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There are some other highly important factors you should consider when adjusting your mouse. These items might not seem that important until one day you try it out. Then you find that you cannot play without it. More importantly having an understanding of these settings allow you change your mouse to exactly the same settings on a different computer as the one you have at home (minus the overclocking on the USB port (aka Polling)).
- A note before these suggestions. The suggestions, while are important, you must remember that your computer Frame Rate in SCII is more important. If you cannot achieve a decent frame rate and the game skips these suggestions will not be very beneficial and you should probably buy a new PC and or Upgrade your old one. Remember that a computer runs as fast as its slowest part and that these suggestions are solid if and only if you are getting a good amount of frames.
- Fiddling with your hardware is extremely beneficial for most people ...but... do not change your settings every few days thinking it will help you. Change your settings to how you want it "ONCE", that has a good feel and work with it. If after a few weeks you are still dissatisfied then adjust some more. Too many people constantly change there settings trying to find the perfect response and it ends up hurting them because they never get adjusted to the new settings. When you make adjustments, based upon my experience, it takes about 3 days to feel comfortable and about two weeks to a month to get a solid feel. The longer you run with identical settings the better your precision, accuracy, and hand speed will develop.
These changes will not make you a better gamer. However they can improve your game play dramatically once you become adjusted to the settings. I am currently between 2000-2100 on the ladder, as I am not exactly the top of the ladder I am quickly reaching there. Without these settings however I would literally lose my mind trying to use my mouse. I have friends that come over and once in a while use my computer and my mouse feels like it is floating on air but at the same time is perfectly responsive and extremely precise.
One other note. These are the accumulation of little things that was shown to me and or discovered over the last 10 years of playing Starcraft. I have ordered these in importance and will constantly be updating the suggestions to provide more information and/or add new ones.
1. Remove Mouse Acceleration. Mouse Acceleration is turned on by default from windows. While you can adjust your mouse settings in control panel and remove mouse acceleration from your mouse program settings, mouse acceleration might possibly still exist.
This is by far the most important of the suggestions. Mouse acceleration is inherently random (may not feel like it but I promise you it is). Because of the randomness you cannot achieve proper precision. Changing this will improve your precision dramatically.
I will grab some more information about how to find out if you have mouse acceleration and remove it in a few hours.
2. Cleanliness. No doubt you have heard the expression Cleanliness is next to godliness. Everything listed above is useless if you do not clean your gear. Gunk builds up overtime underneath your mouse as well as becomes ingrained into the groves of your mouse pad no matter how smooth it may be.
If you play every day I would recommend cleaning your Mouse Pad 2 to 3 times a week (Even by simply rubbing your hand rapidly over your mouse pad can remove build up) and clean your mouse once every two weeks (Unless you have greasy fingers). Wash your hands before you use your mouse and keyboard and if you sit down for a few hours and your hands sweat then wash them later on as well. We all know that Starcraft gamers are never as clean as they should be.
Watch some of the matches during the GSL (Boxer Ro 64) you will see some gamers cleaning their gear before they start.
The Mouse Pad Cleaning assumes you are using either a hard surface or glass mouse pad. If you are using a Cloth Mouse Pad ignore the cleaning of mouse pad.
3. Reducing your resolution in Starcraft 2 to achieve more hertz. 120 hz > 75 hz > 60 hz. I reduced my resolution down to get 75hz from my monitor, (Was tired of getting headaches) this made my mini-map larger and more viewable as well as my mouse becoming 3x-4x more responsive. My frames were still above 60 in both settings.
I will explain in more detail about why this is so important later. Note that some monitors do not support above 60 hz.
4. Mouse Pad. Your Mouse Pad is just as if not more important than your mouse. Many people still do not realize this fact. The mouse pad creates a relatively frictionless surface or a consistent throughout friction surface. Which allows your mouse hand to eventually intuitively know where to move with 100% accuracy every time.
