I'm a returning player (coming back after about a year or two), and now I'm seriously dedicated to getting better. I've been playing for maybe a day or two, and realized that I'm only single tapping (only alternating on doubles/triples.) It's also really stamina-draining to my left hand, at least for me.

I looked online for a little while and realized that there were many different playstyles, and Full Alternate looked the most appealing to me. So, where and how should I start?

All help is appreciated.

play alt maps (maps that are ~95-160bpm depending on SR and use 1/4th aka stream rhythms)
I learned full alt in an afternoon when I was like rank ~600k and mastered it after about a week. all I did was play the maps I normally played (farm maps cus I was 600k lolol) + a few alt maps sprinkled into every session and I learned it naturally

To any 7 digits (or anyone) reading this thread I recommend learning how to alt (full or partial, both are good) immediately, a very large amount of top players(but not ALL)/this games playerbase full alts for a reason.

I took a peep at your rank and quickly grabbed a few alt maps (or, the closest things to an 'alt map' at your level) around the sr people your rank typically play. This isn't an exhaustive list but it should help, you shouldn't be going for FC's on the maps instead go for passes and than upgrade those passes to B's, and than A's. Here's the maps:

beatmapsets/1772945#osu/3832325
beatmapsets/1323527#osu/2937747
beatmapsets/1934009#osu/3996356
beatmapsets/967347#osu/2024490
beatmapsets/2025917#osu/4245380
beatmapsets/1184848#osu/2469839

oh right as I was about to post this I had one last tip: make sure you are ALWAYS alting, even if you're playing a map outside of your skill range with alt but doable with singletapping; you're gonna alt it anyway. Using alt 80% of the time and singletap 20% of the time is almost as effective as nothing at all. Make sure you are EXCLUSIVELY alting in your playsessions

these are tips that worked for me and other friends I gave them to, and these maps should be decent practice.

I was full alternating when I started the game cuz I figured there were two keys to press. It is very efficient way of tapping imo since you can stream and hit jumps with kind of the same tapping. Your acc might be pretty bad at first but practice make perfect

Before I give some advice I want to respond a bit to RealDeathmatch:

RealDeathmatch wrote:

a very large amount of top players(but not ALL)/this games playerbase full alts for a reason.

Is this a typo? Because if you meant "alts" and not "full alts" then yeah everyone alts to some extent, not just top players but everyone, because if you don't you get hard-capped at whatever bpm you can singletap.

But if not, I don't think this is true. The only top player that I know of that full-alts literally everything is gnahus, I feel like most of them will singletap low bpm stuff and semi-alt when the bpm becomes too high. If this wasn't a typo and you know any more top players that full-alt can you list them, otherwise this just sounds like misinformation to me.

In fact, I checked the current top 10 (not very thouroughly) and the only gnahus plays full-alt. I saw that Chicony alts slow sections, but he starts all bursts and streams on the same finger, so not full-alt.

It's also worth noting that out off all of these players gnahus is simultaneously the only one that starts bursts/streams on either finger and doesn't specialise in speed. As someone who full-alts I personally find speed (and tapping in general) my worst skillset out of the conventional skillsets. Yeah I know it's a sample size of 11 but this might show that if you full alt you might struggle with tapping compared to someone that doesn't.

RealDeathmatch wrote:

oh right as I was about to post this I had one last tip: make sure you are ALWAYS alting, even if you're playing a map outside of your skill range with alt but doable with singletapping; you're gonna alt it anyway. Using alt 80% of the time and singletap 20% of the time is almost as effective as nothing at all. Make sure you are EXCLUSIVELY alting in your playsessions

I don't really agree with this, if you can alt you can alt, it doesn't matter if you singletap some things or not. Maybe if you're learning for the first time you want to alt on literally everything including slow patterns to get muscle memory, but singletapping occasionally is probably not gonna hurt your progress much, and after you get the hang of it it won't really matter whether you decide to exclusively alt or singletap while only alting high bpm stuff.



As for my advice, I wouldn't even suggest playing alt maps or whatever, just force yourself to alt on 1 star maps, then when you can do that, slowly go to harder and harder maps until you eventually work your way to your current skill level. You might find that alting doubles/triples are going to be really difficult in specific, if they're too hard you can try starting them all on the same finger or drilling the muscle memory by just tapping out patterns on your table or leg or something.

