, but after you get used to it, you will find it very very efficient I think. (I use an addon called bongos to easily set up the key bindings on my spells as well).

EDIT: After checking the link of that N52, that looks very intriguing. Not sure if I'd want to relearn my keybindings again, but it looks very interesting indeed, and does look very efficient. Biggest thing for me would be having to get used to using the d pad to move around instead of having my thumb be my jump finger haha.

[fzyx]

Ive been using my keyboard and mouse ever since i started playing games and it just never occured to me to swap out the keyboard for something designed more for gaming.

Ive decided to buy one because of pvp and raid situations where you gotta be quick and accurate without having to find and click it on the bars making you that much quicker and better. now on with the decision...

Ive researched it quite a bit and ive decided on 2.
Wolfking Warrior (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1926424,00.asp) $30
and
Belkin Nostromo n52 (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2034221,00.asp) $30


Both look good although i have to say the wolfking looks a lot more appealing with the arc numbers making it very easy to access my main spells fast and easy without having to find and click them with the mouse which is often a bad delay in arena. but i also have a friend who swears by the n52 for its ease of use but with so many spells in wow used in pvp, will it simply have enough buttons? of course i know that some maintenance things like arcane intellect dont deserve a spot on the pad, im talking about pvp/pve spells that are used often in combats.

Maybe you guys can point out something I overlooked. So I need some input!
Do you guys use one? if so, which one? if not, which one would you choose?

Thanks :D
Maybe ill even convince a few to buy a speed pad by the end of this thread :tongue:


I've been using a logitech G15 keyboard which has an extra 18 keys on the left-side. I'm usually able to stuff all of my important pvp functions into those 18 keys, occasionally I need to use alt to extend it though. I like the fact that the extra keys are part of the keyboard since I don't have an extra device littering my desk.

On the other hand, I've been considering using a separate pad so I can plug it into my laptop and play on the road. It would be much easier to carry a small pad than the full keyboard.

[Kugan]

For kugan,

Do you find that the buttons on the n52 is enough for all your spells during pvp to not have to rely on clicking?

No, there isn’t. I have 11 buttons for spells (I bound jump to one of the buttons), which is not nearly enough. I tried for a while to make one of the buttons act as a shift key, but unfortunately it’s pretty hard to press and hold, so I abandoned that as well.

What I eventually did was to make the scroll bar change the “state” which gives me an additional 11 keys. This is a little bit hard to use (I lose about half a second as well), so I put the 11 spells that I use the most on the original keys.

This causes a lot of shuffling between my grinding and PvP keybindings (I’ve had it happen in PvP where something completely different happens to what I entended. It can be pretty embarrassing (e.g. casting my bubble before the match starts)), but it’s something I can live with.

[midnitemyst]

Thanks guys. All very great input. After hearing Kugans post, im thinking maybe n52 isnt for me. i might just order the wolfking and give it a shot to see how i like it. i dont mind the clutter as long as it works well. switching from the pad to the keyboard might be annoying when talking and stuff but it might be worth the hassle.

thedirty, I actually discovered bongos about 2 days ago and tried modifier out which is useful but for my druid, not as customizeable as i would have liked. it looks like it pulls the spells from another bar and since druid uses up pretty much all the bars, its hard to set up a good tanking set up while still having a good pvp setup too. that ctrl modifier is a bit of a stretch too. could you give a little more info on binding and if its possible to bind stuff on the modifier without having to rely on another bar? and how to bind spells using bongos to the modify.

fzyx, i dont mind the seperate component from they keyboard cause its basically the same thing, just not attached so it really doesnt matter to me, in fact i think its better so i can move it around as i need without a huge keyboard attached to it.

If I do buy one of these, youll be sure to hear my review about it in this thread.

[thedirty]

Thanks guys. All very great input. After hearing Kugans post, im thinking maybe n52 isnt for me. i might just order the wolfking and give it a shot to see how i like it. i dont mind the clutter as long as it works well. switching from the pad to the keyboard might be annoying when talking and stuff but it might be worth the hassle.

thedirty, I actually discovered bongos about 2 days ago and tried modifier out which is useful but for my druid, not as customizeable as i would have liked. it looks like it pulls the spells from another bar and since druid uses up pretty much all the bars, its hard to set up a good tanking set up while still having a good pvp setup too. that ctrl modifier is a bit of a stretch too. could you give a little more info on binding and if its possible to bind stuff on the modifier without having to rely on another bar? and how to bind spells using bongos to the modify.

fzyx, i dont mind the seperate component from they keyboard cause its basically the same thing, just not attached so it really doesnt matter to me, in fact i think its better so i can move it around as i need without a huge keyboard attached to it.

