Great news! There’s a new and improved Nostromo scheduled for release in November of 2007!
When playing World of Warcraft on a new system, there is one item I simply cannot go without: my Nostromo Speedpad N52. While the Speedpad is primarily billed to enhance FPS games, I find it to be a perfect fit for World of Warcraft and its many class-specific skills, most of which need to be available at the touch of a button.
If you’re a diehard mouse user (as is my friend Poko, a resto druid at heart with occassional relapses into her previous fifty-nine lives as a cat), you may have some difficulty adjusting to the Nostromo. If, however, you’re ready to make the switch from mouseclick actions to key presses or from keyboard to gamepad, you should maximize your efficiency and pick up a Nostromo Speedpad.
The Nostromo rests under your left hand and mimics the key commands of the keyboard. The keys themselves are laid out as follows:
- 14 keys in 3 rows (the last of which only has 4 keys)
- A black, rectangular thumb button
- A red, circular thumb button
- A clickable scroll wheel
- An analog directional pad
The 14 base keys are where you map your primary abilities. The four fingers of your left hand rest on the middle row of keys (6-9), and there’s a home row marker on key 8 so that you can quickly find your hand position without having to look at the pad. The Nostromo Speedpad works by mimiccing key presses from your keyboard. So your first step is to configure your gamepad so that each of its keys corresponds to a key on your keyboard. I have my keys mapped in the following way:
Click to Enlarge
You can, of course, map your keys however you prefer, but you’ll probably want to avoid using keys that are bound to common interface functions you’ve grown accustomed to using (such as C for the Character screen). In my configuration, I use F1-F4 for shapeshifting, but I’ve never used the keys to target group members as is the default configuration.
This is a good time to plan how you want to associate skills with individual keys of your keypad. While you will be able to change this later, you’ll have less of a headache with a little planning. To help, I’ve created a printable template in Acrobat Reader to help you plan your layout before committing to it.
Note: One of the best features of the Speedpad is the ability to bind the rectangular thumb button to either Shift or Ctrl and then use one of these keys in macros to easily perform an alternate action of that which is assigned to the base key (1-14). For instance, you might bind Key 14 to “Mark of the Wild” and have the same key cast “Gift of the Wild” when you hold down the Ctrl key and press Key 14, as in the following macro:
/cast [modifier:ctrl]Gift of the Wild;Mark of the Wild
Finished template in hand, set up your in game hotbars with the spells and skills you want to bind to the keys of your gamepad (for a highly customizable and powerful UI addon to help with this, I recommend Bartender which allows you to create bars which mimic the layout of your Nostromo). Once you have your spells and skills laid out, use the in game Keybindings interface to map the hotbar buttons to the keyboard keys you’ve specified so that you can trigger each from your gamepad. For ideas, I have included the layout of keys that I commonly use below (note that I’m a Tree of Life druid so Healing Touch plays a less prominent role and is thusly relegated to row 3 of my gamepad):
| Key | Default Action | + CTRL Action | |
| 1 | Innervate Self | Innervate Target | |
| 2 | Cyclone | Entangling Roots | |
| 3 | Abolish Poison (Target=Mouseover) | Remove Curse (Target=Mouseover) | |
| 4 | Barkskin | Tranquility | |
| 5 | Shapeshift: Tree of Life | ||
| 6 | Nature’s Swiftness | ||
| 7 | Regrowth (Target=Mouseover) | ||
| 8 | Rejuvenation (Target=Mouseover) | ||
| 9 | Swiftmend (Target=Mouseover) | ||
| 10 | Lifebloom (Target=Mouseover) | ||
| 11 | Healing Touch (Rank 5) | Healing Touch (Max Rank) | |
| 12 | Moonfire (Max Rank) | Moonfire (Rank 1) | |
| 13 | Wrath | Starfire | |
| 14 | Mark of the Wild (Target=Mouseover) | Gift of the Wild (Target=Mouseover) | |
| RED | Jump (Spell Interruption) | ||
| UP | Shapeshift: Cat | ||
| DOWN | Shapeshift: Bear / Equip Bear Staff Macro | ||
| LEFT | Shapeshift: All-Terrain Travel Form Macro | ||
| RIGHT | Shapeshift: Bird Form |
As you can see above, I like making the CTRL version of an action related to its base key. I had to make a macro for innervating myself and only myself after having accidentally innervated our main tank:
/cast [target=self]Innervate
On rare occasions, however, I’ll innervate someone else, so I use the CTRL key to cast the spell on my current target. To accomodate this, I added a second conditional to my Innervate macro:
/cast [modifier:ctrl,target=target]Innervate;[target=self]Innervate
I also like to pair up two related spells like Abolish Poison (the default) and Remove Curse (my CTRL variant). I use mouseover decursing and healing, so my macro looks like this:
/cast [modifier:ctrl,target=mouseover]Remove Curse; [target=mouseover]Abolish Poison
You should be able to make modifications to the above macros to pair up any two spells that make logical sense to you (like Wrath and it’s “turbo” version, Starfire). The benefit of this is that you require less real estate to make the same number of skills available. With a little practice and if you set the second layer up in a way that’s intuitive, you’ll lose no time at all accessing the abilities with your thumb key.
