bindable hotkeys

[kethnaab]

okay, this is a terrible newb question, but I am having a helluva time figuring it out, and the answer is probably stupid simple, but I gotta ask anyhoo.

DiabloII has 16 bindable "hotkeys", i.e. the F1-F8 functions that automatically switch your attack type from the 2 action buttons for the left and right mouse clicks

my question (Actually 2)

1) HOw do I bind F1-F8 to get 16 bindable hotkeys? I hover over something on the left action thing, select (for example) "bash" to be F1. Then I go to the right action button, and try to select "frenzy" to be F1, and bash loses it's bind.

so how the heck do i bind F1-F8 to be 16 bindable hotkeys?

2) Can you somehow use the regular letters on the keyboard to be bindable? I'd much much rather bind "b" to "bash" than F1.

any help for my density would be greatly appreciated

[G@m3r]

that's easy, first you click the spell tree on the left/right skill button and the list of skills appear. Now, say you want to bind "bash" to F1, just hover your mouse pointer to the skill "bash" and press F1. The same applies if you want to bind "frenzy" to another hotkey, say F2. For obvious reasons, you cannot bind 2 different skills to the same hotkey, simply because it will "confuse" your barb :lol:

to bind F1-F8 to your skills, you would go to "options", "configure controls" and click on each skill individually to bind the hotkey to: e.g. skill 1 --> F1, skill 2 --> F2, etc....(you can bind up to 16 skills)

(just a tip here: you might want to consider binding your skills to other buttons than F1-F8 buttons because your fingers are not "ergonomically designed" to be pressing the top rows of the keyboard while play is in motion. Just like how a formula 1 car has gear shifts strategically placed near the driver's fingers for thousands of gear shifts during the course of a race, you should try binding the 16 skills to the QWERT keys because throughout your formula 1 career, er, I mean Diablo2 playing time, you would be switching between skills thousands of times, I know I do :uhhuh: for example, as a skelliemancer, I have QWERT as the summoning spells, ASDFG as the curse skills and ZXCVB as the poison and bone skills. It can be applied to all classes because all have 3 skill tabs.

One final tip as well, you could go "Counterstrike" style and assign your favourite and most used 4 skills to W, A, D, X so that you are furiously quicker during play time...a lot of players do that

[kethnaab]

how do I know which skills are which though?

HOw do I know that Skill1 is "bash", or is it "whirlwind" or whatever?

I tried binding keys to all 16 skills to try to determine which was skill 1, which was skill 2, etc, and it didn't seem to work.

this has to be easier than I'm making it, help a dummy out!

[Andy2702]

you jsut have to know your character well enough... :thumbsup: play with it more, and try to memorize to keys.....

I have a sorc with tele at f4, and my other sorc with tele at f5....lol i play with the f4 tele sorc more.....and when i play the f5 tele sorc instead, I end up casting static instead, which isn't that good.......though im still too lazy to change it :flip:

Andy

[jiansonz]

how do I know which skills are which though?

HOw do I know that Skill1 is "bash", or is it "whirlwind" or whatever?

I tried binding keys to all 16 skills to try to determine which was skill 1, which was skill 2, etc, and it didn't seem to work.

this has to be easier than I'm making it, help a dummy out!


I don´t quite understand what the problem is, so I´ll explain in detail how it works.

The configuration has two steps:

1. First, you control which 16 keys that can be assigned to skills in the "Options" - "Configure Controls" meny.

2. The actual binding to the individual skills you control by clicking on the "skill icons" (the ones that show which two (the left-click and the right-click) skills that are active right now), which opens up a map over all the available skills for that particular mouse button. Here, you can hover the cursor over a skill and assign the desired hotkey (which must be one of the 16 "allowed" keys) to it by pressing that key.

[Stoopid_NewB]

I just switched to a mouse with a page scroller between the buttons. It lets you scroll through all your hot key skills very quickly, so you don't have to memorize every skill for every character you build. Being on a mac to begin with, it's a huge improvement over the one button mouse.

