I've been trying to find a good configuration for my play, and I thought I had found one with my mouse sensitivity on widows set to 8/10, and then ingame, set at 3.3x. When I bumped up my sensitivity I immediately noticed an improvement in my skill level, but now I've been plateauing for a little while and thought nothing of it, until I was watching a streamer on twitch and he mentioned that any dpi is ok unless it's "not something crazy like 4000+ dpi", and that got me thinking about my mouse sensitivity, and made me realize I have no clue what my dpi is, so I started working to figure it out.

First thing I know is that I use a Razer Abyssus 1800 and from what I'm reading it's an 1800 dpi mouse, as per the name. if I raise the ingame sensitivity by 3.3x that's 5940 dpi, a ways past "something crazy like 4000" dpi already, but then I also cranked the sensitivity up in windows to almost max. Does this also chage the ingame dpi? By how much?

Basically what I wanna ask is first, have I figured out my dpi correctly? I play presumably at or above 5940 dpi? And second, is it unreasonable? Because sometimes it feels unreasonable, like with any jumps above a 5* level currently feel a lot like like luck is required. Also, if I check this google doc:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EOWc7kf9TdyvT31VfzlY284udUNOrtz0uyRtQ2t4MHY/htmlview#gid=0

I seem to be far and above any other of the top players in dpi already. So should I consider lowering sensitivity and take the learning curve on the chin?

Finally, I started raising my sensitivity because I felt that I shouldn't be running my mouse too much across my mousepad, and basically wanted to reach any area with a simple wrist or finger movement. I was also having trouble with small hangups on the mousepad and whatnot. Do pro players really use more than just their wrist in order to play?

You don't calculate your overall sense by saying "3.3x in game sens times 1800dpi = 5940 dpi"

DPI is an acronym for "dots per inch" which is what the mouse picks up on from the movements made on a usable surface.
Like when you use your mousepad.

The in-game sensitivity is simply a multiplier of what the mouse already picks up on so it would be incorrect to say "3.3x in game sens times 1800dpi = 5940 dpi" for example. 5940 is your overall sensitivity.

I would also recommend to put the windows sensitivity to 5/10 because that's what most people use I think.
I don't know if it makes a difference when you play osu, but someone on the forums can probably tell us.

As long as you feel like your sensitivity is comfortable to use then I wouldn't see any reason to change it.
One really positive thing about having a really high sens is that mouse drift is going to be much less noticeable.

But if you feel like hitting smaller circles is impossible and or really inconsistent then you might want to turn the sensitivity a few notches down.

I am starting to feel like big jumps are a crapshoot, and I can't really snap longer distances. You know how when you snap you have to "brake"? I feel like my brake is all over the place, and so whenever I hit a big sequence of longer jumps, it doesn't feel like I knew what I was doing, more like I lucked out at throwing my cursor at the correct place. Not at all consistent. Now, I don't know if this is simply because I still need to improve my jumps, or if higher sensitivity makes it harder to "brake" my snaps. I guess it's just hard to tell in this game. Does every players feel the same when they start to up their diff? Because if so, then it might mean I'm fine with my sensitivity, and I just need to play more.

"The in-game sensitivity is simply a multiplier of what the mouse already picks up on so it would be incorrect to say "3.3x in game sens times 1800dpi = 5940 dpi" for example. 5940 is your overall sensitivity."

This didn't make much sense for me. What's the difference between dpi and "overall sensitivity"?

"I would also recommend to put the windows sensitivity to 5/10 because that's what most people use I think."

One thing I noticed is that the OS sens doesn't seem to factor in at all ingame. I lowered it to 1/10 and it became unbearably slow outside the game, but in game it felt exactly the same. So I won't be changing it because it's also what feels comfortable for use outside the game.

From personal experience (which isn't a lot) you typically want to keep your DPI just below what you consider fast/too fast, after a while you get used to it and your "brake" problem shouldn't be too big considering your mouse sensitivity isn't too high to where you overflick or underflick because you stopped at the wrong time (I had this problem as well but it just goes with pracitse/mastering your sens), that's what i did and it worked for me, if you're curious i have x1 game sensitivity and 1600 dpi, its just right to jump big jumps and just right to go slowly when needed, atleast for me, hope this helped?

lil_wage wrote:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EOWc7kf9TdyvT31VfzlY284udUNOrtz0uyRtQ2t4MHY/htmlview#gid=0

Use that and this http://jsfiddle.net/an789d4s/ and match the "effective PPI" if you want to copy someone else.

lil_wage wrote:

One thing I noticed is that the OS sens doesn't seem to factor in at all ingame. I lowered it to 1/10 and it became unbearably slow outside the game, but in game it felt exactly the same. So I won't be changing it because it's also what feels comfortable for use outside the game.

That's because you are using raw input in game. Raw input bypasses windows settings so in the end it kinda doesn't matter now when you play the game. It should be kept on

I'm not a mouse player in osu! but I played alot of csgo (around 2k hours), In osu you don't lift your mouse but the basic rules for mouse sensitivity will apply aswell.

Definitions

For clearance, here some words I'm gonna define now.

-Sensivity/Sens is the in-game multiplier/sensivity slider.

-DPI is your mouse's "Sensivity", measured in Dots Per Inch, X dots are moved over in 1 inch.

-eDPI is the effective DPI, calculated by multiplying the DPI and your Sensivity, watch out because some games use another method of an in-game mouse setting that IS NOT a basic multiplier!
Games that simply multiply are all Source engine games and osu!

"Rules"

My personal, and imo, most important rule is: lower is better.
Lower eDPI is more precise, but you need to find it yourself, go as low as you can while still being comfortable when aiming big and small distances.

Rule 2: Use your arm to aim.
With your arm you got way better mobility but less precision, you can use lower eDPI with it without having huge problems.
In shooters you would use your arm to look around and use your wrist for small precision movements like aiming to an enemy when he's already close to your crosshair. Obviously the wrist part would fall away in osu! (Or you would instead aim small sliders with it?)
(could be different in osu!, If anyone knows better, correct me.)

Rule 3: don't use your Sensivity too much to change your eDPI.
As I said in the definitions, your eDPI is (in osu!) your DPI multiplied by your Sensivity. The problem here is that, when multiplying something like the DPI, which will be only a "random" number for the game, it will lead to your cursor skipping pixels. The game doesn't know how much DPI you use, it will just multiply whatever the mouse is throwing at the game, and that leads to the said pixel skipping.
This doesn't really happen much a on small sensitivity like 1.5x, but if you were to use 10x or something, it would be visible. What you instead should do is, instead of using some number as DPI, use your eDPI as DPI and set your Sensivity to 1x. (Only works for mice with configurable DPI)

Thanks for the tips and resources, guys.

Recently, I've lowered my in-game sensitivity to 3.0 then to 2.8 and have noticed quite an improvement. Jumps are feeling less like a crapshoot now, and to my surprise, it really felt like there was no learning curve. I immediately could play the same maps I played before with no issues, and even with a bit more control over the mouse. Now, I can never be sure if this is directly due to the decrease in sens or if I just got better with playing more, but my suspicions are strong that the former was the case.

I have noticed I started having to move my arm a little bit, and this is not easy to get used to since I used to rest my arm on the armrest and have stability that way but now at the end of an intense song I notice my arm being raised up, and this, I feel, is just one more variable to keep track of, but again this came in exchange for better cursor control so I'll call it a positive.

This decrease in sensitivity would still translate to 5040 eDPI so I do intend to go lower, but I'm going in increments. Call it being a high dpi junkie in recovery.