As a player that had actually started by single-tapping -> (now) full alternate / sometimes a bit of hybrid too,
I learned through fully alternating through normal maps. What maps to play might matter considering what you're trying to improve on is consistency on your fingers, some people prefer alt maps / stream maps while others can grasp with just any types of map. My own experience is that just play how you'd play normally except with fully alternating tapping style, similar to how people switch from mouse to tablet. While most people know how to hold a pen and draw circles ... duh, it's still quite hard to get used to the area and other stuffs set by the configurations of the tablet, And it applies to here also since consistency is the key ingridient for this to work.

My suggestion are to play some of the warmup maps that you have or any maps lower than what you are currently playing to give yourself some room to get improved while you are trying to learn full alternate. Think of it as switching styles as you having a handicap, essencially you're lower ranked than you are currently because of that handicap, thus it's better to play lower star rating maps rather than straight jumping into hard maps.

And similar to...

RealDeathmatch wrote:

make sure you are ALWAYS alting, even if you're playing a map outside of your skill range with alt but doable with singletapping; you're gonna alt it anyway.

This is very important because if you're not alting fully it's like playing a stream map. nothing is going to improve from intuitive gameplay, Yyu really need to focus so that you're fully alting throguht the entire map.
Visualize it using the keystrokes counter, if you can do around >70% of fully alternating the entire map, it's more likely then you are improving or already good at alternating.

Sometimes it's understandable for your fingers to just jump to the most comfortable finger for the first note (object) after a burst or a stream of the map, so just make sure while you are learning that you feel comfortable since you're entire goal from the start is not to exert strain like singletapping would.

"Is this a typo? Because if you meant "alts" and not "full alts" then yeah everyone alts to some extent, not just top players but everyone, because if you don't you get hard-capped at whatever bpm you can singletap.

But if not, I don't think this is true. The only top player that I know of that full-alts literally everything is gnahus, I feel like most of them will singletap low bpm stuff and semi-alt when the bpm becomes too high. If this wasn't a typo and you know any more top players that full-alt can you list them, otherwise this just sounds like misinformation to me.

In fact, I checked the current top 10 (not very thouroughly) and the only gnahus plays full-alt. I saw that Chicony alts slow sections, but he starts all bursts and streams on the same finger, so not full-alt." (This is quoting DM FOR MUTUAL)


you're acting like to be considered an alt player you have to have to alt EVERY. SINGLE. NOTE. Without fail, I'd even say the full alt definition isn't this strict, like yes of COURSE alt players will singletap extremely slow gameplay, and of course they will start streams on the same finger, but for most good players 95% of maps in their skill range they will be alting for most of said map. Again, there are exceptions (singletap demons like akolibed xooty etc) but it's just a general note that a lot of good players alt


about the whole speed thing, speed I consider to be my best (mechanical) skill and I full alt, now obviously you're 5.5k and I'm 105k (but a deranker, but I deserve at MOST 30k, but more likely 50/60k) but I still beg to differ, you only checked the top 10. I'm sure if you ran a poll among all 4/3 digits a majority of them would say they alt, at least to some extent.

also telling someone that wants to learn how to alt to avoid alt maps so smart lol...

top players list for u: (i also did not doa through check I'm sure theres more)
lifeline seems to alt on very high bpm stuff
whitecat
mathi
zylice (also one of the best speed players)
worst hr player alts a lot but not all maps from what i saw

if u want more ill look for more i just took like 5 minutes out of my day to quickly compile a very short list of people who seemingly alt

Btw to quote in the top right corner of a post/reply there should be a button that says "Quote post for reply", just click that and you can get really nice quotes

RealDeathmatch wrote:

you're acting like to be considered an alt player you have to have to alt EVERY. SINGLE. NOTE. Without fail, I'd even say the full alt definition isn't this strict, like yes of COURSE alt players will singletap extremely slow gameplay, and of course they will start streams on the same finger,

I'm just guessing but I think we're operating on different definitions of what "full-alt" means.

I'll give my definitions:

Full-alt: A style of alternating where you alternate every single note, regardless of the pattern.

Semi-alt: A style of alternating where you don't alternate every single note, eg. you start all bursts and streams on the same finger.

I'm guessing yours are somewhere along these lines:

Full-alt: Alternating all the time for the most part.

Semi-alt: Alternating some of the time, maybe you singletap some maps.

