Ok, this blog is especially for you Cyro, well, kind of. From today (The 25th of May) I will be attempting to change my mouse DPI from 4K, to 1625 (closest increment to 1600 I have). The aim is to play a little every day and write up a blog detailing how I'm progressing every couple days or so (hopefully If I can be bothered with a battle report or something).
The reason for this change was suprisingly not to do with Starcraft 2 but to do with Dota 2:
I noticed I would occasionally miss the specific creep I wanted when last hitting or when things were getting heated I would miss ever so slightly with Clockwerk hook (actually screw that, I'm god damn terrible with Clockwerk's hook), because when I play Dota I absolutely hate letting my team down so I always felt terrible when things went wrong, even if what happened wasn't entirely my fault and the team played badly as a whole.
I really hope my hands adjust fast to the new DPI, I've clocked about 4 years of experience running at 4K so I understand it may take a while for muscle memory to adapt, but here's hoping!
So far: I've been using it for a couple hours and it feels really slow, I'm so used to being able to whip my cursor across the screen in a second so it's kind of odd to not have that, I'm guessing this feeling will go away in a bit with practice and time.
On May 25 2013 21:53 Capped wrote: I switched from 2.8k to 1.6k for SC2 / LoL
Took about a month before i felt any benefits but about 1-2 weeks before i was comfortable with it.
Good luck :D yours is alot bigger drop then mine.
Thanks! Yeah, it's quite a large drop and although I felt fine playing at that speed there were occasionally times when I was less accurate due to being tired/whatever, so it's change time!
You got this, man. The benefits far outweigh the consequence of not being able to whip your mouse across the screen. A suggestion: try not to let your muscles tense. As I dropped DPI to something more accurate I would subconsciously tense my mouse hand (as if to make it more accurate, the same as I might do with a higher DPI), and it made the process a lot slower.
GL, man.
Also, are you not able to type in 1600 DPI? That's weird. Increments in 25, huh...
I would suggest trying a lower DPI at some point - i found it a lot easier to adjust from ~450 to ~630-720 when i played on 1k for a day first (1.6k will seem unbearably fast if you played on 1k)
The benefits far outweigh the consequence of not being able to whip your mouse across the screen.
I can whip my mouse back and forth with higher speed and accuracy than the vast majority of even trained osu players using a third to half of that dpi, i'm sure it will be fine =P 1.6k is still high by competitive standards.
I would suggest trying a lower DPI at some point - i found it a lot easier to adjust from ~450 to ~630-720 when i played on 1k for a day first (1.6k will seem unbearably fast if you played on 1k)
The benefits far outweigh the consequence of not being able to whip your mouse across the screen.
I can whip my mouse back and forth with higher speed and accuracy than the vast majority of even trained osu players using a third to half of that dpi, i'm sure it will be fine =P 1.6k is still high by competitive standards.
Yeah, I chose 1.6k cause I dislike having to move my whole arm a lot.
I'd still say to go lower, like 1k. Moving your mouse under 5cm to cross the entire lengh of the screen is not "moving whole arm a lot" IMO.*
Even at 360dpi (i tried it for a joke earlier, Valar bet me i couldn't get over 88% on this map with a lot of work at that dpi and i did it first try) i lock my arm at the elbow, not the shoulder, so only move the bottom half. "Whole arm" is for FPS play for example, where it's a completely different feel to sens, and you can do full-mat swipes etc - not for interfacing with a 2d screen, that even with 540dpi you can cross in under a quarter of your mousemat.
I think it you work out grips and transition a little, you wouldn't have a problem with 1k - maybe easier if you get used to 1600 more, then try 800 and then increase it a bit, i'd still consider 1k quite high. What feels comfortable or wrong is VERY much down to grip - and there's a lot of subconscious habits developed by both low and high sens that take time and a bit of work, but once you start to get there on either side, it feels completely fine
*After re-reading, i feel really stubborn, oops. But i don't feel like you will see nearly as much benefit from switching from an ultraultrahigh to an almost-high sens, as switching to a strong medium.
Here's the vid, trying to win big money and big prizes with 360dpi on fullscreen 1920x1200;
Now i agree it's a lot of arm movement (below the elbow) which is why i am using 2x this sens (which is a bit high for my tastes but feels better) and asking you to try 3x (:
And of course 360dpi on 1920x1200 fullscreen is enough to significantly handicap performance, just like using >2.5k for example. It was done to see how well i could do and make a fun video, not to beat my best scores on the map.