If I do buy one of these, youll be sure to hear my review about it in this thread.

My main is a druid.

There is an option in bongos to have different bars for different forms, I have a bar for caster, bear, cat, and stealth (I had to set up the stealth bar, to do that, I had to make the bars movable first, then I right clicked on the bar I wanted as my stealth bar, and there is an option in there to make whatever bar you want switch to that bar on prowl, so all my fastest hotkeys are there.

Also, by default, rolling the mouse wheel down switches between bars, I actually have mine set up so it rolls down with alt+mouse wheel up and down. I have a bar for general bear form (mostly pvp) and I have another bar set up that I roll to set up for tanking instances, so it can use the keybindings that I like using most for that. I also have a seperate bar set up for just healing that I can roll to.

For the shift and ctrl modifiers, I have found that my pinky moves fairly quickly now between the 2 when I need to use a skill. I will admit, for the skills I use the most, they start with mouse button 3 (mouse button will be known as mb from this point on), mb4, and mb5, then shift+mb3, shift+mb4, and shift+mb5, followed by ctrl for those, since I can press those buttons very quickly without having to worry at all about comprimising my movements. Then after those 9 hotkeys, my next most used are `, 1, and 2, which are all set to my forms, which are bear, cat, and travel, so I can very quickly switch between forms for pvp instead of the default ctrl+F1 etc.

Then, I have feral fairie fire set to 3, taunt to 4, and cower to 5, and warstomp to 6. I have these buttons set up like this because when I am in a hurry, I tend to occasionally mess up and hit the button next to it, the way it is now, if I hit 2 instead of 3, it will do nothing since I am in form and would have to shift into caster to cast travel, if I hit 4 instead of 5 in cat, it will do nothing since 4 is a bear ability and 5 is a cat ability. Then I have only certain skills set up to shift and those buttons, like stealth is set to shift+1.

I have found that with having the different bars set for the different forms on my mainbar, I rarely ever have to use the alt key for keybindings, and only on certain things use the ctrl button on.

Also know that you can clear out the default keybindings when in keybind mode, that is what I did for my main bar. My main bar is now mostly mouse buttons (including mouse+modifier), and my #2 bar is my secondary bar. It works well for me, but most people prefer to have their main bar be the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.

For bindings, there is a section in bongos when you type /bongos that says keybindings or something similar on that menu box, you go there, and mouse over whatever button you want on your screen, it will tell you what hotkeys are there if any, and will allow you to change them. If you wanted, you could have your main bar have `, shift+`, 1, shift+1 etc in that order. Also, make sure you leave the keybinding mode before hitting something like escape, I made that mistake once, and had a hell of a time getting to the menu and finding out how to reset that keybinding!

If there is anything more specific you want to know, feel free to ask. I tried to answer your question as best as I could.

[fzyx]

fzyx, i dont mind the seperate component from they keyboard cause its basically the same thing, just not attached so it really doesnt matter to me, in fact i think its better so i can move it around as i need without a huge keyboard attached to it.


Agreed, I'm going to try my fang keypad soon, I'd love to not be tied to my keyboard or to be able to switch computers easily. Or when I sit sideways with horrible posture, it would be much easier to have a little gamepad in my lap than a huge keyboard.

[Gavriel]

Just remember you cannot text chat with a gamepad. Or enter searches for the AH. Or do anything that requires more than ASH + a few keybinds.

[moopy]

I use a Logitech G15. Not for the fancy macros, but because it is a nice solid KB with a quiet, comfy action. I only use a couple of the extra keys for things like push-to-talk, having other stuff crammed into my normal keymap. Just having a solid, comfy keyboard makes all the difference. The little popup screen is mildly handy for stuff like the Teamspeak monitor or scores in PvP etc.

