To many abilities - piano playing must be reduced...

BW allready said, they tolerate semi-macros.

So you are allowed to combine some actions (for example all your 15 sec cooldown abilitys).
It's no realy macro but more a "use one key for several keys". If you have a Razor, Logitech or any other keyboard where you can program the keys it's easy to do.

Just as example you could use "1" for AoE slow and "SHIFT+1" for AoE tount.
Now you attach both ("1" and "SHIFT+1") to the 1 KEY without breaks between. If you hit the 1 KEY it will spam both but as there is a global cooldown just one skill fires.
If AoE slow is on cooldown it fires the AoE tount. If AoE tount is on cooldown the AoE slow fires. If both are on cooldown nothing happens .

As Jedi Knight you have 4 high damage abilitys with 15 second cooldowns. Just bind them all to one key.
2, shift+2, alt+2, ctrl+2 and use the 2 key.
To activate them all you need to push the 2 key 4 times.

So it is NO macro (you need to press the button active) but a "group actions".

Threee different classes can be effectively played by spamming ONE button and you make a thread like this? lol

I like this game that it offers you a lot of abilities to chose from.
Most are situational and used rarely; also a good tip to binding:

- you can use Shift + key/moue buttons/mouse wheel. Keep in mind that Shift + T does not work while pressing another key like strafing key
- use Alt + key/moue buttons/mouse wheel
- use Ctrl + key/moue buttons/mouse wheel

While I do not think the abilities themselves are the issue- it's the lack of appropriate keybinds beyond using a naga mouse or such.

I could squeeze in a few more "comfortable" hotkeys if I was at least able to bind them...but nope- CAPSLOCK for instance.

Also, just being able to combine two abilities to a keybind would be nice instead of macros...like a "primary" and a "secondary" if BW wants to avoid macro abuse.

That way it allows a little more room for any additional abilities in the future...as it stands- if anything else is added there is no way I'll be able to find a slot that doesn't border on absurd.

yeah i really need to be able to rebind caps lock

I dunno what game your playing, but using shift, alt, ctrl messes things up in the one I'm playing.

I can't push mouse button four becuase shift + mouse button 4 is different than mouse button 4 and yes there is plenty of cases where I do one thing with my keyboard and another things with mouse buttons where the two actions would conflict if it's two buttons on the keyboard.

At the moment I use 1-6, q-y, a-h and z-b, my hand isn't big enough for 6 and y though, I can't reach them without moving my hand. With space and tab thats around 25 keys, but I have double that number of abilities and features I want to use.

Relics, healing pots, stims, Tab Target, Nearest Enemy, Center Target, Target of Target, Jump, Strafe, forward movement since we have mouse ground targeted abilities where I still want to be moving while I drop them on the ground.

Using shift/ctrl/alt is fine for Mount up, cast my buff or other OUT OF COMBAT things, but the only way for things to work in combat when using mouse and keyboard at the same time, is by everything on keyboard being one key.

20 years of MMO's and this is the first time I've run out of keys and every freaking day I'm trying to find the holy grail to make room for things, but when you run out of slots on your hot bars, before you run out of abilities and start to have to scroll through the abilities menu to cast some stuff things is beyond insane.

It's fine that some of you only play part of the game (PvP) where you don't need half the abilities since they don't work on players, but some of us play both PvE and PvP and I can't redo my bars every time I enter a WZ to redo them when I leave. Would be impossible to train anyway even if I could change bars on the fly.

Most people i know agree with you OP.
You can tell they just made alot of skills with no real iq behind it for each class.
The system is really bad in so many ways.On my g13 i have hotkey almost every button u can reach + using alt to hotkey the same keys twice.That is just bad game design.
But this is biowares first MMO and you can tell they are a little clueless when it comes to creating good fluid gameply.Btw the most patetic skills i think are those pve skills that only work on stunned etc npc enemies under 30% health etc.Like most players i never use them.

"Piano playing" is not difficult.

Most good PVPers will bind what is close to WASD or ESDF, and then add shift/ctrl/alt modifiers to get to 36 hotkeys, which is enough for every class (and overkill on some).

Nice!!! Someone said it... lol

Not only this there are about 3 skills that are totally useless in PVP and hardly benefit you in PVE... Opposing Strike and Pommel are two.. Dont remember the name of the third one. And the best skills are on 3 min cooldowns ***? lmao


I agree I spend more time looking at the skill bar and cooldowns than I do my team, enemy, and other important tactical features i should be watching instead.

having so many abilities means you have to chose what you cast. if you have a slow on your main ability then it means you dont wanna chose when to slow him , you want him to be slowed 24/7 even if hes in range and not running. that means you wanna dumb down the game. DO NOT compare swtor or wow to BLC , i have played BLC on high ratings to , its deff a fun game even tho you only have 6 main abilities. However, those abilities are not everything put together no , you have for example , small fireball- big multiple hitting fireballs - an escape ability - a "cc" ability - and an ultimate ability which is either defensive or offensive depending on your class. BLC DOES NOT have a main ability with a healing reduction with a slow with everything combined either. its a completely diffrent playstyle and that game is all about hitting your skills because you can DODGE anything. the reason SWTOR would be boring if it had 6 abilities is because there is no actual skill in "hitting" the target compared to BLC.
learn to keybind and use modifiers if needed. if you can't do this go play a shooter.

edit: and to the players calling this a "bioware fail" , wow has even more keybinds required. its been a succesfull game for 7 years. stop crying.