Wut's Your Mouse?

I have been experimenting with different mouse options.  I needed more buttons.  My previous weapon of choice was a Microsoft Side Winder Gaming Mouse which had 5 re-mappable buttons: left, right, middle, and 2 pegs in thumb's reach.  Was overall a good responsive mouse which also allowed users to add weights in a side compartment for personalized comfort.  For my healing days on my druid it was good to passable for most situations in game.  I have used the mouse on hunters, paladins, and rogues at low levels but often felt at a disadvantage not being able to access certain abilities on impulse.

My first purchase into higher button count mouses was the Steel Series MMO Gaming Mouse that was released for Cataclysm and backed by Blizzard which even added a UI option for the detection of this mouse.  The mouse offered 14 true mouse buttons strategically placed at key points of this massive mouse.  And, yes, I emphasize massive which was my only complaint about the mouse.  I was constantly fumbling this handful during play which made this mouse really uncomfortable and very noisy during stressful moments (besides my cursing).  The configuration software was relatively easy to use as well as the in game integration and it had a cool change the LED glow color option which though cool would piss me off if that was why this mouse was so huge.  It was also not cheap coming in at $100 CAN was not an option for casual players.

After many weeks of remapping and rewriting macros for my new gaming mouse I came across my next purchase at a demo price.  I have heard about this mouse on the WoW Insider podcast and would not have made the purchase after my $100 dollar mistake if it were not for the demo price this mouse was coming to me for.  So I took the plunge and bought a floor model Razor Naga Mouse - literally a normal sized mouse with a number pad carved into its thumb side.  In my opinion not a pretty mouse and I had a few Mac issues regarding not being able to map the mouse's number keys to the actual numbers on the keyboard - a feature that totally works on a Windows system.  It sadly forced me to re-think my macros and just directly map and macro with out modifiers (shift,control,alt).  In the end the slight change in my game play to use the Naga Mouse was definitely worth it.  Not only did I get better access to an array of abilities but I saw a definite improvement in my game play.  I found the size, as well, to be perfect and definitely no more mouse fumbling on "execute".  Even more so had this been my initial purchase I would have saved my self $20 - the mouse can be found at Future Shop for about $80 CAN before taxes.