Blood elves and Keybinds

[tamardia]

Hello ladies and lurkergents.

I have a couple of questions that are in no way related, so I'll start with the easy one; IMO.

Could a Blood Elf, lorewise, have grown up in outlands? And if that case, what general age would they be?

That's the easy question. Now there's two that are in the same general thing.

I have several alts, and they have somewhat

Comments

[ausmac]

Yes, a belf could definitely have been born/lived/grown up in Outland. Blood Elves have a very prominent place in Outland lore. As to how old....could be any age really.

[chilayse]

Sure. They'd be ...anywhere between 5 and 12ish?

Outlands isn't that long ago. You can have a character that went there as soon as they were an adult, but having one that grew up there's still not quite possible I think.

(I could be wrong. I haven't had my coffee yet)

[laudre]

The blood elves per se didn't exist until the Third War, after Arthas destroyed the Sunwell and Prince Kael'thas declared the new name for his people. The Third War ended ten years before the start of World of Warcraft; it was one year between then and the start of TBC, another year until the start of Wrath, and then three years until the start of Cata. I don't think it's been announced how long after the start of Cata until the start of Mists, but it's probably back to the year time frame; either way, a human wouldn't quite be a full adult in that time frame, and, while the length of a blood elf's childhood hasn't been established in canon, I doubt it'd be shorter than a human's. They'd still be a teenager, and even if they're physically largely mature, blood elf lifespans are such that they'd likely still be a child by social and legal norms/conventions.

[chilayse]

Each expansion tends to be a year or so right?

I simply know you can't have an adult blood elf that's been one all their life, and they didn't hit outlands till after the sunwell was destroyed.

[laudre]

Ack, my comment was intended to be a response to the OP.

Anyway, the fluff/tie-in fiction establishes that the war in Northrend took three years. Otherwise, yes, it's generally been one year between expansion.

The closest you could get would be a high elf that was raised in Outland (there's one canonical half-high-elf who was born in Azeroth but grew up in Honor Hold) who joined up with the blood elves when Kael'thas traveled there, and then, after the Dark Portal re-opened at the beginning of TBC, threw in with the Horde-loyal blood elves rather than Kael after he went off the demonic deep end.

[felknight]

I think any blood elves that were born in Outland would still be children or teenagers at this point. There ARE blood elf orphans in Outlands, in Shattrath City and at an orphanage in Nagrand, but they're kids. The Caravan quest line in Eastern Plaguelands does hint that blood elves mature maybe at the same speed as humans (the blood elf paladin on the caravan talks about running down the Dead Scar as a kid), but it hasn't been that long since the Third War. Concrete dates are a little sketchy, though. I usually use this timeline as a rough guide.I have a lot of alts, and often it's difficult to remember all the keybinds. What I usually do is make sure similar abilities have the same keybind. So my paladins' interrupts are on the same keybinds as my DKs' and my rogues' interrupts. Same thing for defensive cooldowns on my tanks or important buttons for my healers or dps. All similar abilities have the same keybinds, so that if I mess up and go for Hammer of Justice while I'm on my DK, no one will notice because I hit strangulate.

[enveri]

I pretty much do this as well with my keybinds. All interrupts are keyed to the same keys. Cooldowns, whether dps or defensive or healing, are all on the same buttons. Buffs that I need to refresh every 30 minutes? Same buttons. I use Power Auras to remind me if they've fallen off.

If a class doesn't have a corresponding ability (ie, warrior/druid rage generating effects don't exist on my shaman), I make sure not to bind anything to that key, so if my muscle memory goes off and pushes that button... nothing happens. No harm, no foul.

[writermerrin]

I pretty much do this as well with my keybinds. All interrupts are keyed to the same keys. Cooldowns, whether dps or defensive or healing, are all on the same buttons. Buffs that I need to refresh every 30 minutes? Same buttons.

Pretty much this. All of my healers follow the pattern of my original Shaman. All of my tanks follow my DK's, so the aoes are in one place, the taunts in another. Across my toons, my interrupts are on the same button, and because I have a bad habit of clicking with my pinky finger even when I'm not supposed to, that's where I put my buffs. I figure if they randomly go off in battle, it's all good, and they never run out that way.

[regen]

I use the same kind of "keybind formula" for most of my toons to avoid situations like yours. For example, Q is either my slow mana-efficient heal (for my healing toons) or my main DPS filler ability (Sinister Strike for rogues, Fireball on my mage, etc). My cooldowns are bound to F/Shift & F if I don't have them macro'd to a particular ability. My "attack the tank's target", aka my focus assist macro, is bound to X for my DPS toons. My Z is bound to an interrupt ability. I use Q, W, E, R, F and 1-4 the most, and it's pretty easy to come up with your own "keybind formula" for keeping a consistent set of binds between classes.

[spunos]

Re: keybinds; I have a generic keybind setup across all my characters that I try to stick to as much as I can. It's a bit of a time investment to get them to match up and it doesn't work everywhere all the time, but I've found that it really helps to reduce annoyance and confusion when switching characters. Here's what it looks like: