obobskivich wrote:ratfink wrote:I bought a razer naga a couple of years ago - was a big improvement for World of Warcraft, would really recommend for that. and doesn't take much getting used to in my experience.
Not used it much with other games - it wasn't much use in Diablo iii, was ok in Path of Exile.
The naga has buttons on the side though, which makes thumbing them easy.
What actual benefit does it have to having 12 buttons on the side? (I don't play World of Warcraft; this is a serious question)
You easily end up with 10-20 "moves" your character can make or spells thy can cast, plus there might be different potions or other consumables which effectively are additional moves/spells.
Normally you have action bars in the screen [or either 10 or 12 moves each, six bars in all], and you can assign keys to the individual items; I suppose the action bars are just a way if visually confirming which buttons are assigned to which key [as well as a reminder of what spells you have].
Moving fingers across a keyboard to the right key seems more difiicult [to me] than rubbing your thumb over 12 buttons over the side of a mouse. Must confess that the first six buttons on the side are a lot more useful than the other six, which are easier to miss-click. The naga made my gameplay better - though people will argue it's all just keyboard mashing anyway, it's just easier and less stressful with the naga.
The naga is especially thelpful when you have "spell rotations" or sequences that are common, or where you have say half a dozen spells you use repeatedly with different cooldowns on each - they are all handy for whenever they are off cooldown. You can't run all your spells on the naga [or at least I can't] but it seems good for the common ones. For less used ones you just use the usual keyboard bindings.
Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I found it easier than trying to memorise keyboard keys!
The naga buttons are by default just the same as keyboard 1, 2.. to 0, -, = [UK keyboard]. Can't recall if you can reprogram them - which you might want to do if for some reason you wanted keyboard 1-9 to be things you didn't want on your naga buttons.
As to why this matters to gameplay: any reductions in delays in pressing buttons increases your dps, which means enemies go down faster or get crowd-controlled more effectively [immobilised in whatever way your character can do]. Or raises your healing, so your pals live longer. But it also just makes playing easier all round.