Can ya help a noob out?

Personally, I find setting weird hotkeys around my movement controls most useful. I have tiny hands, so my current setup is: 1 - E; 2 - R; 3 - F; 4+ no change, I only use those for one class, and I can actually reach 4 easily; Inventory - Q; Drop - G; Sprint - Shift; Sneak - CTRL; F5 - C; OptiFine zoom - V.

 

One thing I have found is my aim has gotten 100 times better since I started. You just have to stick through it. If you don't like a lot of items, and aren't a good shot, Assassin or ninja might be a good choice for you. Pyro would also work, but don't try to snipe with the bow, just use it for close range. Dwarf might also be a thing, but I find dwarf to be a class that some people LOVE playing and some people absolutely HATE it. Either way, GL!

 

Believe it or not, I don't hotkey at all. I scroll. Pretty hard to master, since you can mess up and pull something out you didn't want to. Maybe I'll start to hotkey when I buy a mouse with the # pad on the side.

 

I agree completely with the latter point, but I do not suggest setting sprint to a key that interferes with your movement keys if you intend to main close-quarters PvP classes. The only person I know of who has succeeded at maining a CQ PvP class and strafing only to one side is @Resampling.

 

Heavy and Medic are the most basic and useful classes to master if you want to maximize your use with the least amount of effort.

You dont need to hotkey with chemist either, you could just faceroll the computer and you'd get good results. Chemist is one of the easiest classes to use, and if you don't know how to hotkey then just place health and damage next to the sword for maximum cancer.

 

http://www.amazon.com/UtechSmart-Venus-Programmable-programmable-Customizing/dp/B00FNKMVUO one of the cheapest but best mice out there imo. I use this, along with @IloIsPro_92 (cliff). Really good deal for $40, while the other good mice with the #pads generally cost $60-100+

@Glasgow_Beam rlly for most of the classes you just have to play them a lot to be good at them. Mage, archer, chemist, whatever takes time to master.

As for hotkeying, when I used to not be able to, I would kind of be hybrid between hotkeying and scrolling. I would have 1 set to E and whatever slot my health was to R (even if it was slot 2 like heavy steak), so it's a quick switch between the two and i can go right back to my directionals. I also had C set to crouch (makes sense ;P), F for inventory, and shift for sprint. Q = f5 and X = drop

So basically:
E = 1
R = Health item/invisibility
C = Crouch
F = Inventory
Q = f5
X = drop
Shift = Sprint
And then I would scroll to the other stuff i needed, or just used 3 and 4 cuz it's not that far away.

^^^ that method was fast af for me. You might have to get used to it, but once you do it's super efficient. I only hotkey now because it's a bit more accurate than the hotkey/scrolling combo, as I'd sometimes miss scroll or whatever.

 

Believe it or not, I use default controls xD and a default texture pack. Yea I'm pretty plain.

 

I disagree with you saying it's one of the easiest to use. I mean if you consider the people who play it and just potspam, then I guess it's easy to use. To use Chemist effectively though, isn't easy at all, honestly.

@Glasgow_Beam I'd say get fairly good at Heavy or Medic, because that'll help you when using ever class (except Mage). That's really all I can say, since I'm just as bad. xD

 

I'm alright with chemist, but if you really want a class to help you improve, try archer. you'll eventually get better.

I haven't really bothered setting my sprint key to something else, since, I double tap w key pretty fast.

 

Just a little advice, if you're going to go the scroll-wheel route you might want to get yourself another mouse if the current one you have doesn't scroll very well. I learned to hotkey because my mouse is really, really bad and always seems to scroll though things way to fast as well as sometimes 'wandering' across the screen when I'm not moving it. Before I got stuck with my crapmouse I had a really good one that had a very stable scroll wheel and had almost no issues with clicking or pointing it where I wanted/needed too. I hugely recommend trying out another mouse if you're a bit shaky on the one you have. The mouse really does make a massive difference in being able to PvP effectively because if it doesn't click right or the scroll-wheel is trash you might as well be using a track-pad.

 

@Glasgow_Beam Like everyone is is pretty much saying, heavy and medic are the best classes to get good at if you don't want to do anything else (if you're not great at archer, I wouldn't bother getting elf, but if you get good at archer at any time.... get it and you will have the most fun in your life if you don't rage at dying a lot).

Just to contribute my two cents, here's my hotkey setup, and their background stories!
E: Slot 1 - Used to use #1, but it got inconvenient considering you need to switch to your sword a lot. Also, when holding a loaded bow, if I don't make a shot and don't want to waste an arrow I'll hotkey back to the sword, which doesn't fire the arrow.
R: Slot 2 - I also realized it's a necessity to have your steaks at the ready. Since all classes which have steak have it at slot 2, I set R accordingly.
#2: Slot 3 - I'm an archer and otherwise an elf; slot 3 is your archer bow / pure element, and 2 is right above the W key, so it's very easy to reach.
#3 - 8: Just like #2, all of them are tied to the slot one above their number: 2 is 3, 3 is 4, 4 is 5. If you struggle to reach across your keyboard, this gives one key of help for that; for me it works very well, especially since my keys are very spaced out (I have a laptop so I'm stuck with them ). I would be much more of a failure at chemist than I already am if my health pots were another key away.
#1: Inventory - I have absolutely no better place for inventory. I tried my scroll-click once, but for some reason that only opens the inventory, not closes it.
Q: Sprint - Very very effective to have your sprint key directly next to your W key. However with my A finger occupied with Q, I've only been able to strafe to the right most of the time; I'm now training myself to push two keys at once, Q and A, to strafe left.
F: Drop - With Q gone, and with the need to pass off a flag quickly and tell people to "Wait up!", and with every other immediately available keys neighboring my WASD keys being taken, F was the best option.

It took me about two months or so to fully develop this system. At first I thought it was a little unorthodox, but reading this thread I realized we all have our quirky setups. Hope you see all this and pick up a few things . Remember, all it takes is practice, dedication, and a good deal of raging patience.

 

play pyro and 1-hit everyone

 

Here's the best advice I can give you:

Step 1:
-choose any free class you'd like

Step 2:
-don't play it

Step 3:
-go play something else

Step 4:
-profit

 

I know I learned to hot key decently from playing on kit pvp servers. There was this Brazilian one I played on all the time, and there were several players on there who I'd 1v1 a lot. I used to have a recording of a fight that lasted 11 minutes between me and a German player.

The only remapping of keys I've done is:
C is used for zooming in with Optifine. The default is Ctrl, but I use that for sprint.
That's it, just one.

 

since i am among the most special of snowflakes I use qwes
i also scroll and hotkey

 

I used to use a trackpad and arrow keys to play, but dis summer I switched to a mouse. I had to learn to hotkey and play basically all over again, and how I did it was go heavy a bunch. That helps you learn to hotkey to 2 and 1 and use general controls, and then I went ninja, since ninja uses 1-4 a bunch. PvPing on the KitPvP server also help a bunch, you'll get it down after a while and then just get better from there.