5. Overclocking your USB port between 250-1000hz. "The reason that you want to do this is so that your mouse movements are much more fluid, and this is extremely important for gaming. The default polling rate for a USB mouse is 125 hz. USB Mouserate Switcher is a utility for Windows XP/2k3 (an older beta version works in Windows 2000) that enables the USB port to poll at 250, 500, or 1000 hz. This makes a difference for high-end optical mice such as the Logitech MX series and the Razor Diamondback. There are of course draw backs, I killed a Logitech webcam using this so be careful and think about what you have attached prior to doing this. Am I 100% positive this killed it? No, but it worked prior to increasing the polling rate, not afterwards, you do the math." Quoted
http://www.overclock.net/faqs/73418-how-improve-mouse-response-accuracy-changing.html <-- Links inside no longer work will fix this later.
***Always read completely before attempting this. If you restart and your mouse does not work simply plug your mouse into a different USB port and reread the tutorial to make sure you did not do anything wrong, then try again***
Windows 7 requires some additional things to overclock will reedit later with more information but I do remember you need a Driver Signer.
6. Keyboard Ghosting. Will edit later (It becomes important when cycling through your hotkeys)
-edit- Going to make some updates on this post as I grab some more information.
Considering to expand this to a general guideline of how to setup your computer/mouse/keyboard to achieve proper responsiveness in all areas.
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Seems a bit over the top tbh.
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On November 02 2010 23:33 Widar wrote:
Seems a bit over the top tbh.
It may seem like it at first but once you have done this for the first time you can never go back. Any Pro-Gamer from CS or other FPS always do this.
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What exactly did you lower your res to?
I have lag when I stream with windowed mode so I would like to find ways to change that...
And mouse acceleration is a given. I make sure my IRL friends NEVER have it on. That's a carry-over from SC1.
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On November 02 2010 23:36 Sanasante wrote:It may seem like it at first but once you have done this for the first time you can never go back. Any Pro-Gamer from CS or other FPS always do this.
just to let you know some mice simply cannot handle 1000hz. popular cs mice such as IME 3.0 will only go to -500- hz otherwise you risk damaging your mouse
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How do you Overclock a USB port? And what exactly does that do?
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Let me grab more information so I can get some detailed tutorials on how to do this. I do not want anyone breaking their mouse. I have all the programs on my computer because i've been doing it for years.
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On November 02 2010 23:42 Sanasante wrote:
Let me grab more information so I can get some detailed tutorials on how to do this. I do not want anyone breaking their mouse. I have all the programs on my computer because i've been doing it for years.
there's programs like usbrate.. but it's gonna differ depending on OS. i know windows 7 has a special way of changing your USB polling rate
also the difference between 500hz and 1000hz is really negligible (1ms). most pro CS players use 500hz simply because it is more consistent whereas 1000hz will fluctuate & reduce the lifetime of your mouse.
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I have the feeling that some people try to blame problems in their gameplay on the hardware they are using.
All those changes might increase your APM by roughly... 1-2 actions per minute, mostly because you misclicked somewhere and moved your army to the enemy instead of focus-fired the unit you wanted to hit and then struggle to undo the damage.
It might be good for FPS games, but you know what... SC2 is no FPS, precision is far more important than speed.
If you really, really want to do this, well, do it, but it won't make you a better player (and i highly recommend _not_ fiddling with hardware and overclock anything...)
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Get a mouse bungee. They're awesome.
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If only I had a nickel for everytime I've lost a game and thought to myself "Man, if only I overclocked my USB ports I would have HAD that one!"
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United States22883 Posts
On November 02 2010 23:46 Morfildur wrote:
I have the feeling that some people try to blame problems in their gameplay on the hardware they are using.
All those changes might increase your APM by roughly... 1-2 actions per minute, mostly because you misclicked somewhere and moved your army to the enemy instead of focus-fired the unit you wanted to hit and then struggle to undo the damage.
It might be good for FPS games, but you know what... SC2 is no FPS, precision is far more important than speed.