Interested? Get a Nostromo Speedpad N52 through Amazon.com for less than $30!
Related Posts
34 Comments
Comments RSS Feed TrackBack URL
@Graylo: Oh, my mistake!! I’ve adjusted the description to be more clear.
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Thank you for writing this up! Very, very helpful, I was thinking about getting one, now I am convinced! The templates, sample setup and macros are a great addition to a review.
Your site is fantastic btw keep up the good work.
/bookmark
June 25th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I’m so glad to hear it, Neil! I hope it revolutionizes your gameplay as much as it has mine. Thank you for the kind words; they are much appreciated.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Hey Phaelia! Glad you checked in. I got the Nostn52 and played around with it for about 2 hours. Started with the profile like you suggested and was simultaneously fixing my UI with Bartender3 to have my buttons correspond to the keys on the Nost.
Things were going well until I tested cat and bear form. Shortening bar 1 to only 5 buttons left me with only those 5 buttons for those forms. The other bars don’t shift like bar 1 does.
How do you deal with this? Do you set up additional bars with just the cat and bear buttons and click in those forms? Or is there a way to set it up so that when I shift all 14 buttons change according to form?
I really want the UI buttons to correspond to my Nost buttons because I run two characters and it seems it would be very difficult to memorize without the visual prompting of the bar buttons.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
My email is aisa121569@gmail.com if you’d rather reply that way.
Thanks!
June 27th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Neil,
It sounds like the root of your problem is that you’re using Bar 1 (the only one that pages by default) as part of your Nostromo layout. Because Bartender limits bar sizes to 12 buttons or less, in order to lay out my bars to mimic the appearance of my Nostromo, I used two bars, one with 10 buttons, and one with 5. The first bar is set to wrap to two rows, giving the appearance of 3 rows of 5 buttons. To get both of your bars to page correctly, do the following:
- While in edit mode (where all your bars are green or red), right click on the bar you wish to have automatically swap.
- Go to “Paging” and ensure that it’s enabled.
- Under “Paging” look for a popout menu of stances (Bear Form, Cat Form, Cat Form Stealth, Tree Form, and Moonkin).
- Select the stance you wish to configure for (in your case, “Bear Form”) and select another bar to which you wish your bar to switch. (Note: Be sure to select a bar that you aren’t using elsewhere on your screen. It’s best to pick one that’s currently disabled so that you don’t have to worry about messing up another bar.)
You can do this with both of the bars that you use to emulate your Nostromo layout and with as many forms as you have extra unused bars to accomodate. Once you have it configured this way, switch to caster form then back to Bear Form and layout your buttons as you please.
If you set up your top bar to be 10 buttons (in 2 rows), you should have plenty of space to layout all your various bear abilities. Cat Form is a bit trickier, but can be accomplished if you build abilities into macros (having a button do one thing while stealthed and another while not, for instance). This way you don’t have to have both of the bars page when you shapeshift if you don’t want.
