I am not really sure how most people play this game. I only have my own experience after all. We all take the core mechanics and then apply our own set of heuristics to those mechanics to create a rule set that works for us. Those who are able to create some method to interface with the mechanics in ways that work for them often take for granted that there was even a learning process at all, and those who are unable to do so, not having any guidance in the matter blame the game. This is to be expected when the defaults are as bad as they are. To my mind there are 3 primary ways of addressing this, first and most awful, is to adapt the ego core entirely to the core mechanical defaults. This is undesirable because the defaults aren't very good. In order to heal you need to let go of movement controls for instance. I think there is a certain set of older players who might play this way, because they expect, perhaps naively, that the defaults are sane. They may also come into this game with previously held beliefs about how to play games in this genre in general. It is quite apparent however to those of us with experience in many games, especially those more action oriented that the tag targeted slow point click moving hand off of movement to attack defaults are terrible and to adapt to them is to play with one hand tied behind your back. I suppose there is an alternative to using the mouse for aiming but then you are sacrificing precision in view for hitting skills (which likely require mouse aiming anyway) This option is not really a valid option, the fact that it is the first and most obvious way to play is a terrible thing that /really/ ought to be looked at... Honestly. The problem of course with changing these defaults lies in the second way in addressing this problem. 3rd party hardware. If you choose this route it makes the most sense to leave the controls for the game as close to the defaults as possible. You are going to have to add key bind changes yes, but why add them in two places when one will suffice. Often the third party hardware allows for mode shifting, macros, and other features to allow for easier binding options, so the effort of remapping the controls in that software is more likely. Thus changing the defaults of the game will break the vast majority of setups involving third-party hardware. This is undesirable considering this option is in all likelihood the one chosen by most of the "Hard core" players. The third option is to create a sane set of bindings for the game which don't involve using third party hardware. This, is a quite labor intensive problem. But it is an option. Lets discuss what changes make sense. First and most obvious is to overlay 6-0 on 1-5 using shift. This is pretty sane and simple. Mapping - on `+shift also is pretty sane. If this was all you did you'd have a /fairly/ usable setup. But at this point I feel the question marks begin to mount. The f-keys are very important for standard play, thus the fact that they are so far away on a standard keyboard is so problematic, I would say anyone who leaves them as is will never be good enough to do raids. For some classes it might be sufficient to overwrite q with f1, but that, isn't not a good solution for all classes, because some require f1-5 as if they were alternate skills. To this end it might make some sense to bind alt+1-5 as f1-5 it's a bit of a reach, but it's not impossible and it is easier than moving the hand entirely to reach the f keys. Caps lock can replace shift for dodge, however, as someone who uses third party hardware, there is one thing I am terribly use to that is a pain to do normally. Dodge Jumping. To those who don't know it is, if dodge and jump are pressed with the right timing an emergent behavior called dodge jumping is performed. This allows for a jump that is much farther than normal, which is nice on certain jumping puzzles, it also makes the normal dodge animation move a considerable distance further, which is useful to escape red circles, etc. It is useful in every situation I care to dodge. So I have replaced my normal dodge with dodge rolling in EVERY case. Mapping a key to do a simple macro of both key presses at the same time will accomplish this. Without the macro it is not hard to learn to do it, it's just a different muscle memory, however to get it every time takes quite a bit of practice. But because attempting a dodge jump and missing the timing will result in either a normal dodge or a normal jump if you are relying on the extra distance to bridge a gap or escape an attack, a missed dodge jump can mean death, and that's less than great. Anyway. I'm really writing this because I don't know what most people do. This perspective is based on talking to guildies and observing things. Based on my observations I feel like there are a lot of people using the defaults because that's what's default and don't really have a good keybind set that makes sense, which also explains why such a large portion of the player base is so terrible at the game. Then there is a minority of players who have invested a lot of time their own custom binds and third party hardware, who get mad at people in pugs who don't and never think about why this might be the case. .