Hotbar Auto-Switching

[Malakar]

I recently realized that the hotbar auto-switching, which occurs when you go stealth or switch stances, only works for the first hotbar.

This really managed to piss me off. It's hard enough to juggle my tons of skills/stances for a Warrior, and it's critical that I switch to my pvp hotkeys immediately after coming out of stealth on my Rogue.

Does anyone know of an interface mod that fixes this? I'm using Cosmos currently, but it seems that there is no feature to deal with this.

[Xanthix]

I believe there is an option in Cosmos to have the SecondBar switch along with the main action bar when you shift. I'm not sure if this would help.

What I would definately recomnmend though, is using Cosmos's PopBar or SideBars, or another mod's additional buttons, and map them to hotkeys. This way your PvP abilities could always be accessible, perhaps on F1-F12 instead of having to shift the main action bars. Or you could move your lesser-used abilities to the auxiliary bars, and always keep the main action bar on bar 1, removing the need to shift.

[Ravage]

Check out
http://www.efn.org/~gravillr/WoWScrnShot...233003.jpg

Note that I have cosmos set to show two bars. When I switch stances, the bottom one changes, the top one does not. So, I put all the skills that are available in all three stances in the top bar, and the stance specific buttons in the bottom bar. If something (like Execute) is available in two stances, then I have placed it on the bottom bar of both stances, but not on the bottom bar of the third. This seems to work out quite well for a warrior. I dont know about Rogues.

Ravage


PS: the story to go along with the screenshot, posted at:
http://www.theoldergamers.com
I play on the Proudmoore server


Last night, I, Dobuya, warrior of the honored Orcish Horde decided to pay a visit to Darnassus, home of the villainous and reprehensible Night Elves, members of the evil Alliance. I had received word that Dawnwatcher Shaedlass and others of the Ardent Dawn were being held captive by these creatures, and that they were concerned regarding the location and safety of some of thier members.

I proceded to Zoram and headed north. Entering the Darkshore, I could feel the quaking of the elves I passed as they stared at me and trembled. Yes, fear me they should.

I came to a place called Auberdine, and for a while simply sat and watched the ships come and go, depositing more and more elves upon the shores. I knew these were elves I would need to curcumvent in order to complete my objective. I believed that at least one of these ships should take me to Teldrassil, but there was no way to know which one.

Looking behind me to ensure no elves were following, I crept to the waters edge. Heading north I came to the dockhouse. Even though I had done my best, being a warrior provides little training in the ways of stealth. The Auberdine guards became alerted to my pressence. Despite the fact that I had not attempted to harm them in any way, they did their best to harm me. I did not have time for this foolishness, Shaedlass was waiting on my assistance. I ran through the dockhouse and out upon the docks. As I was being persued by the elven guards, I had to choose the ship. There were two currently at dock and so I had a 50/50 chance of choosing correctly. I chose north. Barely making it onto the ship, it pulled away from the shore. I could not help myself, and made a rude gesture towards the horrid elves. It was not an honorable thing to do, but I was angry.

I was lucky, I chose well. Arriving at Teldrassil, I saw a signigicant number of elves upon the shore. I know this would be difficult, but life is never easy. I made a run for it, not knowing exactly where I needed to go. I ran up the hill and almost reached a large purple glow before sucumbing to injuries.

My spirit was strong and came to me back in Darkshore. Even though my spirit could run accros the waters, it could not reach the homeland of the elves without assitance. I haunted the ship that had just recently provided passage to my corporeal form. I reentered my body just meters away from the glowing purple magic, and ran inside. The guards did not follow.

There were more guards inside, but I had heard that the Ardent Dawn were being held captive in the Craftsmen quarter of the city. I ran in that direction, but the city guards prevented me from reaching my destination.

Again my spirit arose, however this time it was in a gravyard full of elven bones just outside the city of Darnassus. Even my spirit hated the elven presence in this place. So I left to recover my physical form and complete my mission.

I resurrected just at the entrance to the Ardent Dawn holding area, and no guards noticed me. I saw Shaedlass and ran to her. Speaking quickly, she informed me that Argent Guard Thaelrid was missing. She asked me to do whatever I could to find out where he was and if he was ok.