Also to add to the "not moving whole arm" thing - 360dpi on 1920x1080 means to snap, side to side from absolute edges, it takes 13.33cm to do. 1000dpi means it takes 4.8cm.
In FPS, for a while, i used 30cm for a 180 turn - which is where you stop locking your elbow and really throw your arm about.
Weird, I use far less than 1600, hell, my mouse at work (Logitech Performance Mouse MX) has a max DPI of 1500, and my settings are still quite a bit lower than that. Pretty sure I'm using around 1200 dpi on my razer mamba at home. I could definitely see myself go even lower, I feel that precision becomes terrible already at 1600, but that's obviously a matter of getting used to it. I can't even imagine using 4000+, you literally traverse your whole screen by touching the mouse with your thumb.
This is the type of grip i default to now for "normal" dpi ranges. Can you post similar pics for what you use now? It's very difficult to communicate grips and ways of using a mouse with words or pictures, and a slight change can completely remake the feel of the mouse. You'll probably have to make pretty big changes to be more comfortable with a different range though, going up or down. As you see there i often use the base of palm contact point at bottom of thumb, but often i pull away from that a bit so that my only contact points are fingertips.
On May 27 2013 16:40 Tobberoth wrote: Weird, I use far less than 1600, hell, my mouse at work (Logitech Performance Mouse MX) has a max DPI of 1500, and my settings are still quite a bit lower than that. Pretty sure I'm using around 1200 dpi on my razer mamba at home. I could definitely see myself go even lower, I feel that precision becomes terrible already at 1600, but that's obviously a matter of getting used to it. I can't even imagine using 4000+, you literally traverse your whole screen by touching the mouse with your thumb.
I guess 1-2K + hours of practice helps you adjust to that sort of sensitivity, I found it helpful for OS UI browsing because all the important stuff is in the corner so I would just flick my hand to the bottom corner and click to get the start menu or desktop.
This is the type of grip i default to now for "normal" dpi ranges. Can you post similar pics for what you use now? It's very difficult to communicate grips and ways of using a mouse with words or pictures, and a slight change can completely remake the feel of the mouse. You'll probably have to make pretty big changes to be more comfortable with a different range though, going up or down. As you see there i often use the base of palm contact point at bottom of thumb, but often i pull away from that a bit so that my only contact points are fingertips.
I guess 1-2K + hours of practice helps you adjust to that sort of sensitivity, I found it helpful for OS UI browsing because all the important stuff is in the corner so I would just flick my hand to the bottom corner and click to get the start menu or desktop.
I did that too at almost any dpi level =P
I understand the uncomfortable feeling of not being able to reach things easily to you, but it's entirely down to what you are used to, and not because it's difficult to select something at a certain dpi for example. It fixes with time - one of the biggest reasons i would suggest making 1.2-1.5x the dpi change you want (like instead of 4k to 1.6k, go 4k to 1k and then back up to 1.6) is because it completely destroys those types of feelings, they are most of what makes changing sensitivity difficult
Also, throw the mouse around the screen a lot, just randomly force yourself to do loops of most of the length of the screen as fast as you can, it helps to adjust a lot
I guess 1-2K + hours of practice helps you adjust to that sort of sensitivity, I found it helpful for OS UI browsing because all the important stuff is in the corner so I would just flick my hand to the bottom corner and click to get the start menu or desktop.
I did that too at almost any dpi level =P
I understand the uncomfortable feeling of not being able to reach things easily to you, but it's entirely down to what you are used to, and not because it's difficult to select something at a certain dpi for example. It fixes with time - one of the biggest reasons i would suggest making 1.2-1.5x the dpi change you want (like instead of 4k to 1.6k, go 4k to 1k and then back up to 1.6) is because it completely destroys those types of feelings, they are most of what makes changing sensitivity difficult
Also, throw the mouse around the screen a lot, just randomly force yourself to do loops of most of the length of the screen as fast as you can, it helps to adjust a lot
Well I'm actually adjusting suprisingly quickly, check this twitch link to see what my mouse control looked like the day I changed.
I guess 1-2K + hours of practice helps you adjust to that sort of sensitivity, I found it helpful for OS UI browsing because all the important stuff is in the corner so I would just flick my hand to the bottom corner and click to get the start menu or desktop.
Well, I'm a programmer (a vim user at that) so I'm the kind to use the keyboard a ton... windows button rather than pointing to the start menu button (hell, windows 8 will make people realize this is the right way soon enough), windows key + d to Desktop, etc.
