Lots of us purchase these nifty mice from the local computer store. Be they a fancy new Logitech mouse with a dozen keys placed strategically around the unit, or a slick new beauty from Apple, the mouse is a strategic part of your game play.

At least, it should be.

All too often people don't utilize what they have in front of them. Today we're going to look at how you can increase your game play by using your mouse more effectively. In particular, the buttons.

However before we look into buttoning strategies, lets just quickly cover moving with the mouse. It's pretty simple, right? Push both buttons down, move forward. Right click and hold to turn your character. Left click and hold to look around without moving. Mike Schramm covered this in a post about a month and a half back, and it's a pretty good read for those interested more in the topic of mouse moving.

So now that that's out of the way, let's look at basic mouse buttoning techniques. I own two Logitech MX5000 cordless optical mice. They work very well and have a battery life of a couple days; but even then I recharge them both every night just so I don't have disaster strike me in the middle of a raid when the battery goes out.

These mice have a ton of buttons on them. The main ones that I use to increase my game play lie on the left side of the unit, conveniently near where my thumb rests when using the mouse. The three buttons there serve to really help things out. In my Logitech control panel, these three buttons are mapped to use the key combination Alt-Control-Shift-1, Alt-Control-Shift-2, and Alt-Control-Shift-3. They're very obscure combinations, and help insure that when I'm playing the game I won't every accidently hit them.

In WoW, I then have a Bongos bar setup that has three spots assigned to these key combinations. Pretty simple. As you can see from the picture to the right, the Bongos bar is setup in a 4x3 setting, so the far left side of the bar represents the three keys. This allows for easily changing what each button on the mouse does. Need the middle button to active Tears of the Goddess? Great, just drag it into the middle spot on the bar. Poof. No more falling death in Archimonde. As you can see, right now my top mouse button is set to activate Intercept, the middle to Charge, and the bottom to Taunt. These buttons are great for any ability that requires a "twitch" or reflex based use.

A simple fact is that it's much easier to hit a button right where your right thumb rests than it is to move your left hand across the keyboard and press "7", which for me is Taunt. Of course, this depends on your individual game play, but there'll always be situations that need some quick acting abilities when not enough space is available near the QWERTY set.

What other mouse tips might you have for your fellow readers? How do you use your mouse to increase your game play?

And coming up tomorrow, techniques for using that keyboard of yours...

Tags: archimonde, bongos, button, button-bar, buttons, charge, hardware, intercept, mh, mount-hyjal, mouse, mx, mx-5000, mx5000, raiding, taunt, tears-of-the-goddess, tips, tricks

Filed under: Tips, Tricks, How-tos, Odds and ends, Add-Ons, Raiding, Hardware