MMORPG Mouse Guide. Utilizing MMORPG mice to the fullest.

[FranBunnyFFXII]

Hi everyone, I've been an MMORPG player for over 12 years, and have been using MMORPG mice since 2011, when I first picked up Naga Molten. Over the years I've procured a lot of knowledge and a significant amount of usage into MMO mice and as such I'd like to write a guide to give other MMO players and other games who might be interested in MMORPG mice an idea and premise to build upon.



The main mice I will be supporting in this guide are the 12 button "Naga" style key pad mice.
Primarily the Razer Naga series, Logitech G600, Corsair Scimitar RGB, and Roccat Nyth. There are other 12 button mice alternatives to this such as the Reddragon Perdition, and Utech Venus. This guide should work for them in the same path of thinking.

Supported Mice
(MMORPG Mice that Support keybinding properly)

Razer Naga Molten, Epic, 2014, Naga HEX original, Naga Chroma(Epic).
Logitech G600
Roccat Nyth
Red Dragon PERDITION

 

Importance of Setting up correctly
First things first before getting into keymaps and trying to set things up and adjusting for your play style, lets get your mouse to the correct settings with in windows to make sure you're able to aim and move correctly with the mouse and eliminate issues.

First you need to check your cursor setting in Windows
Follow this path in Windows(Vista,Win7,Win8?, Win10?)
Start-->Control Panel-->Hardware and Sound-->Mouse
Or you can Start-->Control Panel and just search for "mouse" in the explorer search

Go to the Pointer Options tab
The Motion section will have a slider with the text "Select a pointer speed"
Set this to 6/11.
Why? This sets the mouse to a 1:1 ratio within windows, lower and higher settings changethe ratio at which the mouse is being interpreted within windows.
setting it 6/11 will provide a 1:1 imput.

Then uncheck the box that says "Enhance pointer precision."
Turning this off turns off Windows native mouse acceleration.


After this is complete, install your mouse's software, and restart your PC.(Then come back to this thread)
If you've already installed it's software then don't worry about it.

Open the software and make sure your mouse is set to 1000hz polling rate. This puts the mouse at a 1ms latency, which is about as low as you can get it.

Check within your mouse's software to make sure it has disabled acceleration
If you don't know how to use the mouse software yet, then take some time to get familiar with it
Once this is all completed you can move on to the usage aspects.

Two ways of Utilization, and Methods

When it comes to the "Naga" like mice, with 12 thumb keys, you have a significant amount of options, and possibilities.
First let's talk about how to learn and use the 12 Button keypad.

If you're new to MMO mice, then this will be helpful in learning how to use the keypad, if you're already an MMO mouse user, then you'll pretty much be aware of this information already.

Home Row and Natural resting position
Regardless if you're a claw gripper or a palm gripper, you should learn to rest your thumb on the middle row of keys. Particularly the "2" Button.
This will give your thumb a natural point of reference. From here you will learn to automatically position your thumb per key as you become used to the mouse.

1~3, 4~6 key rows will be the most easily accessible by design.
However some players may find 456 to be a more easily comfortable position to rest on. If so then use the reference sheets and information relative to this position, but it is suggested that you try to get used to the "2" key position as your resting position.
From this position it allows you to access 1~6, quickly, 789 with your thumb pulled up a little bit, and 10 11 12 with the first joint of your thumb. Thus making all 12 keys instantly accessible to you.
For the G600, you may want to disable the 3rd mouse button to be able to use it as a counter pressure grip, which will make picking up the mouse easier.


Please Note: If you are a "Clicker" someone who clicks hotbar icons, instead of pressing buttons, you need to learn to use hotkeys fully. One of the primary reasons to get an MMORPG mouse is to no longer need to click any hotbar icons.
Just like keyboard turning. Hotbar icon clicking is extremely inefficient and has massive disadvantages to gameplay.

Two ways of Utilization

Depending on the game you're playing you will have the find which keybind methodology works the best for you when it comes to how you play the game. But there are 2 major ways to use the MMORPG mouse keypad.

We'll call these Naga Hotkey, and Naga Movement.


Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Naga Hotkey allows a greater access of hotkey ranges with a single modifier.
Naga Movement allows much greater capabilities of hotkey access with a single hand.

Naga Hotkey's drawback is that you are using only 1 finger effectively to use all of your hotkeys. This is where Naga movement's advantage is superior. With Naga movement you have a full hand to hit your hot keys.

Consider boths effectiveness for the game and style of play you use.
Note: I personally use Naga movement for almost all of my MMORPGs. Including WoW, WildStar, GW2, TERA. I use Naga Hotkey with Vindictus.