If you really, really want to do this, well, do it, but it won't make you a better player (and i highly recommend _not_ fiddling with hardware and overclock anything...)
These are specifically for precision. Still, SC2 requires a lot less of it than an FPS game so I don't think overclocking a mouse will matter much.
Dropping the resolution is just good practice for any game you're thinking of playing competitively. Much better FPS and the more you can dumb things down, the easier visual cues are to process.
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On November 02 2010 23:49 Tenks wrote:
If only I had a nickel for everytime I've lost a game and thought to myself "Man, if only I overclocked my USB ports I would have HAD that one!"
Then you would still be broke? 
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This will not make the difference between winning and losing. However adjusting to and then playing with a mouse that is more responsive will overtime show a APM increase as well as much better micro and overall will make your game play more enjoyable.
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On November 02 2010 23:49 Tenks wrote:
If only I had a nickel for everytime I've lost a game and thought to myself "Man, if only I overclocked my USB ports I would have HAD that one!"
Lol my thoughts exactly. But I guess to some people, this will be useful so thanks a lot for the effort, OP!
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Lowering your resolution on anything but a CRT is counter productive because of the loss of visual clarity from straying away from a native resolution. A boost in refresh rate is always good but 75hz from 60hz would have little difference compared to the 120hz most competitive gamers play at. It is more likely your mouse became more responsive due to the fps boost of lowering your resolution?
As far as mouse accel goes you can get rid of it in XP by turning off the enhanced pointer precision. In counter strike this wouldn't remove it completely which is why people tell each other to get the CPL fix, turn it off in setpoint, or change the registry. In CS:S there are also commands like -noaccel to turn it off.
It sounds like op should get a samsung/viewsonic 120hz monitor or get a CRT, after that you won't need to overclock usb ports, lower your resolution, or worry about mouse responsiveness or ghosting.
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The links to the software in your link are dead 
I'd like to try this.
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jeez everyones such a downer xD don't tell me you have NEVER tried to improve hardware or gear for any sport or really anything for that matter. Even when I was young I would study harder if I got a new pen or pencil (yes I'm a nerd ^^). Or when you get a new racket, club, or shoes. It's more of a psychological thing. Obviously, PRACTICING is a given and OP never said these things will make you a pro, I think it's a neat way to optimize everything and give you a little nice confidence boost and drive you more to practicing. It's fun (and nerdy) to talk about things like this ^^ seriously does every single post here revolutionize your game? No, it's just fun browsing threads like this and having nerdy conversations everyone can enjoy and comment on ^^
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I have the feeling that many of the naysayers do so simply because they are not used to tweaks like these. I mean, hell. If disabling mouse acceleration is considered 'fiddling' I find it hard to believe you've ever changed *any* setting on a PC.
Let me put it this way. If these tweaks, 5 minutes of effort at most, save you one game where you otherwise would have had a fatal misclick or micro screwup, they were worth it. The mousepad and disabling acceleration are even worth it anyway, because of the increased level of comfort you can play at (and all the strain injury that can prevent).
All the stories about these tweaks making you an instant pro are, ironically, only uttered and subsequently shot down by those opposing these tweaks, not the ones actually using them.
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On November 02 2010 23:46 Morfildur wrote:
I have the feeling that some people try to blame problems in their gameplay on the hardware they are using.
All those changes might increase your APM by roughly... 1-2 actions per minute, mostly because you misclicked somewhere and moved your army to the enemy instead of focus-fired the unit you wanted to hit and then struggle to undo the damage.
It might be good for FPS games, but you know what... SC2 is no FPS, precision is far more important than speed.
If you really, really want to do this, well, do it, but it won't make you a better player (and i highly recommend _not_ fiddling with hardware and overclock anything...)
I agree man. Some people saying things like playing with mouse acceleration means you can never be pro or stuff like this seem ridiculous. Maybe this can be applied to some extend for FPS games but not here.
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EPT