I guess 1-2K + hours of practice helps you adjust to that sort of sensitivity, I found it helpful for OS UI browsing because all the important stuff is in the corner so I would just flick my hand to the bottom corner and click to get the start menu or desktop.
Well, I'm a programmer (a vim user at that) so I'm the kind to use the keyboard a ton... windows button rather than pointing to the start menu button (hell, windows 8 will make people realize this is the right way soon enough), windows key + d to Desktop, etc.
I'm generally a mac user and spotlight is at the top right, so I would flick my mouse up and to the right and click then just type what I wanted to find, imagine it like a keyboard command you can do in one movement.
Now with windows I flick my mouse to the bottom right in the same way for desktop and bottom left for start, everything else like new tabs, new windows, closing stuff etc. is all done with the keyboard.
This is the type of grip i default to now for "normal" dpi ranges. Can you post similar pics for what you use now? It's very difficult to communicate grips and ways of using a mouse with words or pictures, and a slight change can completely remake the feel of the mouse. You'll probably have to make pretty big changes to be more comfortable with a different range though, going up or down. As you see there i often use the base of palm contact point at bottom of thumb, but often i pull away from that a bit so that my only contact points are fingertips.
I think my grip is similar, usually my only contact points are the fingertips:
Think i've ran like 400 dpi for all my life, like 30cm/360 in like every game ever. Come from an FPS background however and accuracy is just so much better with a very low sens.
On May 27 2013 23:59 unkkz wrote: Think i've ran like 400 dpi for all my life, like 30cm/360 in like every game ever. Come from an FPS background however and accuracy is just so much better with a very low sens.
I actually surprisingly come from a FPS background, I played a bit of CS 1.6 at the equivalent of a PC bang when I was younger and most of my gaming was spent on Quake 3 Arena, only very occasionally did I get to play Red Alert 2 at my friends house! :D
I chose 4K dpi because I was under the impression quicker is better.
Edit: lol Red Alert 2 not 3, 3 wasn't anywhere near out yet.
Lol i used to play FPS at 30cm/180.. was too damn low, but fun :D I got into the habit of keeping mouse about 7/10'ths of the way to the right of my pad, and if a turn was more than 50-60 degrees right, i would just spin left
I've got an FPVOD of playing with 720dpi if you want, no handcam though. ~diamond level zerg because no idea what to do strategy wise but mechanically i think it was pretty good - i'm just getting into playing HOTS
On May 28 2013 03:10 Cyro wrote: Lol i used to play FPS at 30cm/180.. was too damn low, but fun :D I got into the habit of keeping mouse about 7/10'ths of the way to the right of my pad, and if a turn was more than 50-60 degrees right, i would just spin left
I've got an FPVOD of playing with 720dpi if you want, no handcam though. ~diamond level zerg because no idea what to do strategy wise but mechanically i think it was pretty good - i'm just getting into playing HOTS
I actually keep my mouse about 7/10ths of the way to the left of my bad out of habit. And nahh I don't need the vod, you're Z eww, and 720 is way too low, I'm always gonna want my mouse slightly fast.
fast is entirely subjective man (and highly dependant on what you played with recently), 720 is fast as shit for me (sacrificing accuracy to cross the screen super easily)
And it's offrace, i played like 10 1v1's with zerg ever =P But this one game i streamed out of nowhere looked surprisingly good to me in some ways
I mean to me, to Valar, several others (i'd guess wolfwood) 1.6k is extremely high. All three of us use dpi equivalent to 720-750 on 1920 width screen. That's what i want you to understand, much of the benefits come from being lower than it, it's not a low or even a med sensitivity but actually still quite high - it's just your 4k was omgwtfareyoudoinghigh before so it might take some adjustment time (i find this to be much faster if you play mouse intensive stuff like osu with relax (noclick) mod)
I'd rather see you be really amazed, than just kinda "oh, this is better" :D
On May 27 2013 23:59 unkkz wrote: Think i've ran like 400 dpi for all my life, like 30cm/360 in like every game ever. Come from an FPS background however and accuracy is just so much better with a very low sens.
I actually surprisingly come from a FPS background, I played a bit of CS 1.6 at the equivalent of a PC bang when I was younger and most of my gaming was spent on Quake 3 Arena, only very occasionally did I get to play Red Alert 2 at my friends house! :D
I chose 4K dpi because I was under the impression quicker is better.
Edit: lol Red Alert 2 not 3, 3 wasn't anywhere near out yet.