Keymap Templates



 
Defining the usage of Naga Hotkey keymapping
Generally this is the more naturally gravitated towards progression for MMORPG players when they get an MMORPG mouse.
And it's to be expected because when Razer designed the original MMORPG mouse(Naga), they did intend to allow players to utilize hotkeys on their mouse, so your left hand is free to move around and use your key modifiers.
For many players this seems a nice similarity to the other games they play, such as FPS, and Adventure games that generally use the standard WASD keybinds for movement.
Naga Hotkey keybinds are a good way to free up hand contortion that many MMORPGs cause, and allow more default ready keyboard setups to be used. Less confusion on default settings.

There isn't much to say about said this method as most players fall into it pretty easily, but players can still take a bit of time getting used too these setups.

For the most efficient way of setting these up. Using your Naga 2 key, for your most used ability is the best place to start with arranging your hotkeys. Then find which buttons you tend to use the most and bind them to your naga by priority around that "home row" concept.
 
 
 
Defining the usage of Naga Movement keymapping.

"Won't it affect my Aim?"
Not at all.
The buttons on the naga, and G600, and others aren't easy to accidentally press but are also easy enough to press that they wont cause issues with aiming unless you have poor control of your mouse.
The Naga Hex however, has some rather easy to press buttons and will have a lesser possibility of being an issue with aiming if you are concerned with the issue.


The Utilization of the 12 button keypad for Omnidirectional positioning
The main purpose, as explained in the first infograph, of utilizing naga movement is to allow a player to use their left hand to hotkey freely and centralize positioning and direction to the right hand.
Biologically speaking this separates the commands in the brain and creates less confusion and more natural registration of behaviors.

Omnidirectional or 8 directional positioning with the naga is very useful skill to learn and will easily enhance your quality of life in game.

The QWEASD mirror allows to utilize full 8 direction movement.

with the keys bound in the 2x3 array you can hold MB2 and can press single or multiple buttons strafe move and reposition

For example

if
naga keys
123
456
=
QWE
ASD

Then you can press the naga
4+5 and stafe back to the left, 5+6 strafe back to the right
1+2 Strafe forward to the left, 2+3 strafe forward to the right

ect ect
all 8 full directions of movement in an standard WASDQE based mmo.

It allows omni direction positioning while in combat.


There is an alternative to that, depending on how you want utilize the keys

if
naga keys
123
456
=
QWE
SSS
Which allows similar 8 direction positioning behavior with these key presses
1+4 Strafe back left, 3+6 strafe backright
1+2 Strafe forward left, 2+3 strafe forward right
Then of course.
2 forward
5 back
1 Strafe left
3 Strafe right
 
I have uploaded some demonstration videos showing how Naga Movement works.
Short clip Video

In Raid full fight video

 

I apologize that these aren't higher quality but I don't have a real video camera.
 
 
There are advantages of Naga Movement over Naga Hotkey.
Primarily as mentioned before, you have more fingers to access your hotkeys. A whole hand is better than just one thumb. You can use your thumb on your naga to position yourself in combat with ease. Pressing 2 Naga Buttons with your thumb is easy.
You won't rely entirely on the mouse for movement. You will still be naturally able to go back to WASDQE when in non combat or travel, but WASDQE on the mouse provides another major advantage.
When your movement keys are bound to the mouse, your entire mental understanding of your orientation in the game space is allocated to one hand. Position, and Viewport are under control of one hand, and combat commands are on the other.
This divides left hand right hand apart in the brain, which helps issues with overlapping. The mind theoretically operates more efficiently as commands are distributed to different hemisphere.


Ergonomics of Keymapping and placement.
Most MMORPG players learn very quickly which hotkeys will be utilized the most on their characters.
And as such as a player learns the frequency of keypresses, it is best to map these hotkeys according to their most intuitive ergonomic placement.

Lets look at a Standard 104key keyboard

Note: This is my keyboard and the keycaps are flipped around a bit, but it's otherwise the exact same as any other 104 key

The key placement naturally above the WASDQE by hand movement is 1234.
3 is the centeral most usable key when placing your hands on the number line, 12, 45 extend this home location.
Your hand will naturally shift between 3, W, and S with ease.
Furthering this, ZXC are the next most natural placements afterwards, then followed by F1F2F3. 6, VB, and F4 are keys that are easily accessible outside of these natural ranges without loss of natural placement.(For most hands)
So this is where we would want to place most of our keymap for combat skills.
This is more relevant to Naga Movement, but also applies to Naga Hotkey.

This sense of ergonomics is centralized around WADSQE native key placement, placing keys accordingly increase the optimal positions of keys for mapping.

Lets move to the 12 keys on the MMO mice and how the keyboard is involved.
When utilizing naga hotkey your access to movement with your left hand, is occupied with the WASD keys, and your shift modifier.
When utilizing naga movement, your access to hotkeys is directly ergonomic by placement.
Most MMO players will naturally know how to utilize naga hotkey without much issue.
 
These are ergonomic placements based on Default movement key settings.
 
