Gaming mice oriented to MOBA or MMO games are characterized by, among other things, having a series of additional buttons that allow you to configure macros to easily perform complex actions within these games. Now, if you have a mouse for MMO or MOBA but you don’t play these games (or you don’t do it all the time, of course), can it also help you improve your productivity ?
One of the good parts of gaming mice is that, as a general rule, they have their own software (be it individual or unified, such as Corsair or Razer for example). This means that we can configure different profiles for different areas, being able to even make a certain profile activate automatically when starting a certain game. In this way, just as we can program a mouse for MMO to have advanced actions and macros in a game, we can configure these keys for other purposes when we are not playing.
How to improve your productivity with a mouse for MMO or MOBA
When you take your mouse out of the box and connect it to your PC, you can’t do much with the additional buttons until you install the software and configure them. This means that before the mouse can help you improve your productivity or gaming performance, you will have to spend a lot of time configuring it.
But this is not wasted time but rather invested if you look at it on the good side, since the finer the initial settings you make, the more complex actions you can configure that will later help you save time. It doesn’t have to be a huge savings: saving a second or two on a task that you do hundreds of times a day every day means a ton of time saved in total.
For example, imagine you are working on a MacBook Pro and you prefer to use a mouse in addition to the built-in trackpad. Switching between desktops in macOS is easy with the trackpad, but a mouse does not have that function and would force you to remove your hand from the mouse to use the trackpad function or use the keyboard shortcut: hold CTRL and press the directional cursors . If you can configure this key combination on one of your MMO mouse buttons, it is a lot of time and effort that you will be saving.
In Windows you can do exactly the same. Windows 10 incorporates the ability to work with several virtual desktops , and to switch between them you must press the key combination WIN + CTRL + directional keys. This of course you can configure on any mouse for MMO or MOBA without the slightest inconvenience, and it will save you from having to press the keys. As we said, one or two seconds is more than enough to be profitable.
On a smaller scale you can do the same with Chrome tabs and any other tabbed app. To go to the next tab you normally have to press CTRL + TAB on the keyboard, while to go back to the previous one you have to press CTRL + SHIFT + TAB. You can easily configure both actions on the additional mouse buttons and you won’t even have to move your hand to do it.
Those users accustomed to using keyboard shortcuts will continue to use them, even if it is out of habit. For some applications having both hands on the keyboard is faster than using a mouse, and this is something that programmers can attest to. But in the end, everyone ends up using the mouse at some point, and being able to set any shortcut action directly to a mouse button is always a bonus.
Of course, a mouse for MOBA or MMO not only serves to configure game macros or keyboard shortcuts, but you can use these additional buttons for multimedia actions such as raising and lowering the volume or going to the next song, direct access to programs And a long etcetera. In general, one of these mice is great for MMO or MOBA games, but it can also be very useful outside of these.
Tricks of this type of mouse
Even if you have an MMO mouse with 12 side buttons, it may take a liking to it and quickly run out of buttons to program additional actions. Fortunately, as we mentioned before, these mice always have different profiles, so you can always configure, for example, a general profile, another for your favorite MMO game, another for Photoshop, another for multimedia controls, etc., and always leave one of buttons available to switch between profiles. Everything at your thumb’s fingertips.
Likewise, you will also have the option of creating nested macros, and this is especially useful for programs like Photoshop or After Effects. By creating nested macros we mean that you can always create macros with individual specific actions, and then other macros that run several of these specific macros, one after the other. This will help you perform complex actions in the blink of an eye.
In summary, a mouse for MOBA or MMO can help you improve your productivity (and a lot) if you use it properly, and as long as you have invested the necessary time to configure it correctly.