PS - I’m writing these instructions from memory so please forgive me if they are inexact!
June 29th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
You’ve got me seriously considering picking one of these up. The only thing I’m left wondering about is how you’re able to move around fluidly, as I don’t see any movement keys programmed onto your n52. I’m used to using WASD to move around (A and D are set to strafe) and using the mouse to turn.
Also, you’re using mouse-over to select targets for healing, tying up your mouse movement. How on earth do you get around? I do a lot of PvP healing, and I need to be able to cast all the instant-cast spells while on the move. Could you explain how you control character movement, as well as your spells? I feel like I must be missing something obvious.
Thanks very much. I’ll keep an eye on this site.
June 30th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Thanks for the questions, Biorhythm!
I use the mouse for movement in World of Warcraft (I was an arrow key user in EverQuest, though). As you know, you can move forward by holding the right and left mouse keys at the same time, but this can be cumbersome. I bound my autorun to the left thumb key. Once that’s activated, I can steer by holding down the right mouse key and swinging my mouse back and forth. I let go of the right mouse key to stop steering and place my cursor for mouseover heals. Admittedly, I focus mainly on Alterac Valley when I do venture into Battlegrounds and movement is less important there than in a Battleground like Warsong.
My husband, on the other hand, plays a Warrior. He uses the directional thumb pad to move. With two keys bound to “left” and “right,” he’s able to strafe by holding that key and the right mouse button at the same time. He has another direction bound to backward movement, but the key you might expect to be “forward” is actuallly for autorun.
July 1st, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Can you strafe at all using that method? It doesn’t sound like it. I doubt I can PvP with my only way to move being autorun. I think I’ll probably just ending up binding WASD (or at least WAD…who needs S?) to the n52. I do hate wasting 3-4 keys on that though, so I’m looking for alternatives.
July 1st, 2007 at 3:37 pm
With the method I use, no, I can’t strafe. I recommend doing what my husband does with the directional pad if you decide you can’t live without strafing. =)
July 3rd, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Hey I just got a n52 and love it, however, I have problems pressing the red button, which i use for shift.
Does it get easier to press over time, or is there some way to secure the speedpad to my desk so it won’t slide so much?
Thanks for introducing me to this wonderful device:)
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Jason,
The red button is a tough one. I bound Alt to the red button and Shift to the lower key that Phae bound to LeftCtrl. For those that want another take on the Nostromo, I posted my own setup on http://parrydodgespin.blogspot.com/2007/04/rogue-nostromo.html
July 4th, 2007 at 3:39 am
Hey Jason! I’m glad you are enjoying your Nostromo. I have heard others complain about the red button giving them trouble, but I haven’t experienced it myself so perhaps it varies from pad to pad.
As for it sliding around on your desk, you might try some sticky tack (the putty you can use to hang posters without marking the walls) between the pad and your desk. Also, it’s worth mentioning that the pad can be adjusted for hand size (the palm plate is removable and can be slid down in case you have larger hands). That might be contributing to your problem. =)
Thanks for commenting!
July 10th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Thought I would stop back in…loving the Nost! So much more efficient than before.
As far as movement goes I use the mouse as well and I have right and left strafe bound to my mouse keys so I can indeed strafe with the mouse only.
My thumb button is bound to tab for easy targeting.
This way my all my movement other than walking backwards and autorun is mouse, and targeting and spells are on the speedpad. I use the dpad for my shifting with each of the four directions bound to a macro for each form. Can shift so fast sometimes you don’t even see the Tauren form in between travel and cat for example.
July 12th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Neil,
When you say that you target using your Speedpad do you mean targetting group members? I tried that but could never remember which group member was bound to which key, even after I found a UI addon that would label them F2-F5. I switched to mouseover healing with the release of the new LUA and can’t believe how much quicker I feel I can react!
Glad to hear you are enjoying the gamepad so much. Maybe you’ll find some more tips to share!
