For those with some experience with my problems that didn't assume I was cramming my mouse crevices with cheeto dust between rage-pounding and honestly suggested some lesser known brand models on the merits of quality: thanks, I'll have to look into that.
TL;DR starts now:
I was going to respond directly to replies earlier but put it off and now there are a surprisingly high number of replies. I'd like to amend my original thoughts to address some of the recurring comments.
I don't abuse my electronics nor am I hard on them. They surely see higher than average use. I'm not even a key spammer and tend to obsess about not ever clicking or button pressing more than is necessary as part of my perceived precise and efficient control strategy. I have a friend I voice-chat with regularly and always notice him wood peckering his keys or mouse button, game depending. I am not a slob and do not eat over my keyboard/mouse. I wash my hands frequently, daily, and clean any build up off my mouse whenever I notice it. I used to sometimes pry all the keys off my keyboard and clean that too with rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs but its been a while. The one element of potential extra wear that comes to mind is that the air is very dusty where I live and I tend to open windows at night forgoing AC during long summers to avoid the wrath of exorbitant PG&E electricity bills. I do what I can to combat the dust but it's a losing battle living in an area ranked in the top 10 for America's worst air quality. Somehow, though, it doesn't seem like this would be a large contributing factor being that computer mice are mostly enclosed devices.
There has also been an update to the status of my Razer Naga. It is actually my second Naga as the first developed a couple stiff thumb-pad keys and a problem where the left click would execute a double click action with a single press. I utilized a RMA and was issued, what I have now, a refurbished product which I've had for a little over a year. I noticed within a few months that the left click required more pressure but it wasn't major and I tolerated it. Recently the degradation toward a stiffer left click has accelerated dramatically to the point of my original post. In the time between I found a youtube contributor proposing a fix for my problem but found that my refurbished Naga had the access screws glued in place. Had I a retail warranty I might have recourse through the manufacturer but it appears that warranty was cashed in with the first return and I received a 90-day covered refurb with glued access screws so it could never be fixed again.
The Naga video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIR3MfrD7Gc The uploader isn't much of a charmer but watching it you learn that the point of contact from the outer plastic to the internal left button mechanism is a plastic standoff (same material as the shell) that wears away with use as it appears other Naga owners have the same problem. Interestingly commenters to that video also can't remove the access screws.
I have a spare logitech mx518 that I'm using now. The left click is noticeably stiffer than the right. However it is, I would estimate, a 2x magnitude difference as opposed to the 30-50x magnitude difference exhibited by the Naga. I am somewhat sensitive to the left click no longer being a "hair trigger" because long duration use with the worn out naga was causing some wrist discomfort. The logitech mx518 is a replacement from an RMA 518 where the optical sensor died which replaced an mx510 where a sensitivity stage button went out (which was enough to require a new one as i was in mmo-mode at the time and utilizing the button being assigned to a keystroke) which replaced an RMA 510 whose optical sensor died. All that being said, I very much like the shape of the mx518. I think it's a great design. I just wish it had more buttons and a higher available polling rate. Granted high polling rate response time was only clearly noticeable on CRT monitors which I no longer have, I wish to incur as little local lag as I can.
Referring to the chief design feature of the Naga - all those buttons: I do not play any MMO's anymore but have always put effort into control customizations to ensure maximum effectiveness. To that end I have to recognize my right hand can handle a lot more than three, or even five, buttons in addition to moving the mouse. In any game with many commands, distributing them within the bounds of a comfortable workload to both hands is key. Most recently I had become accustomed to using the thumb pad for Starcraft II control groups 6-10 which I can't hit reliably without looking at the keyboard under a default configuration. Any statement of, "That's just more buttons than are needed" is erroneous coming from any gamer that plays the gamut of genres. The "necessity" of an alternate control scheme is relative to the advantage it provides.
I honestly don't believe the optical sensor in a mouse justifies a 70$+ pricetag that is being payed. What's left? All so much molded plastic and the buttons we interact with. A keyboard has more than 10x the buttons and plastic and they cost less than 10 dollars. Furthermore the higher dpi advertisements are all garbage anyway since unless you have a resolution of 6000 pixels across, the fine motor control of a trans-human cybernetic micro-transistor surgeon, or if the only game you play is Piroutte Master G-Force xTREME, you aren't going to get more precision from 5600dpi: you probably have less from a lowered windows sensitivity setting ignoring a portion of dpi to translate it into a significantly lower number of horizontal pixels. The tradition in gaming has been to increase precision from lower dpi while higher dpi gives improved speed. The only real important improvements added to mice from a tracking perspective, that are advertized, are the increased polling rates & on-the-fly dpi adjustment from a preferential perspective. However polling rate adjustment through various modifications/hacks has been around for years prior to it ever showing up as part of a driver feature so I have to wonder whether or not it really represents any increased investment in the optical sensor. And the few areas
As a gamer, part of a gaming consumer group, consuming gaming mice: I feel like there are not any honest 'gaming mice' from the manufacturers I have encountered as the mechanical aspect (button presses & clicks) is as cheaply constructed as any other and the actual manufacturing cost likely much the same as the cheapest optical mouse available.
don't care for the screen underneath and i whould like more on the fly controle over my dpi but the shape is just perfect for me. (in line with the famous microsoft intellipoint that people have mentioned in this tread)