I do tend to have all my important abilities bound to keys wherever possible, it's less tiring and a great deal faster. The only exception to this is for my warrior, who I haven't really played enough yet to decide which abilities need to be where.. Baby steps, I have stuff like heroic strike, sunder, revenge and overpower on keys, I guess it's a start.

I've used a few keypads, borrowed some for extended testing even. I've found they're never as good as they look on paper, and are limiting and uncomfortable. I have quite large hands, and find that most gaming pad efforts give me hand cramps too, after more than half an hour's continuous thrashing. The G15 with its nice big key pitch is ideal.

[OneMadOgre]

I use my N52 when I play my warrior. I didn't like having to reach over the keyboard to get skills at the far end of my keyboard and I like to use the mouse+keyboard to move.

I don't however use the D-Pad for movement. I use it to jump, and shift stances. Then I mapped the same sort of keys to each spot in each stance. As a result I'm fairly good just playing on the left hand and with my right hand always on the mouse. I don't have a problem moving from N52 to keyboard to type in chat or use other interfaces. I have found that I'm usually either talking or fighting anyway. I don't normally try to do both at the same time.

By the same stroke, when I play one of my priests, I don't ever use the N52. I think it's usefulness is a little related to the class you're playing.

[belfastbiker]

I use the Fang Gamepad, and ADORE it.

http://www.ideazon.com/experience/FANG/


To supplement this, I use a Logitech G15 Gaming keyboard - macros are a doddle, and the screen has native support for Warcraft, Vent etc....

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/keyboards/keyboard/devices/180&cl=us,en





Wonderful combo, IMHO.

[SirBazturd]

How do you get vent to show up on the LCD, on the G15? I think I am just a moron and cant figure it out.

[Aurum]

I used nostromo before but now i use http://www.saitekusa.com/USA/prod/cupro.htm and i cant play without a pad like this. Switched because this one got more buttons then the nostromo.

[IRID1UM]

imnsho intelligent macros and keybindings is all you need. you can assign hotbar slots to your mouse buttons, more hotbar slots to your shift+mouse buttons, more hotbar slots to ctrl+mouse buttons, shift+space, shift+1,2,3,4,...
use /castsequence buttons or double cast macros:
/cast stealth
/cast slice and dice for example. casts stealth while OOC and if stealth is on cooldown it casts SnD. if you manage to use intelligent macros you can save so many buttons.

[OneMadOgre]

Yup. I think it's more a case of a reactive class than a proactive class. As a warrior, when my mortal strike or overpower is going to come up is a little random. So I like having all of my buttons on my left hand without having to reach or combo-key to get them.

As a priest, I've got enough buttons that I usually can just handle that on the numeric line on the keyboard. But I don't move the priest as much as I move the warrior either and being a keyboard turn on the priest isn't the killer it is on the warrior.

You certainly don't need them. I just kinda like it for my warrior.

[belfastbiker]

How do you get vent to show up on the LCD, on the G15? I think I am just a moron and cant figure it out.


Use the more recent beta of vent - works a treat!!!

[boulee]

I use:
Logitech G15 Key board
Logitech G5 mouse
Nostramo N52 speed pad

I started using the N52 back in the days of UT2004 and have loved it ever sence. For WoW I have the keys bound to the number row (1-+). D-pad is Auto run, left, right, and backwards. orange button is Vent PTT. top row middle is forward, 2nd row middle is pet attack+HM.

I use the G15 buttons for macro sequences (prgramed using in game macro, not Logitech GUI)

[SirBazturd]

Use the more recent beta of vent - works a treat!!!


Thanks belf.

[moopy]

How do you get vent to show up on the LCD, on the G15? I think I am just a moron and cant figure it out.

From ventrilo release notes:

2.3.2.Beta.3:

Added support for Logitech G15 keyboard LCD. Can be enabled or disabled via Setup-Global page. Also supports all 4 soft buttons below the LCD.

Check your version is new enough, and then go into setup/global and enable it- enjoy :)

[SirBazturd]

From ventrilo release notes:



Check your version is new enough, and then go into setup/global and enable it- enjoy :)


Thanks moopy. I did download the newest version but haven't had a chance to install it yet. Darn RL keeping me away from the important things in life. :wink: