World of Warcraft: Fan Fiction

A slightly off beat review on the SteelSeries Warcraft Mouse (also known as the WoW Mouse) today as I felt the need to share my views on this very different piece of hardware.

Firstly I suppose I should give a bit of background as to why I even wanted this device; I play a Paladin healer in WoW and have slowly evolved my healing from targeting then pressing a button to heal to using HealBot to manage my healing needs. I used that particular addon for over a year and found it to be perfect for my needs and wouldn't of considered not using it. However with the introduction of the WoW Mouse that has thrown it all out of the window; once installed the main idea would be to bind my new mouse buttons to functions within HealBot therefore allowing me a very easy and quick way to set up the things I want to be able to press during a raid.

Unfortunately I came across several problems, Healbot will only recognise the left, right, middle and two side buttons, the others it will not detect. I searched high and low on the internet to find an answer, one site advised that you set the profiling software (that comes with the mouse) to "in game mode" and ensure all the key binds are clear, then it will detect it. Now that is true if you use Warcraft's own interface to bind your keys however in this situation I am trying to use HealBot to bind them. So it was back to the drawing board to see what else I could do and after several hours of tinkering the only solution I could find was to stop using HealBot and find something else.

The removal of that addon did not come easy to me but I was desperate to get this mouse working so I decided to install Grid which I have seen many other healers use and another addon called Clique now this combination seemed to work for a while after getting it all setup however once again the dammed extra buttons wouldn't work.


Eventually I gave up and stuck with my new addons but just changed the way I did things, I ended up making macro's for all the spells I wanted to use on the mouse and putting them on my 1st and 2nd action bars. Then using the Mouse's software I programmed each button to the appropriate action bar button which also took some doing as I use Bartender so I had to use its own key binding options to bind the second bar to the buttons.

This took far too much time for my liking but I can honestly say that with some tinkering and patience you will get it to perform exactly how you want it to. I now have all my key's (except one and that was due to an unfortuante accident with Divine Intervention in the middle of Halls of Reflection which I will never live down) bound to spells and to be honest I am a bit more effiecient now at healing as well.

The reason that I feel better know than before is mainly due to the fact I had to make macros for all my spells which intern lead to me programming the macros to cast other spells prior to the heals such as: casting Divine Illumination before Holy Light allows be to conserve more mana, casting Divine Favor before Holy Shock ensures that I get a critical hit and therefore an instant Flash of Light.

Here are the macros that I use for my mouse:
Beacon of Light
 #showtooltip Beacon of Light
/cast [target=mouseover] [ ] [target=player] Beacon of Light

Flash of Light
#showtooltip Flash of Light
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use 13
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script UIFrameErrors:Clear()
/cast [target=mouseover] [ ] [target=player] Flash of Light

Holy Light
 #showtooltip Holy Light
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use Divine Illumination
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script UIFrameErrors:Clear()
/cast [target=mouseover] [ ] [target=player] Holy Light

Holy Shock
#showtooltip Holy Shock
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use Divine Favor
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script UIFrameErrors:Clear()
/cast [target=mouseover] [ ] [target=player] Holy Shock

Hand of Sacrifice
 #showtooltip Hand of Sacrifice
/cast [target=mouseover] [ ] [target=player] Hand of Sacrifice

Hand of Salvation
#showtooltip Hand of Salvation
/cast [target=mouseover] [ ] [target=player] Hand of Salvation

Judgement of Light
/targetenemy [noharm][dead]
/cast [harm]Judgement of Light

Lay on Hands
 #showtooltip Lay on Hands
/cast [target=mouseover] [ ] [target=player] Lay on Hands

Sacred Shield
 #showtooltip Sacred Shield2
/cast [target=mouseover] [ ] [target=player] Sacred Shield

I am sure there are still some bits that I could add to the macros to make them even better but I took the stance of getting to know them first as I have never written any before and then I will add/amend later on. If anyone has any advice please feel free to comment.

So all in all an expensive piece of kit that will leave you wanting more on first impressions but given sometime and a lot of reading and hard work you will get everything you want out of this device.