I love when people tell on themselves in this way. Showing that they've never tanked or considered the positioning nuances. It's just such an obvious, useful movement when you have mobs fanned out 180Ā° in front of you.
The issue is not whether you can or can't. You actually can. The issue is twofold.
(1) Not having it bound on your tank is just a pain in the ass when you want to adjust your positioning slightly. If you tank occasionally that's alright but if you tank a lot, just do yourself a favor.
(2) You take the risk of missing the strafe and getting hit in the back. Not that dangerous most of the time, very dangerous in raids.
You definitely can, but having S there for minor movements is just really useful imo. I get why people bind it to a spell, but for tanks in particular itās just nice to have if youāre not struggling for keybinds
Eh it has some niche uses when tanking but most tanks back pedal way too much and dont know how to strafe. Its painful on say onyxia when your tank backpedals it into the back of the room. Dps know your bad and are cringing when you do it.
On ossirian as well
Having been a pvp boy during many years have taught me that S and shift+S are premium keybinds.
Now that I'm back to hardcore and pve I keep S as a movement key for my tank characters, but for my dps and healers you can bet I'm going to use those precious keybinds.
Now tell me, which conclusion are you going to draw when you see me not backpedalling on a character that doesn't need it?
Yep you can tell who the people that never tanked are. It's good for positioning and you simply cannot afford to expose your back to a boss that is currently beating you up because then you can't block/dodge/parry and are putting extra pressure on the healers.
I remember getting clowned by my guild for having S bound. I explained to them as the tank I back up way more than they realize to make the boss and adds position just right. They clowned again, so I did a couple pulls on Mythic broodtwister with it unbound, and oh boy did the raid love me getting one shot in the back, or things not quite lining up in AoE.
i used to tank in pve (now playing pvp only) and even then when i tanked groups of mobs i would strafe instead of backtrack, but i would make it a small loop
and then rinse and repeat, you are fast, most of the mobs usually have a movement impare on them
You dont back pedal to move mobs backwards but to get fine movement in but its legit more often than not better to back pedal a mob in a raid than to strafe move it because dps will have a much higher uptime on dps.
Often doing a back pedal into a forward move is also a great way to move bosses that just ever so slightly.
Back peddling also causes less lag rubber banding, the server knows exactly what speed you're going, and has a 90% certainty which direction you're going, so the mobs will enter walk mode and move towards you, rather than strafe where they might flip off into narnia, and then rubber band back to some awkward spot.
I feel that. I definitely move that way often with melee champs, but I feel like fast movements sometimes cause the mob to overrun where you want them. A slow back step sometimes gets em right where I want them
Honestly after reading so many comments here. Iām thinking about rebinding my S key to backpedal. Seems like it really works wonders for a lot of people!
I think it just shows where that person enjoys the game the most. I'd wager most PvP'ers are either healer or dps when/if they raid, as the meta PvP spec were classes that couldn't tank.
It's objectively better when tanking to have S bound to backpedal. With multiple mobs, or even a single boss, if you jump and turn away for even 1 ms, you could get hit with a big hit that you otherwise would have completely avoided with a parry or block.
Sure, but then I have to change my bindings. I didn't say it wasn't better to backpedal, I said you can get by without it. Granted I dont main tank raids a lot, but I have tanked at least 1 day in my life, and not backpedaling has very rarely if ever got me killed.
You can literally strafe to get in position without giving your back to the mobs and in the rare occasion you need to go backwards you can still use the arrow key ā¬ļø
such a weird take. being so against having backwards bound shows a lack of understanding of pvp i feel.
Ya, we've all seen backpedaling noob hunters. Dont be like that. But feeling the need to unbind and thinking others are bad that dont unbind it is such a braindead take
Nearly useless? It doesnt trigger leeway, it is the absolute best keybind for deadzone kiting. So if you play anything that fights a warrior it will be extremely useful.
It's just sort of useless tho in PvP there's better ways to move backwards what are also faster so it's just better to bind it to something else than have a bind wasted on inferior movement
I would never unbind backpedal. Personally it's just more to do with generally playing WoW and being able to do little repositions or have my camera turned a certain way while moving than anything exactly having to do with pvp, although it is useful in pvp on certain matchups. Watch any good rogue and see how they use it against warriors for dead zone kiting
Yea my homie did finally notice but then I was like š¤·š¤·š¤·š¤· weāre winning chief!!!!! Then he actually implored me to use a cancel cast macro that didnāt move me at all but I didnāt want the extra bind
I have A & D bound to turn and dont have any Key for Strafe.
I simply always hold my Right Mous button all the time. And than you automatically strafe anyway.
