Ugh, stagnating, or going forwards even slightly would be preferable to what's happening at the moment.
Right now, my skills are actually
degenerating.About a year ago, I was about to achieve rank 100k (still really underwhelming), and then I hit a wall. I couldn't advance in rank at all. In fact, no matter how much I played, I kept losing ranks, and slid backwards. Now I'm nearly at 150k.
All of the sections in my graph where the line is *almost* even are where I've been constantly repeating a map over and over again to memorise a retardedly slow Normal map or something and farm it for pp, and even that wasn't enough.
My reflexes just get slower every year, and I can't beat my own personal records anymore. This map
https://osu.ppy.sh/s/135401 (Rurutia - Shin'Ai) is one where I played a number of alright runs and eventually scored a 491x/900x combo on the Insane difficulty, probably my best score ever on any map, but now I can't even come close to a 200x combo - most times I don't even complete the map without failing anymore.
And that's just sad.
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My only real goal is to just be able to play 90% of the maps that get released - you know the ones where the mapper decides "Fk it I'm only going to release an awesome but seriously brutal Insane/Extra difficulty for this really good song (that nobody else will ever try to make a map for ever again)".
Like this one:
https://osu.ppy.sh/b/381798 (Nhato - Miss You)
Super super super cool map, but getting past the unpredictable opening sequence into the part where the chorus opens up is completely beyond me. I die in about 30-40 seconds every time.
Repeat same story 100x. I'm dumb and have slow reflexes, both problems are getting worse and they're not going away any time soon.
PS : I keep hearing this advice of "50 plays in one day or die trying". That's ridiculous, my hand seizes up after 25-30, effects progressively worse the longer the map.
PPS: On an earlier topic, AR-11 is literally impossible for some (not most, but some) players to play, including myself. When I do "simple choice" baseline reaction speed tests (click as soon as the screen changes), my results are about 50-60ms slower than average.
I used the map editor to make an Easy map into an AR-11 version, and I couldn't hit the circles 50% of the time unless arrows were pointing to exactly where the circle would appear, despite the map being very painfully slow.