July 19th, 2007 at 12:34 am
No, I mean targeting mobs, or enemy pvp with the tab button which I have bound to the bottom thumb button of the Nost. I target friendlys with the mouse if I need to heal.
Btw you’ve inspired me to start my own blog…
Just one post yet but we all start somewhere!
http://wowoffspec.blogspot.com/
September 5th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
I picked up the n52 when I started my first MMO - City of Heroes. Let me tell you, I couldn’t play MMOs without it - I’ve tried to play World of Warcraft without it and failed miserably!
I’m a very accomplished typist (around 95 WPM with a 4% error), but I think that fact actually makes it more difficult to use a keyboard for complex games like World of Warcraft.
I took my basic profile from CoH and modified it for my first WoW character - a Mage - and played for about 4 months, then took a break. Now I’m back with a 54 Paladin pushing for 70 before Wrath of the Lich King comes out - and I’m praying my Nostromo doesn’t wear out before then!
My friends think I’m crazy for using the n52, but it gives such a wide range of keypresses. For example, I have my primary powers bound to keys 1-0, and the remaining 2 keys (- and =) bound to the middle keys on the bottom row. The “shift” key that changes profile color I have bound to shift to the red profile, which activates Numpad1-0 - my second bar. The bottom side key on my mouse is bound to Alt - so at any given time I can hit this and switch to Alt+1-0 or Alt+Numpad1-0 - and the top button is Shift, so that’s another 2 sets (Shift+1-0 and Shift+Numpad1-0). Lastly, the orange button on the n52 is my Ctrl key, giving me access to Ctrl+1-0 as well.
Yeah, lots of keys. But I use ‘em all - and couldn’t play WoW without my Nostormo!
October 30th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
You are the best, thanks so much for this guide. I looked when I first started a year ago and couldn’t find anything like this for WoW. Nostromo should mention this in their literature.
November 5th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
With the release of the new Nostromo n52te, I was really interresting looking at this article and the comments.
As PvP is a primary concern, I need to strafe a lot more than a PvE player. Now I’m searching an effective way to do it with such a pad and be able in the same time to have access to all my totems/macros etc.
I think Valenna’s profile mixed with yours would be the ideal for me. I really need to have a hand at this tool to make up my mind.
November 5th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
@Dajay: Yeah, I am trying to decide how I can add the ability to strafe to my Nostromo, as well. It’s a pretty essential maneuver for pillar kiting and really hindering my ability to live through a Warrior. ^_^
November 11th, 2007 at 3:12 am
Nice tutorial, I’ve been using the N52 for a couple years now and I couldn’t survive without it now, if your on the edge about getting one realize that you can find them for dirt cheap on ebay and Razor even put out a new model if you want new with better buttons I hear.
December 11th, 2007 at 6:30 am
Nice writeup! I’ve been using one of these bad boys ever since WoW went live. I’ve also used it for CoH, CoV, SWG, EQ, EQ2, Day of Defeat Source, CS Source, TF2…basically I don’t play a game without it!
My question though with the set up posted, if you have the n52 designed to do all your spells/skills etc. how do you move around?
Personally I use my n52 and mouse, I only ever touch my keyboard to open up screens or to chat. I use the 3,7,8,9 buttons to move around on the n52.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:22 am
@JohnnyG: The new Nostromo from Razer is on my Christmas list. =)
@DasdeThwar: I’m with you and have applied the Nostromo to lots of different games. I even managed to use it for NWN2 which has a terrible default interface.
As far as movement, I have autorun bound to one of the keys on the side of my mouse and have the back button mapped to one of the keys on the direction pad (the layout featured here is long out of date, but I left it here as an example). When I start PvPing again, I’m going to have to bind strafe left and right to my direction pad, too, though and find a new place for my shapeshifts.
December 15th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I was wondering if you could program a key to press shift+4, and shift to another color state. While in this new color state, could you program the same button to press shift+1 and shift to the original color state? I’m so used to shifting between bars 1 and 4 I don’t think I’d be able to manage without some type of macro like this. Thanks for the answers!
