what type of mouse to use is not always a simple answer. there are a few factors you may wish to think about before making a decision.
what type of games do you play?
- while extensive buttons on a mouse may be beneficial to a mmo player they can hamper a fps player by being harder to move around and being too confusing to control. likewise a mouse with not enough buttons can hamper a mmo player unless the keyboard hand can access the skills instead.
are you right or left handed?
- left handed mouse users are much more limited on their selection of products and often have a much harder time of things. there may be some options i list here which may not apply as a consequence.
what is your prefered hand position on the keyboard and what are your preferred keymapping areas?
- do you use wasd for movement and # & fkeys for skills or arrow keys and the numpad & delete cluster? how many key can you comfortably map to your keyboard hand while still maintaining good movement ability? if you can map enough skills with this hand a mouse without as many buttons could work. if not a mouse with more buttons may be beneficial.
do you use a gamepad? (such as razer nostromo, logitech g13)
- by using a gamepad and having motion set to the joystick you can have 14-22 keys for skillbinding at your fingertips. this would allieviate the need for a mouse with many buttons unless of course you wanted both for 32+ keybind buttons. of course this depends on you using the joystick for movement. an alternative would be to use wasd for movement on the keypad and use the 8 direction thumbstick for skills. this would give you 20-24 keybind locations on the keypad alone. note: actual keybind buttons is determined by the pad.
how do you feel about mice with a joystick?
- there are a select few products which feature a joystick (leetgion el'druin) on the mouse. some people use this for wasd movement so that the mouse controls player movement, camera angle and attack. this leaves the left hand completely open to use # row and fkey spells or allows mapping skills to just the alpa keys or entire keyboard. from key 1 to ? this gives you about 44 keys for mapping in easy reach. more if you use the whole keyboard. an alternative would be to use the thumbjoystick for an 8 way directional keymap for skills.
how do you feel about mice with many keys on the side?
- some products feature a numberpad on the side (razer naga, logitech g600) which can be a bit daunting. others offer more simple designs with half as many keymaps but half the complexity (razer naga hex). others still offer a different layout allowing you to still grasp the mouse with your thumb (corsair g95) and using different parts of your thumb to reach the side keymaps.
is color important?
- purely aesthetic but some people absolutely require all of their pieces to match. some have color changing led backlighting some do not.
now, i know what i listed may be a bit much however it is worth thinking about all of the choices available to you.
perhaps i can share my own experiences which may provide some insight...
i have typical guy hands and prefer arrow keys and numpad + delete cluster for keymapping and ctrl, shift and enter for duck, jump and chat. i currently use a razer deathadder in a palm grip with the pointer and middle fingers on the left and right click buttons. my third finger grips the side and my pinky sort of hangs. i have played this way for years on this mouse and similar mice through various rts, fps and the coorpg guildwars without any problems. there are enough keymaps at my disposal for any one of these. guildwars had a 8 skill limit on what you can take with you into battle at any one time.
with that said, i recently decided to try out tera rising and the sheer number of required keymaps is staggering. granted, i hear this is commonplace for mmorpgs but what i came from was completely different with 8 skills max per character in combat but swappable outside of combat. since i have just began playing i do not have all that many skills yet however i do not think numpad + delete cluster is going to cut it. most players use wasd and #key and fkey keymaps however that is not an option for me and i think it would be very clunky due to the inability to use wasd movement at the same time effectively in a game which requires active combat movement.
this leaves me in a bit of a bind. either i can make due with what i have and try to somehow use alt keys for presses or work with a limited skillbar or i can go out and buy a product or products which will give me some more options. honestly i have to say that my mouse works rather well for me and is easy to control and click though it only has 2 side buttons. with this said i was debating on getting gamepad such as the g13 or razer nostromo (orbweaver is larger but more expensive and more buggy) or staying with my wasd mechanical keyboard (great product by the way) and going with a g600 or naga mouse.
a new mouse would allow me to use side buttons on the mouse as well as the numpad and delkey cluster for 14+12 (26) easy to reach buttons. there are 9 other close buttons for mapping on the keyboard but they are hard to press while moving. this would be an improvment to the 14 i can use now.
if i purchased a gamepad such as the logitech g13 i could set the center buttons with the depressions as movement keys and still have 26 keys for mapping and two on the mouse for a total of 28. if i purchased both a keyboard and pad this would raise to 26+12 for 38 total keymaps. quite frankly i am not sure what will work best.
now, as for a recommendation for you now that i provided you a sensory overload of choices and information?
as you have small hands which can not reach as many keys you may have trouble with the g600 or naga and reaching all of the buttons. the naga hex may be better suited since the keys are all in close proximity to where your thumb should rest. the razer deathadder i have now is a rather large mouse so i am not sure how large the naga is. keep this in mind.
as far as a gamepad is concerned you may be best served with something smaller such as the razer nostromo as it looks like buttons are closer to the wrist rest than products such as the orbweaver and g13.
a combination of naga hex and nostromo would give you 8 keys on the mouse not counting standard left, right and scroll wheel and 14 buttons on the pad, 2 near the thumbstick and 8 for the thumbstick. this would give you a maximum of 32 keymaps in a product which may fit your hands better than the larger products.
of course you also have an option such as the el'druin but i'll leave that choice up to you. read over what i said and think about what sounds appealing for your own useage habits.
some links:
el'druin
http://www.leetgion.com/product-eldruin.php
naga
http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-mice/razer-naga
naga hex
http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-mice/razer-naga-hex/
nostromo
http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-keyboards-keypads/razer...
g13
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/g13-advanced-game...
g600
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/g600-mmo-gaming-m...
m95
http://www.corsair.com/us/gaming-peripherals/gaming-mic...
good luck, if you have any more questions feel free to list.
i copy pasted this from Reddit
