Will using a gaming mouse get you banned?

My mouse is going south and I need to replace it but I noticed the gaming mice basically use macros. Will I get banned?

I don't want to get banned over a new mouse. Not worth it.

That's what I thought but better safe than sorry.

I'm not sure I 'get' the question...

GGG aren't going to check which mouse you own and ban you if it's a gaming mouse, nor will a gaming mouse abruptly start automating gameplay without your knowledge. If you choose to use its software to create a flask macro or something, then yes - you'd get banned for that.

No, I think you do get the question. So, I have never used a mouse with more than 4 buttons. Which macros that come with the mouse are bannable? I don't want to program the mouse to get me banned.

What I'm not understanding is what is and isn't legal.

I been using a gaming mouse for years without a problem. As long you setup the buttons on the mouse to do only one action per key press then you are fine. You wont have a problem as long you follow this simple rule. I'll use a Razor Naga mouse as a sample so you can understand better.


Player press button 12 Once = A single action is completed Once (Allowed)

Player press button 12 Once = Multiple actions is completed for you (NOT Allowed)

I've created a guide pertaining to macros and what is allowed which you can find a link to in my signature. The tl;dr is that GGG don't like them, but are willing to make exceptions for ones which are particularly simple and don't confer an advantage over those not using them.

So really my advice would be that it's not a problem to own a gaming mouse, but when playing Path of Exile it'd be best to mostly use it as a basic mouse. Using the mouse's extra buttons instead of the keyboard (key rebinding, basically) is fine if you're interested in doing so.


tl;dr: I probably wouldn't buy a gaming mouse for Path of Exile, but don't go out and buy a different mouse for the game, either. Macros mostly aren't allowed, but a few basic ones are.

Thanks guys! Good advice all around.

I see why macros are polices and rightly so. But how is anyone going to be able to tell if someone is using banned macros? Couldn't this be unbalanced in PVP, one honest player Vs one dishonest ?

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Peacheyd wrote:

But how is anyone going to be able to tell if someone is using banned macros?

Let's take the example of a flask macro which pops all five for the sake of simplicity.

It's trivial for GGG to ~20 employees to mash the five buttons on their keyboard at the same time for an hour and record the discrepancy between client-side input detection per flask, then use a macro themselves and again time the delay between each input being recognised.

The company's policy exists for two reasons that I can think of. The first is fairness, and the second is anti-botting efforts. When macros partially automate gameplay, certain forms of both client-side and server-side anti-cheating tools can pick up on this and flag an account. If such macros are permitted it frustrates efforts to combat bots, as the company has to spend longer sorting through false positives. If they're not allowed, GGG knows everyone flagged broke the rules.

You'll never be able to completely stamp out cheaters and undo any unfair advantages they might get. What you can do is create "good enough" detection which means their account will be flagged when they're cheating, and then later banned. The delay exists so that they don't know when the company caught them cheating, so they can't modify their macros / bots accordingly. So-called "banwaves" are a common approach for precisely this reason.