Preamble: I wrote this guide in 2012. I never released it because at the time I was preparing to leave the Cayman islands where I was living at the time and move back to the U.S., and I knew I'd have to quit osu! because my life was about to become too busy to keep playing competitively. When I wrote this guide I was an above rank 900 player (I might have peaked at 700 but I honestly can't remember.) on the rise, and I believe I was very knowledgeable about my playstyle, since I played it nearly eight hours a day and sometimes more in an effort to keep getting better. I never expected to post this guide, but I have surprisingly continued to get requests for it despite quitting the game and leaving the community over two years ago. I am posting my guide now because I feel that there is enough interest in it that I should make it available. Remember, I was never a number 1 player, and I only wrote this to try to help people who might be struggling with what I see as a very strong but difficult style. Thanks to this great community for being so friendly to me when I was active, and thanks to all of you for literally having been one of the most positive impacts on my life during that time. I hope this will be a useful contribution.
HOW TO BE A CLICK/X PLAYER
I am not the best player on osu!, and I'm not even the best click/x player. I am writing this article solely because I love this play style, and I want to share it with as many players as might be interested in it. Also, when I was still learning to play, I found myself faced with the trouble of not knowing whether I was playing this style right or not, because I couldn't find too many role models, and because there wasn't very much information on it. I want new Click/x players to at least have some basic pointers to help them decide if this style is right for them, and to show them the benefits of it, along with the detriments. This guide obviously won't help any pros. If you are already a pro, then what are you doing reading a guide anyway?
1. Benefits And Detriments
The click/x playstyle is an extremely powerful playstyle when used by an experienced player, and when properly understood. The strength of the style is that streaming at high speeds is greatly simplified. For a keyboard player streaming looks rougly like this: (z x z x z x z x z x z x), but for a click/x player streaming will be more like this: (clickx clickx clickx clickx clickx), where a space denotes a pause, and an enjambment denotes a quick double tap. I am not sure why it is this way, but that is why I think click/x makes streaming quickly feel easier. It makes streaming into a sort of series of doubletaps. This kind of rhythm can be done on a keyboard, but I think most keyboard players do not pick it up quickly, and I believe that the general way to do it is as I expressed above. Incidentally, doubletaps are extremely easy to do with the click/x style at virtually any speed.
At any rate, streaming at high speeds will feel easier with the click/x style, and your hands will not get as tired, because you are using two to do the work, rather than just one. Your accuracy will generally start out bad, but you will swiftly improve it on fast streams about 160 and up. Streaming will feel like the easiest skill to master with this playstyle.
The down side of streaming this way, however, is that slow streams require you to alternate your fingers more, and so you will have to spend significant time learning to do them accurately and without missing any beats. This can be frustrating, because you may find yourself streaming 190 BPM with no problem, but constantly breaking combo on a 130 BPM stream. It takes some time to achieve balance here.
Another benefit of click/x is that most people tend to be used to clicking their mouse in games, and so it may be easier for many players to pick up rhythm by clicking their mouse. Also, you can click your mouse with your dominant arm, which means that you will find it less awkward at first to keep rhythm clicking beats this way.
Unfortunately the click/x style does create a sort of upper limit to how fast you can single click beats. This is particularly distressing when you consider that learning to alternate this style is extremely confusing, due to the clicks being done by both hands with one hand also attempting to aim. Generally your clicking speed will be the toughest thing to improve. With a good deal of work, however, you can achieve formidable speed and endurance.
If jumps are your thing, then you may find that this style makes it a bit hard at first, but later on you'll notice that having to learn to stabalize your mouse while clicking has the benefit of making your aim very finely tuned. Your muscles will learn how to make snap jumps and small movements with only the smallest margin of error, because this kind of muscle control is constantly worked as you push your clicking speed up. You may notice that your movements begin to look almost robotic.
2. The Settings
This playstyle obviously requires a mouse. Your mouse should be a gaming mouse with the ability to adjust DPI. This is absolutely necessary to your continued improvement over time. I won't go into DPI too much, but it is a measurement of how many pixels (dots) your cursor moves on your screen per inch of hand movement. This means that more DPI = faster cursor movement. For most playstyles you have a lot of leeway as to what kind of DPI setting you want to go with, because all your aiming arm will be doing is aiming; but with this playstyle you need to be able to keep your mouse extremely steady at all times, or your clicking will ruin your aim. It's too much to ask anyone to do this when their cursor is already sensitive as a buzzing bee, so you're going to need to keep your DPI low. Low here means around 800 or less. I suggest beginning here only because it will give your arm muscles an immediate workout, which you wouldn't get with a much higher DPI. If you started at 1000, for instance, you'd probably get in the habit of using mostly your wrist and your fingers to control your mouse, but ultimately this will defeat your goal of clicking while keeping the mouse steady, because your fingers, and to some degree your wrist, are involved in the task of clicking your mouse. After setting your DPI to 800 or lower, learn to play that way, and then ramp it down further as you begin to feel that you need more control over time. Just remember to take it slow.