[kethnaab]

okay, I go into configuration, and set qwerty, asdf, and zcxvb to skills, along with mouse3.

i set severalk of them to the left action and several to the right action

when i go back in-game and click on the left action button, i am able to hover over the skill, and tap whatever key i wanted. i bound a,b,c,s,d, and f
then i go to the right action button, and i can't hover and keystroke a hotkey. it just won't..."take". I hover over "battleorders", and doesn't matter which key I tap, it won't bind.

BAH! Help!

[G@m3r]

okay, I go into configuration, and set qwerty, asdf, and zcxvb to skills, along with mouse3.

i set severalk of them to the left action and several to the right action

when i go back in-game and click on the left action button, i am able to hover over the skill, and tap whatever key i wanted.

seems like you're doing fine there.

i bound a,b,c,s,d, and f
then i go to the right action button, and i can't hover and keystroke a hotkey. it just won't..."take". I hover over "battleorders", and doesn't matter which key I tap, it won't bind.

from what I'm reading, it worked for your left action button but not on the right? could you tell us more specific...

how do I know which skills are which though?

as andy2702 says, you just have to know your characters well enough!
if you have trouble memorising which skills are on which buttons, look at your keyboard, the letters can all represent your skills one way or another,...

example: my "qwert" = summoning skills, keyboardbutton "w"="wobbly gumby/golem"
my "asdfg" = curse skills, "a"="amplify damage" and "d"="decrepify badass baal"
my "zxcvb" = poison and bone skills, "x" for "xploding corpses"
(I have also just recently obtained an enigma, so "s"="sneakily teleporting away" :lol:

HOw do I know that Skill1 is "bash", or is it "whirlwind" or whatever?

I haven't played a barb yet, but if I did, and if I had "bash" and "whirlwind" as my main skills, I would assign: "q"="quickly bash baal's butt" and "w"=you guessed it,"whirlwind"
that way, you can tap between "q" and "w" fast....but remember, your secret skills should always be "i"="increase_simplication" and "r"=reduce_complication"

Good luck in MFing! (er, I mean ButtonFinding)

[MrScythes]

It also comes in handy to have certain actions that you have on all/most of your chars under the same key (unlike andy :P). I use F4 on all my chars for townportal and F8 for teleporting. F1 is always my main LMB action and F2 for the RMB action. Also remember that not all chars use as much different skills as others. The qwert/asdfg/zxcvb is great for a necro or kicksin (melee assassin), but is almost useless for a sorceress (fast attack/timed attack/static/shield/teleport is only 5 main skills).

[G@m3r]

no, I disagree. in my humble opinion, whether a player is only using 2 skills or 15 skills, he/she is meant to stick to the qwert/asdfg/zxcvb keys because it's more ergonomical for the fingers, your "shift" key(for standing-still attack), "control" key(for weapon swap) and "alt" key(for highlighting items on the ground) are all near your fingers, therefore enabling ease of play. That's the point I'm making in this thread to help new players. I'm not criticising players who use F1-F8 keys, I'm merely suggesting a better alternative. :thumbsup:

however, I recognize that it is a good tip to assign certain "standard" actions under the same key for all characters (such as "townportal") to get out of "sticky situations" fast. I have now assigned button "t" for townportal for all my characters :idea: Heh, I blame you for giving me that brilliant idea :drink:

[Boreal21]

Thanks for asking this question! I've been using F1 - F8 but have been wanting to move to QWERT etc for a LONG time... just too lazy to try and figure it out.

Now I know :)

[jiansonz]

I just switched to a mouse with a page scroller between the buttons. It lets you scroll through all your hot key skills very quickly, so you don't have to memorize every skill for every character you build. Being on a mac to begin with, it's a huge improvement over the one button mouse.

When I play HC, I could never rely on this method. An extreme example is some of my necromancers or assassins, who use all 16 hotkeys (and wished they had a few more!).
I might need to conjure up a Terror, a golem or a Town Portal really fast in a sticky situation. With the scrolling method, I´d like to know how I can get to and cast Terror (which in this case might mean I need to roll through 7 skills one way or 9 skills the other way from the Dim Vision I was just using) in 0.2 seconds, with as good as no risk of failure! Not only would I need to have an extremely good feel for just how long I´d need to roll the button, but also have the entire skill sequence firmly burned into my mind. Something that would be much harder to memorize for all characters than a few important "save my @ss!" buttons.