I agreed, and turned away, prepared to fight my way out of this wretched city, when a low level elf attempted to stop me. I slapped him down in 3 swings and headed for the doorway, and ran smack into Nerual, a member of the hated <Thorns of Gold>. One of my arch nemeses. He was much greater than I, but Honor demamded I attempt to defeat him. I fought long and hard, but failed in this one on one battle.

I returned to the graveyard, and used my hearthstone to being be back to the Crossroads. I will do my best to find Argent Guard Thaelrid and assist the Ardent Dawn to the best of my abilities.

For the Horde!

Dobuya <Thorns of Grey>, level 37 Orc Warrior

[DarkCrown]

PS: the story to go along with the screenshot, posted at:
http://www.theoldergamers.com
I play on the Proudmoore server

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Wow. Not only did I take out a fellow TOG gamer, I took out a fellow Lurker. I almost feel guilty.

-DarkCrown

[Ravage]

Hah! Well Hiya DarkCrown, wasn't expecting that, but maybe I should have. It would make sence to have a high crossover rate between TOG and the Lounge. Seems TOG and the Lounge both try to be a directed toward more mature acting people, they just use different methods to accomplish that.

[Malakar]

I believe there is an option in Cosmos to have the SecondBar switch along with the main action bar when you shift. I'm not sure if this would help.

What I would definately recomnmend though, is using Cosmos's PopBar or SideBars, or another mod's additional buttons, and map them to hotkeys. This way your PvP abilities could always be accessible, perhaps on F1-F12 instead of having to shift the main action bars. Or you could move your lesser-used abilities to the auxiliary bars, and always keep the main action bar on bar 1, removing the need to shift.
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The reason I don't use these features is because I prefer to exclusively use easily accessible hotkeys. I have remapped my hotkeys like this: 'sdfe' are my strafe/movement keys. 'azxcvqwr1234' are my hotkeys for each bar. So it's relatively easy for me to hit shift+1234 to switch between hotbars and quickly hit skills. However I don't like switching hotbars for each skill I need to use. So I like to group the hotkeys on each hotbar for a specific purpose. Typically I it's hotbar1 for PvE, 2 for group PvE/AoE's, 3 for PvP, and 4 for misc. It works great except for this complication for stances on my warrior and the stealth problem on my rogue.

[Malakar]

Check out
http://www.efn.org/~gravillr/WoWScrnShot...233003.jpg

Note that I have cosmos set to show two bars.&nbsp; When I switch stances, the bottom one changes, the top one does not.&nbsp; So, I put all the skills that are available in all three stances in the top bar, and the stance specific buttons in the bottom bar.&nbsp; If something (like Execute) is available in two stances, then I have placed it on the bottom bar of both stances, but not on the bottom bar of the third.&nbsp; This seems to work out quite well for a warrior.&nbsp; I dont know about Rogues.
[right][snapback]67085[/snapback][/right]

This wouldn't directly solve my problem like a fix for hotbar auto-switching would, but it may lead me to an acceptable work-around. I explained my hotkey setup in my response to Xanthix, so I won't reiterate it here. What I might try is enabling the SecondBar, and mapping '5tgb' to the first four keys and F1-4 to the second four keys. That'd be reasonably accessible, and might prove to solve most of my problems on my warrior.

As for a rogue work-around, I've thought of moving my PvP hotkeys to hotbar1, since that's the only time where it's absolutely critical that my hotbar switch is fast. It would be annoying to switch everytime I ambush or sap a mob, but I might be able to get used to that, or possibly manage some PvE with PvP hotkeys.

[Malakar]

As you guys suggested, I tried out using more hotbars. I enabled the left and right sidebars, and mapped keys to 8 of their 12 buttons. On these I put skills that are useful all the time because the bars are always there. On the 4 remaining slots not mapped to hotkeys, I put skills often used but not readily needed, like summon food/water, hearthstone, etc.

It made all the difference in the world. Freeing up 8 slots often repeated on multiple bars allowed me to consolidate multiple bars into one, which allowed me to use the first hotbar for nearly all my combat needs, along with its fully functional auto-switch. Not only that, it eliminated a lot of hotbar switching, which is really nice.

So now I have 20 hotkeys near where my left hand rests on the keyboard. All of my interface buttons that were previously on '5tgb' got moved to the right. After some getting used to it, I love it.