Your grip should be a palm grip for long term results. As mentioned above, you can't put too much work on your wrist and fingers if you want to be able to click quickly on faster songs. You're going to need to be able to use your arm to do a lot of the work, along with your palm and essentially every muscle in your hand. At higher levels your entire hand is constantly doing something to aid in your keeping steady as you aim. Learning to use a palm grip will set you on the path toward being able to have 100% control of your mouse without slipping or slowing your clicks.
Your windows settings should be 6/6 (I'm not going to explain this one, as it's been done to death), and my personal suggestion is that you use 1024x768 resolution. I recommend this, because a larger resolution gives you better control (same concept as lower DPI), but if you go too large you can make it harder to track coming notes. It's up to you if you want to go larger, but smaller I'd strongly argue against, as I used to use a smaller resolution, and personal experience tells me it hurt my play for a very long time before I went larger.
Lastly, for God's sake turn off Enhanced Pointer Precision in Windows Pointer Options. NOT the one in osu!, as that one is harmless. I won't explain this, as it falls outside of the confines of this article, but do it at all costs, and then go research why.
3. Strategy
It may sound funny that there is strategy involved, but there is a certain element of strategy in learning to use this style. I've already covered how singleclicking can be frustratingly hard to gain speed at. Because of this, you will want to learn to supplement your normal singleclicking with some keyboard taps. It's not always necessary, but being able to do some rudimentary alternation can greatly increase your survivability with this style. Also, you'll find that it helps you get used to switching hands when playing streamy maps with sliders switching into streams and single beats. Always remember, however, that your clicking speed will increase over time, even if the gains are small. This is just a good way to round out your play.
Your left hand will generally never get tired with this style, so you're going to want to focus your energy on your right (Assuming you are right handed). Make sure to pay close attention to how your muscles tense up as you play, as sometimes too much tension on your mouse hand can lead to bad clicking rhythm. There is a certain amount of tension necessary, however, to maintain control on very fast clicking sections.
When switching between a slider and a hit circle there are about three ways that you can do it: you can singleclick the slider and then singleclick the following beat to lead into a stream or to then follow with another click for a following stream; you can switch hands on the hit circle, and then back again for the next slider or to continue a stream; or you can hold down your keyboard key after clicking the middle beat until it is needed to be depressed again. That last one may sound odd, but it can really help you with timing when done correctly. Just be ready in case you need to depress the key quickly. It's best used when a stream ends in a slider. Learning to do all of these is recommended, but you do not need to be as good with all of them as maybe you are with just one. They are tools in your click/x toolbox, and they will get you through sections with a lot of alternating.
4. Practice
Your practice routine will generally be the same as any other, but remember that your mouse hand is going to do a lot of work, so don't be surprised when that hand gets tired fast. Push your limits without injuring yourself. A tired mouse hand can still play, as long as you pace yourself and are careful. Your clicking finger will get tired faster than a keyboard player's fingers might, because you cannot aid your clicking with arm strength, but make every effort to push this limit as well. You're going to need to get a lot of muscle strength in your forearm, hand, fingers, shoulders, and even upper arm. It really is a muscle intensive style, as so much precise control is needed to keep steady. You'll need to start small and work your way up. Your fast streaming ability may make you feel like you can do anything fast, but don't neglect slow maps, because you can learn a lot from them. Your main areas to work on will be alternating, slow streaming, and fast clicks. Don't get discouraged!
5. Why Doesn't Everyone Play This Style?
The honest truth is that most of the time a keyboard clicking player who has a tablet is going to have a higher skill ceiling than a click/x player, simply because he can tap faster than you can click. If he can learn to stream as fast as you, and can firm up his jump control through practice, then he's probably going to outplay the majority of click/x players. However, this style is not a bad style by any means. There are very successful click/x players who can do amazing things, and you can learn to overcome the shortcomings while exploiting the strengths. Attaining reliable results at very high to ultra high speeds (210-240+) can be hard this way, but it's not impossible.
Aside from the difficulty in attaining high speeds with this style, many players do not play it because they hear right away that playing with keyboard taps only is better, or because they notice that the majority of players play that way. Also, it's impossible to do this with a tablet, and many players will get a tablet right away, because they believe it will make them play better. If you play this style, you'll have to be aware that you are in something of a minority. Many players who play this way also play other styles. I personally only play click/x. There is a related style played by tablet users, which is called tap/x, but I will not go into that here.
This style is something of a neurological niche, in my opinion. Some people cannot feel comfortable playing it no matter what they do. It's similar to how coordinating one hand can be much easier than coordinating two at once. Some people feel more awkward doing it than others.
Closing
I hope that this guide is useful to new players who want to experiment with this style, or maybe are using it, but want to know more about it. I have experience with the style, and wanted to share my feelings and opinions about it. I have attempted to organize the guide as best I could, but I will make changes to it if I think of anything later.
HOW TO BE A CLICK/X PLAYER
I am not the best player on osu!, and I'm not even the best click/x player. I am writing this article solely because I love this play style, and I want to share it with as many players as might be interested in it. Also, when I was still learning to play, I found myself faced with the trouble of not knowing whether I was playing this style right or not, because I couldn't find too many role models, and because there wasn't very much information on it. I want new Click/x players to at least have some basic pointers to help them decide if this style is right for them, and to show them the benefits of it, along with the detriments. This guide obviously won't help any pros. If you are already a pro, then what are you doing reading a guide anyway?