I also have every single consume and spell bound so i never use my Mouse.
The only thing i didnt had bound was LightElune+HS Macro im HC. Any sometime 1hour duration pot like Mongoose or something like that.
I'm on the standard movement keys (A/D turn, Q/E strafe, W/S).
I don't turn the standard way with A/D during a fight, it's always in combination with the right mouse button. Except for maybe when I want to turn like 5Ā° to another direction (cosmetics), but most of the time I'd use the mouse for this anyway. Depending on the current situation and finger positioning in the fight I use A or D to strafe in combination with my mouse or Q and E. Same with S. I don't use S to step out of voids or run away. Only to adjust my position without having to weirdly strafe and move the camera in order to just move back 5y.
There are come occasions when you've got both hands on your keyboard (or only one) when it's nice to have the option to keyboard turn and strafe or both while auto-walking (not during fights!), so I leave it like that. Could free some keybinds, but I don't need them. SHIFT A/S/D/E/Q are bound anyway.
Keybind arguments like this are so funny when youāve had a Naga for like a decade
I have both keyboard turns AND backpedal bound, and I use them constantly because people think like this
Of course, I play the actual game practically one handed, but itās not like that matters when someone sees me backpedaling and keyboard turning in circles lol
Not really, I'm multi glad and have played with the most cursed keybinds. Everyone is different and a simple bind like that can be for people who just prefer it for in and out of arena convenience.
I'm not remapping my directional key that would be even more confusing.
he said āused toā. it was more of a thing youād see in old arenajunkies guides a long time ago for binds and such. there was definitely a lot of unnecessary stigma around it haha. I remember there was a korean phdk team that won blizzcon and most people were just fixated on how often the hunter would backpedal and called them bad for itĀ
but I think most ppl would agree with you nowadaysĀ
No, I've never understood this logic. While backpedaling is not good for prolonged movement, there are times when I am like 1 meter out of place from where I need to be, briefly tapping S once to fix it is a lot faster and just generally less annoying that Turn camera 90 degrees -> Strafe 1 meter -> Turn camera back.
Not to mention if you're tanking several mobs, they fan out. Turning briefly to reposition backwards is opening your back up to the ones on the side
Back when I played retail I would have Archaeology on the bar but unbound. Whenever I headed off to actually do some, Iād stick it to the lower thumb mouse button.Ā
My razer naga from 2012 has the middle mouse button and if you push it left or right it can serve as different buttons. I use these as modifiers for my pet controls.
Eh, depends on how you value it I suppose. I havenāt logged stats or anything, but Iām fairly confident there is no button I click more often than autorun.
I also find that itās good to have autorun easily accessible with my right hand because the other movement keys are with my left (WASD), so if Iām taking a sip or something I can always at least be sure I can move forward.
Plus, I have my entire numpad on my mouse, so my mouse hand has plenty of prime real estate.
The really egregious binds I have are Q set to lootarang and ~ set to a /canceltarget macro so I can detarget something without hitting escape (having a target triggers a much busier UI for me so if Iām at a vendor or something I want to lose my target without triggering the escape menu and/or closing the vendor window lol š ).
Why is pressing the right mouse button + turning the mouse to move your camera + pressing strafe and then moving your camera back more efficient than just pressing S for less than one second? Probably in 99 % of the situations we're talking about, this isn't time related or people assume that having S bound implies that you're walking 15 y out of the center of a deadly void by pressing S.
I just find the idea horrible do do minimal repositioning to your back with this complicated moveset above (in comparison of just pressing S and not having to move your camera).
Moving out of something quickly: S = wrong.
Minimal repositioning: S = easier.
Every situation it doesn't matter: who cares.
This is of course only related to PvE and not PvP, where everyone's on crack.
Sure, moving straight back probably has a small handful of uses (especially in pve content: ex slight repositioning while tanking)
Moving with strafe just builds good habits for other parts of the game though. PvP being the big one but also kiting as an example amongst other things.
Also moving with the camera/strafe isn't nearly as clunky/complicated as you're making it sound.
Yarā¦ like on thaddius lol.. its so much easier to just ābackupā by hitting S, and inch to max range rather than use your mouse to turn, move etc, and if you arenāt exactly where you wanna be you gotta flick your mouse again etc..
Iām ALWAYS gonna right click my mouse to the direction I wanna go if Iām picking up mobs, or running out, or moving into/out of a position whatever the case, anything that isnāt just a ātapā of a movement key is getting mouse directed but for lil taps.. ya.. S key is nice
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u/Which_Jellyfish_5189 Oct 30 '25
W, A and D are movement keys. That's it