If I'm right, then the difference between our two definitions is that I'm talking about how you specifically alt when you do alt, and you're talking about how often you alt. If I'm wrong please clarify.

Under my definitions, out of the top 10 only gnahus full-alts, and they also seem to full-alt lower bpm patterns that can be easily singletapped. Chicony seems to similarly alt all the time, but only plays semi-alt because he starts all bursts and streams on the same finger. I also saw that nyanpotato played semi-alt in every replay I checked even for maps that players like mrekk might singletap, but I didn't watch a replay of him not playing some super high bpm dt map to confirm whether he alts all the time or just with dt.

Also, I've never really thought about what specifically makes an "alt player". I always just thought that an alt player was someone who alts everything they can all the time (doesn't matter whether they full-alt or semi-alt, those are both alt), while a singletapper would singletap everything that they were able to/were comfortable with and switch to alt for high bpms. Of course this isn't binary but instead a spectrum of at what point do you switch to alting, and idk where exactly in this spectrum the distinction between "alt player" and someone who isn't an "alt player" lies.

RealDeathmatch wrote:

but for most good players 95% of maps in their skill range they will be alting for most of said map. Again, there are exceptions (singletap demons like akolibed xooty etc) but it's just a general note that a lot of good players alt

This is completely anecdotal because I can't be bothered to gather numbers but this doesn't feel right, because it feels like most top players (and also most non top players) will singletap anything within their "singletap bpm range" and alt anything outside of that or alt to conserve stamina. Maybe this is skewed from seeing players like mrekk and lifeline seemingly singletap as much as possible. Honestly I can't speak too well on how singletapping works because I switched to full-alting all the time as a 6 digit.

RealDeathmatch wrote:

about the whole speed thing, speed I consider to be my best (mechanical) skill and I full alt,

I'd be interested to hear if you full-alt in the way I described it, because if you do, with a sample size of 12 we have now found a break in the pattern. And as you touched on, if we were doing an actual study it would be wrong to not factor in ranks as a possible variable to how good you are with speed relative to your other skills when you full-alt vs don't full-alt.

RealDeathmatch wrote:

I'm sure if you ran a poll among all 4/3 digits a majority of them would say they alt, at least to some extent.

I'd go even further and say that there'd be barely anyone that can't alt at 4/3 digits, and if they can't they'll see it as an overwhelmingly massive weakness in their skillset.

RealDeathmatch wrote:

also telling someone that wants to learn how to alt to avoid alt maps so smart lol...

To clarify, I didn't say to avoid alt maps, just that playing alt maps wouldn't be advice I'd specifically give because I don't really think it's that relevant to learning how to alt initially. I just said to start off by learning the muscle memory by alting on easy maps and moving towards harder maps as you get better. Btw this is how I learnt to full-alt, I just played easy maps and worked my way up. I don't even think I was good enough to play alt maps, or at least play alt maps that couldn't be played easily by singletapping or were in terms of fingercontrol just low bpm burst maps with some flow aim.

RealDeathmatch wrote:

lifeline seems to alt on very high bpm stuff

From what I've seen, Lifeline seemingly singletaps literally everything he can and is pretty vocal about being bad at alting, I don't think he's the best example of a "full-alt" player according to either of our definitions (he starts all bursts and streams on the same finger). I don't know much about the tapping habits of the other players you listed, but if you were just looking for top players that alt at least to some extent, literally all of them should. I can personally confirm that the entirety of the top 10 alts to some extent. I'd be extremely surprised if you could find a top player who can't alt.

Download mcosu on steam and import all of your osu maps. it's free, it's basically osu but on steam with some very useful built in features like rate adjust and force alternate mode (osu Lazer MIGHT have it, can't check right now.) You probably want to play force alternate mode in mcosu until you're comfortable with it. For me it only took around 10 hours and then I could play dt maps which will really help solidify the alternating technique.

Very simple, just lower the star rating by abit and force yourself to play full alt. Alt maps, non-alt maps, play them all. Don't focus on just one style. Finger control, stream, speed, doubles quads 6note bursts, low bpm and high bpms. Play them all.

Keep practicing and you'll get it! Don't get intimidated if maps suddenly feel really hard to play. You fundamentally changed your tapping method, worse skill is just temporary.

One last thing to note: you gotta make sure your key presses on the right look like this (anime girl included)

I started full alt at around rank 900k

I dont remember 100% how I switched, but I just remember trying to force myself to alternate on every note and it worked.