How to Organize Action Bars for a New Character in WoW: Forever

The easiest time to organize your action bars in World of Warcraft: Forever is while you still have empty slots. Put the abilities you press constantly on your main bar, reserve nearby keys for time-sensitive actions, and show a second bar for things you use between fights. This guide is for keyboard and mouse; the Gamepad UI has its own setup.

Put your first abilities on the main bar

Open your Spellbook and drag an ability onto an action-bar slot. Repeat with the small set of abilities you expect to use in almost every fight. Look for the binding printed on the button before you assume the slot is assigned. Moving a spell to a new button changes which slot activates it; it doesn't move your key binding along with the spell.

Start by sorting abilities by what you actually do with them. A frequent attack or heal belongs under a finger you can reach while moving. An opener you use once per enemy can sit a little farther away. A defensive ability you might need with no warning deserves a key you can find without looking. It's fine to reserve a blank space for an interrupt if your class hasn't learned one yet.

A new player often puts spells in the order they learn them. That works until a new spell takes over a more important job. When that happens, move the new spell to the key that fits the job and decide whether the old spell still needs a prominent slot. For example, an area attack can sit beside your usual attack instead of at the far end of the bar where it happened to land.

Show a second bar and keep it visible while learning

Press Escape, open Options, and look for the action bar settings. Enable one additional bar first. Open Edit Mode from the game menu if you want to move the new bar. Place it where you can see its icons without covering your character or the ground around your feet. Make small changes, then save the layout.

Use the second bar for the hearthstone, food, a mount once you have one, and abilities you normally use outside combat. If you put a potion or another emergency consumable here, bind it to a reachable key. Its location on the second bar doesn't make it a low priority action. The distinction is between a visible place for the button and the key you can press to activate it.

Leave both bars visible while learning. If you later change visibility settings, test them while moving between safe ground and combat. A button that disappears at the wrong time can make it difficult to tell whether the spell is ready.

Bind a few keys and try them in motion

Go to Game Menu → Options → Keybindings. Assign keys to the slots you intend to use and check for conflicts before replacing existing bindings. If you prefer to set several buttons directly, use the quick binding option where available. Set a few keys at a time so you can identify what changed when a button stops doing what you expect.

For a first test, move sideways and press your main attack key. Try the same movement with your defensive binding. If you must take your hand off your movement keys to reach an important spell, try a closer key. Don't make a dozen changes based on a stationary test: the awkward combinations tend to show up when you need to move and act together.

You can use a weak outdoor enemy for a practical check. Start with the expected opener, use your common attack or heal, then deliberately press a defensive button while repositioning. Check the spell icon or character animation to make sure the intended ability fired. Do a second pull without looking at the bar until the fight ends. Any button you still need to search for is a candidate to move.

Fix a button that doesn't behave as expected

If clicking a button works and pressing the key doesn't, check the key assigned to that exact bar and slot. If neither works, read the spell tooltip, then check your target, distance, resources, and cooldown. Moving a spell won't fix an ability that's unusable under the current conditions.

When a new ability earns a place on your main bar, change just that slot and repeat the outdoor test. Before your first dungeon, check that you can find your defensive, any interrupt you've learned, and the consumable you plan to bring. Those three checks are more useful than filling every empty button.