It is possible to alter your settings even more to allow more comfortable settings and association with keybind usage efficiency.
It's all about finding what's most comfortable.
Some players do find it better to rebind their strafe keys to A and D and open up QE for extra hot key placement. I personally have done this with TERA.

Just be sure that if you're utilizing different movement keybinds, that you set your mouse up to reflect them(Naga Movement) 
I personally keep WASDQE default because out of combat I do like to travel around on my mount and still have keyboard turning an option in case I want to take my hand off my mouse and just relax a bit.(You should never Keyboard turn in combat. Ever)

 

Questions? Comments?

I will be refining and updating this guide as I go along and acquire new advice and insight. So if there hasn't been something explained feel free to ask, and I'll be able to fill you on and give advice.

[Runescapian]

Thanks for this!

[DEDRICK]

How lazy do you need to be to bind your movement keys to your mouse

[FranBunnyFFXII]

How lazy do you need to be to bind your movement keys to your mouse

Read the guide. It's about effectiveness and accessibility.

The guide explains in full about why Movement keys on the mouse create a wide opportunity for optimizing gameplay.

[sqwidee]

In any game with standard WASD movement controls it's pretty pointless to have movement binds on your mouse since you could already move in 8 directions with WASD alone and aim with the mouse. Especially if it's a game that relies heavily on skillshots (this is coming from years of playing SMITE with all actions except movement bound to my Naga).

[VortexS]

I feel like this might deserve a sticky, thanks bunches! ^{witcher 3 reference}

[Whorax]

Since when has this Scimitar been a thing... that's sweet.

 

Edit: And it's optical!?        This is groundbreaking.

 

Edit2: WHEN DOES THIS COME OUT I NEED THIS.

[FranBunnyFFXII]

In any game with standard WASD movement controls it's pretty pointless to have movement binds on your mouse since you could already move in 8 directions with WASD alone and aim with the mouse. Especially if it's a game that relies heavily on skillshots (this is coming from years of playing SMITE with all actions except movement bound to my Naga).

As I said before, you need to read the guide and learn why it's expressing this particular design aspect.

You can't make a judgement without looking into it first.

 

Think about it this way.(with MMORPGs)

You only really need one finger to move, but you have 8~20 abilities and maybe more with pots, and consumables.

WASDQE is just another grid of 6 buttons, not much different from having them on your 1~6 thumb pad.

With WildStar in particular, Naga Movement is superior bar none. WildStar has too many keys that must be pressed in simultaniuous or sequence too quickly. And your left hand having 4 fingers to do it, is far better than having just your thumb on the keypad.

And WildStar is entirely skillshots.

I switched to naga movement around 2 years ago, and I can't really go back to putting main hotkeys on the mouse. Except maybe TERA and Vindictus but even TERA now I'm using naga movement. For most MMOs movement binds for combat on the mouse is going to prove a superior design.

If you've ever played an RTS, or MOBA you'll understand how the natural feel of having all orientation of the game on the right hand, and all skill bases and commands on the left will feel.

[Agent181]

This reminds me of the dual joysticks setup I had and mapped minecraft to it, I might Do a dual joysticks setup guide...

Nice guide this really is going to help a lot of people, took me a while to get use to g600

[Jaybird]

Excellent guide. I didn't read all of it but I got what your saying. I'm not a big mmorpg fan but I did pick up a m95 mouse so I might try it out.

[leelaa14]

Should also include the mark c mouse fix. Everyone should use this if they play any sort of game with a mouse.
He also update it for windows 10

[FranBunnyFFXII]

Excellent guide. I didn't read all of it but I got what your saying. I'm not a big mmorpg fan but I did pick up a m95 mouse so I might try it out.

The M95 is one of the mice that I tried out for this guide, and had to exclude it.

It does not operate properly for MMORPGs. It doesn't allow multipress keys on its keypad, which is a big downfall to it, and it has very poor keypad ergonomics.

I might be ok for FPS games or general games. But it's unacceptable for MMO gameplay.

The Scimitar RGB is corsair's placement for the M95.

[FranBunnyFFXII]

Updated the guide with some video clips and information improvement.

[boboman342]

Updated the guide with some video clips and information improvement.

Epic man! Just bought the Nyth and am excited to see and feel the differences from my current naga hex (dam glossy mouse, never again).

 

Edit: Holy FUCK the Nyth sucks donkey nuts. First of all, it works 10% of the time on windows 10... Second, unless you completely get rid of all side buttons with the covers, you have to hold the mouse EXACTLY like a claw grip, your palm can't touch the mouse unless you have 5in long hands. 

 

So if you have shorter wider hands, you might like it, otherwise stay away!

 

I guess I could try the slide able Scimitar next.

[FranBunnyFFXII]

This guide has been updated.

If anyone has a UtechSmart Venus, I need your input for this topic.