Very interested in how your setup's are. I'm not a experienced MMO player that has maximized his efficiency with the keys, so they way i set up my keys might be totally fucked for someone who has played a lot of MMO's.

But i use 1-5 as my most used skills, along with a second bar underneath that uses ALT+1-5. Then 6-9 is the stuff i dont use that much and the same goes for the last half row of the second bar underneath. But i feel ike i need to bind some more keys, as its a pain in the ass to go from the keyboard to clicking icons with the mouse, sometimes when it gets hectic you missclick, and i have even dragged a skill icon out of place, because the bar wasn't locked. And the higher level you get the more skill you have, making it more essential to have good placement and fast placement for the skills.

So whats your setup like? how do you maximize your casting efficiency.

I use 1-6 and shift+1-6. I'll click 7-12 if I need them (I keep my set up AoE, 2 minute cooldowns heals and defenses out there).

If I get new stuff I don't know where I'll put it.

@Brodehouse said:

If I get new stuff I don't know where I'll put it.

That's kind of how i feel. I have a lvl 25 Bounty Hunter and a lvl 20 Trooper. And i have gotten a lot of skills by now, so i really need to figure out the best and most effective way of binding them to useful and easy to reach keys.

I use 1-5 and q, e, x, z, f, t, v. Once all of those are taken, I use shift plus those.

I use 1-9, 0, + and \

And SHIFT plus all of those buttons.

I have the Razer Naga mouse, so hitting all the numbers is not a problem for me. Using that setup gives me 24 abilities I can use with hotkeys, And i don't think any class has more they need to in any rotation.

Keep in mind that I am on a Scandinavian keyboard so the "+" and "\" buttons are between "0" and backspace

1-5, shift+1-5, R, T, A, D, F, G, C, V and shift permutations for all of those, 3 mouse buttons and shift versions of those.

1-5, Q, E, F, G, T, Y, V, B, and shift modifiers for all listed.

I'm considering using one of my mouse buttons as a modifier so I can keep my hand in the 1-5 area. I don't want to start messing with control because it's right next to the damn windows start menu button. Actually, I should just turn that key off.

Considered using E, R and F. Would make it hard to switch between trooper and smuggler though.

1-4, Ctrl + 1-4. Mouse side buttons. 
G, F, H, E, Q.

@pornstorestiffi:

1,2,3,4,5,M4,M5,E,Q,C,F,G (+Shift for 2nd Center Bar, +Alt for Leftside Bar, Rightside Bar for Mounts and Huttball and 'Stuff' like Social Skills using Mutator+Mwheel up/down and 2xMutators, if need be and possible)

M3 for target next enemy, M3+Shift for target next friend, R for self-target

That's like 40+ easily accessible hotkeys right there.

I use 1-6 for my primary rotation abilities

I use Ctrl + 1-6 for my primary abilities that are situational

I use Alt + 1-6 for my key combat abilities with a very long cooldown, 30 sec - 1 min

I use Shift + 1-6 for my OSHIT abilities and defensive abilities with the longer cooldowns, 3 min

I use 7-0 for my most situational abilities and consumables: Medpac, Relic 1, Relic 2, Guard

- is Sprint, = is Speeder

Ctrl + T is Companion Attack, Ctrl + F is Companion Passive toggle

Ctrl + F1 is Shii-Cho Form, Ctrl + F2 is Soresu Form

I still need to figure out where to put Intimidating Roar, Vicious Throw, and Intercede when I get them. I'm probably going to end up shuffling Savage Kick and Pommel Strike somewhere else but I am running out of buttons. Needless to say, tanking Sith Juggernauts suffer from a bit of ability bloat.

1-6 for my DPS skills in my Cover bar (Gunslinger, so flurry of bolts, charged burst, aimed shot, trick shot, quick shot and Quickdraw), and then the rest of it is for the few DoT moves I have and CC/Stun moves that aren't really essential unless everything goes to shit. I use the auto-target nearest option rather than the standard Tab select, which after being so WoW ingrained threw me a little.
 
Right Action Bar is for longer buffs like Lucky shots and fluff like Quick Travel, Mount and Recuperate, and the Bottom Action bar is for Med packs and combat buffs like All in or Second Chance. I'm not a particularly hotkey-er sort of MMO player and more often than not everything outside of 1-6 is done by me clicking on it. 

Lots of good setups here, thanks for sharing.

First row is where all my attacking and battle skills go, and the second row is where all the defensive abilities go. Mouse-4 and 5 (and q) are the highest priority attack skills on the top row, while they're more of an "Oh shit" button to buy time with in the bottom row when I've used up all my other defensive skills.

Right bar has Alt+key hotkeys with buffs, sprint, quick travel, speeder, e.t.c. on it. Haven't gotten enough skills for the left bar yet.

I haven't played many MMOs either, but I found this to be the most comfortable for me after figuring out that I couldn't deal with going past 6 for hotkeys.

My setup is pretty unique in the sense that I use my right hand for the abilties - i.e. not using the mouse when I'm engaging a mob.

So most of my abilties are bound to NumPad keys 0-9. And my keyboard has 3 macro keys on both sides of the keyboard, so I use those as well (left for defense/escape and right for stun/sap etc.).

In a raiding situation it's not ideal, since I have to turn with the keyboard and not the mouse, but since I'm not interested in raiding, it suits me just fine during normal gameplay. And it gives me access to a whole bunch of buttons: normal number keys, NumPad 0-9, Macro keys, Shift+F/D. Mouse3 and Shift+Mouse3 I use for targeted AEs atm.

Because I don't like taking my finger off the movement keys, this is the best MMO setup I came up with during WoW and have used it in every MMO since then.

On my Resto druid in WoW i had 40 some hotkeys. So far I am up to about 30 on my Operative.

1-6, shift+1-6, r, c, z, t, `, x, e, f, g, shift for all those, and then some.

These are mine xD Really messy apparently, according to my guildies. It's just how I play. I don't like my fingers to stay in one spot. I play Imperial Agent (Sniper) if it wasn't obvious already.

1-5 for one set of skills, shift+number for another set. I click the rest which are mainly defensive cooldowns or buffs of some sort. I tend to keep stuff I click on the side-bar, though (right one) for easier access.

Just got Annihilate and had to do some moving around. It feels really, really weird after going from like 20 to 43 with basically the exact same rotation.

1-6, Q E Z, then my side mouse buttons.

For the bottom row, I just add Alt in front of those, except 5 and 6 are replaced with Alt + W and S.

I can't for the life of me get comfortable using Ctrl to control (ha pun) my companion, though. Feels clunky.

I've bound tons of abilities before in WoW on my hunter but haven't really seen a need for it here. I put the most used abilities on my 1-5 and just click everything else. Simple enough.

The important thing to pick up from most of these is that (even though it takes a little getting used to at first) you should rebind your left turn, right turn and back-pedal keys to action keys and use mouse-turn. I would suggest to keep S bound as normal for tanking, but facing doesn't matter in swtor so you can rebind it as well.