It's really weird how that works out, some people have the impression that faster is better, others that slower is better. On consoles, it's almost always agreed that the higher sensitivity you can deal with, the better, since you limit yourself by using a low sens (because you can't do anything other than jam the joystick when you want to turn), but among my peers during CS 1.5 etc, everyone agreed that you were supposed to go as low as you could deal with (and most CS pros who released their console settings had very low sens). The sweet spot was basically to be able to turn 180 in one big swoop of the mouse, but the sensitivity should be so low that extremely precise movement could be done very fast to be able to twitchshoot with the AWP (and by that I don't mean some form of quake running around corners shooting, I'm talking about scoping over a semi-large area and be able to shoot targets extremely fast regardless of their entrypoint in your field of view). Later though, I've heard of a lot of people who played CS around the same time and used far higher sensitivity.
Obviously, one will always be biased by having good players around them who advocate one or the other... but I personally always felt like I improved more steadily by lowering the sensitivity than raising it.
On May 27 2013 23:59 unkkz wrote: Think i've ran like 400 dpi for all my life, like 30cm/360 in like every game ever. Come from an FPS background however and accuracy is just so much better with a very low sens.
I actually surprisingly come from a FPS background, I played a bit of CS 1.6 at the equivalent of a PC bang when I was younger and most of my gaming was spent on Quake 3 Arena, only very occasionally did I get to play Red Alert 2 at my friends house! :D
I chose 4K dpi because I was under the impression quicker is better.
Edit: lol Red Alert 2 not 3, 3 wasn't anywhere near out yet.
It's really weird how that works out, some people have the impression that faster is better, others that slower is better. On consoles, it's almost always agreed that the higher sensitivity you can deal with, the better, since you limit yourself by using a low sens (because you can't do anything other than jam the joystick when you want to turn), but among my peers during CS 1.5 etc, everyone agreed that you were supposed to go as low as you could deal with (and most CS pros who released their console settings had very low sens). The sweet spot was basically to be able to turn 180 in one big swoop of the mouse, but the sensitivity should be so low that extremely precise movement could be done very fast to be able to twitchshoot with the AWP (and by that I don't mean some form of quake running around corners shooting, I'm talking about scoping over a semi-large area and be able to shoot targets extremely fast regardless of their entrypoint in your field of view). Later though, I've heard of a lot of people who played CS around the same time and used far higher sensitivity.
Obviously, one will always be biased by having good players around them who advocate one or the other... but I personally always felt like I improved more steadily by lowering the sensitivity than raising it.
I was actually surprisingly good at twitch AWP at 4k, I could beat most people I knew in a 1v2 or sometimes 1v3 situation if I had AWP, I did have sensitivty on 3 though in game.
Here's some 720dpi ponies if you still doubt screen snapping;
I messed up the ending though D:
I think you should really play osu or something, it helps a lot with getting used to a different sens and actually provides a way to compare and see improvements
On May 25 2013 21:13 Targe wrote: Ok, this blog is especially for you Cyro, well, kind of. From today (The 25th of May) I will be attempting to change my mouse DPI from 4K, to 1625 (closest increment to 1600 I have). The aim is to play a little every day and write up a blog detailing how I'm progressing every couple days or so (hopefully If I can be bothered with a battle report or something).
The reason for this change was suprisingly not to do with Starcraft 2 but to do with Dota 2:
I noticed I would occasionally miss the specific creep I wanted when last hitting or when things were getting heated I would miss ever so slightly with Clockwerk hook (actually screw that, I'm god damn terrible with Clockwerk's hook), because when I play Dota I absolutely hate letting my team down so I always felt terrible when things went wrong, even if what happened wasn't entirely my fault and the team played badly as a whole.
I really hope my hands adjust fast to the new DPI, I've clocked about 4 years of experience running at 4K so I understand it may take a while for muscle memory to adapt, but here's hoping!
So far: I've been using it for a couple hours and it feels really slow, I'm so used to being able to whip my cursor across the screen in a second so it's kind of odd to not have that, I'm guessing this feeling will go away in a bit with practice and time.
Hooray!
Targe out for now.
I used to play at 3k dpi and I'd never be super accurate but I thought it was okay until I switched down to 1.8ish then I realised how much more accurate I got
I think you should really play osu or something, it helps a lot with getting used to a different sens and actually provides a way to compare and see improvements
Well my mouse control is nothing like that, no where near. I'll try out osu then later today and I'll see how it goes.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tN7dsFe.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LiuJizR.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/xlE9GRu.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/btWeQd1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/PmAmBHi.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WPtKto6.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wjQyoSB.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vrwUvTx.jpg)