December 17th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
@Garov: No, this isn’t possible with the current version of the Nostromo software, as least the latest I have. This was one of the first things I looked into when I got my Nostromo as I wanted to do something very similar to what you desired. As of yet, I have found no way to press a Nostromo key and result in a keyboard code and a Nostromo color shift at the same time. Instead, I use macros for all my Nostromo keys and a large number of modifiers in my macros to handle different stances and states.
February 1st, 2008 at 7:20 am
Ok I can has question for joo!!
I too use a nostromo n52. I attempted to program macros on my buttons but found the input on them to the game to be mind numbingly slow when it attempted to type out a command such as “/cast Mark of the Wild”
Did you have this problem also and if so how did you get around it?
Klanksta
February 1st, 2008 at 9:35 am
@Klanksta: You don’t want to program whole macros into your Nostromo. That WILL be really slow and inefficient. Instead, build your macros in game and then bind them to keys on your keyboard. Then bind your Nostromo’s keys to those keys. Then when you press the key on your Nostromo bound to the “1″ on your keyboard, it will trigger the macro you’ve assigned to the action bar button associated with “1″.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
[...] Discussion of the Original N52 Speedpad and the [...]
March 11th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Oh - so many options! I am really tempted by this. A few months ago I invested in a Logitech G11 keyboard which I love; it gives me 18 extra buttons down the left-hand side of the keyboard. On my Holy Priest I am also trying out Grid and Clique (I’m also an addon junkie) but haven’t had the chance to try it anger yet. I suspect I’m not going to like it much as I have no way to remember what is bound to l-click, shift l-click, ctrl l-click etc.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
With the moving around problem.. I’ve been using The N52 for a few years now. What has worked best for me is to have the D-pad set up with
W/S as Up/Down, and Q/E as left and right. This allows me to move using only my thumb, leaving the rest of my fingers to mash buttons. I use the 3 buttons on the left as tab, escape, and space. With the remaining 11 finger buttons as 1 through -. The red dot is =
I bound the mouse wheel to shift plus mousewheel so i could change bars as needed, and the mousewheel push is set to toggle autorun. Hope this helps..
March 28th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Great guide! I’m not too fond of using the mouse to move around like that, but the macros section is a god-send for me. I’ve had my n52 for some time now, just upgraded to a n52te (the keys are SO much better…soft ftw). But I never quite knew how to apply it to WoW, only my FPS’s and other games. I appreciate your work.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
@Hulan: Give in to your temptation. Once you’ve tried a gamepad, you’ll never go without again.
I use one a ZBoard (the ones with the pictoral, game-specific plates) but don’t really like it. So thanks for the Logitech recommendation!
@Grabba: I think my husband has his gamepad movement configured similar to what you describe. If I can ask, why do you have a key bound to escape? Is it for spell interruption? If so, wouldn’t it be more efficient to bind that key to “jump” which has more practical uses like flying upward or just bouncing around waiting for the raid to start?
@Clay: I’m glad the macros were helpful! I have this article on my list of ones to revisit since my macros have changed a lot since this was originally posted (thanks in large part to PvP requiring I have access to more than just heals).
June 27th, 2008 at 8:45 am
I recently purchased a nostromo n52. While searching the net looking for ways to set it up i stumbled upon your blog. Overall, i like the way you have yours set up. I just have one question. I see that you are using mouseovers for your targets, and you are using your mouse to move. How do you cast insta cast spells on other people while you are moving with this setup?
June 27th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
@Elwinoria: I have autorun bound to a key on the side of my mouse so I can slide my mouse over to the person I want to cast on then activate autorun and cast a spell. Alternatively, you could create your macros such that they would selectively cast on your mouseover target, your regular target, and then yourself in order of preference. I may have to try that.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:34 am
I know this is a fairly old artical, however the link to the printable template is dead. Does this document still exist today?
August 7th, 2008 at 10:21 am
@Tielc: Doh … I didn’t notice that was a dead link. Yes, it’s been moved to here. I’ll correct the link in the above article, too. Thanks for telling me!!