1. Benefits And Detriments
The click/x playstyle is an extremely powerful playstyle when used by an experienced player, and when properly understood. The strength of the style is that streaming at high speeds is greatly simplified. For a keyboard player streaming looks rougly like this: (z x z x z x z x z x z x), but for a click/x player streaming will be more like this: (clickx clickx clickx clickx clickx), where a space denotes a pause, and an enjambment denotes a quick double tap. I am not sure why it is this way, but that is why I think click/x makes streaming quickly feel easier. It makes streaming into a sort of series of doubletaps. This kind of rhythm can be done on a keyboard, but I think most keyboard players do not pick it up quickly, and I believe that the general way to do it is as I expressed above. Incidentally, doubletaps are extremely easy to do with the click/x style at virtually any speed.
At any rate, streaming at high speeds will feel easier with the click/x style, and your hands will not get as tired, because you are using two to do the work, rather than just one. Your accuracy will generally start out bad, but you will swiftly improve it on fast streams about 160 and up. Streaming will feel like the easiest skill to master with this playstyle.
The down side of streaming this way, however, is that slow streams require you to alternate your fingers more, and so you will have to spend significant time learning to do them accurately and without missing any beats. This can be frustrating, because you may find yourself streaming 190 BPM with no problem, but constantly breaking combo on a 130 BPM stream. It takes some time to achieve balance here.
Another benefit of click/x is that most people tend to be used to clicking their mouse in games, and so it may be easier for many players to pick up rhythm by clicking their mouse. Also, you can click your mouse with your dominant arm, which means that you will find it less awkward at first to keep rhythm clicking beats this way.
Unfortunately the click/x style does create a sort of upper limit to how fast you can single click beats. This is particularly distressing when you consider that learning to alternate this style is extremely confusing, due to the clicks being done by both hands with one hand also attempting to aim. Generally your clicking speed will be the toughest thing to improve. With a good deal of work, however, you can achieve formidable speed and endurance.
If jumps are your thing, then you may find that this style makes it a bit hard at first, but later on you'll notice that having to learn to stabalize your mouse while clicking has the benefit of making your aim very finely tuned. Your muscles will learn how to make snap jumps and small movements with only the smallest margin of error, because this kind of muscle control is constantly worked as you push your clicking speed up. You may notice that your movements begin to look almost robotic.
2. The Settings
This playstyle obviously requires a mouse. Your mouse should be a gaming mouse with the ability to adjust DPI. This is absolutely necessary to your continued improvement over time. I won't go into DPI too much, but it is a measurement of how many pixels (dots) your cursor moves on your screen per inch of hand movement. This means that more DPI = faster cursor movement. For most playstyles you have a lot of leeway as to what kind of DPI setting you want to go with, because all your aiming arm will be doing is aiming; but with this playstyle you need to be able to keep your mouse extremely steady at all times, or your clicking will ruin your aim. It's too much to ask anyone to do this when their cursor is already sensitive as a buzzing bee, so you're going to need to keep your DPI low. Low here means around 800 or less. I suggest beginning here only because it will give your arm muscles an immediate workout, which you wouldn't get with a much higher DPI. If you started at 1000, for instance, you'd probably get in the habit of using mostly your wrist and your fingers to control your mouse, but ultimately this will defeat your goal of clicking while keeping the mouse steady, because your fingers, and to some degree your wrist, are involved in the task of clicking your mouse. After setting your DPI to 800 or lower, learn to play that way, and then ramp it down further as you begin to feel that you need more control over time. Just remember to take it slow.
Your grip should be a palm grip for long term results. As mentioned above, you can't put too much work on your wrist and fingers if you want to be able to click quickly on faster songs. You're going to need to be able to use your arm to do a lot of the work, along with your palm and essentially every muscle in your hand. At higher levels your entire hand is constantly doing something to aid in your keeping steady as you aim. Learning to use a palm grip will set you on the path toward being able to have 100% control of your mouse without slipping or slowing your clicks.
Your windows settings should be 6/6 (I'm not going to explain this one, as it's been done to death), and my personal suggestion is that you use 1024x768 resolution. I recommend this, because a larger resolution gives you better control (same concept as lower DPI), but if you go too large you can make it harder to track coming notes. It's up to you if you want to go larger, but smaller I'd strongly argue against, as I used to use a smaller resolution, and personal experience tells me it hurt my play for a very long time before I went larger.
Lastly, for God's sake turn off Enhanced Pointer Precision in Windows Pointer Options. NOT the one in osu!, as that one is harmless. I won't explain this, as it falls outside of the confines of this article, but do it at all costs, and then go research why.
3. Strategy
It may sound funny that there is strategy involved, but there is a certain element of strategy in learning to use this style. I've already covered how singleclicking can be frustratingly hard to gain speed at. Because of this, you will want to learn to supplement your normal singleclicking with some keyboard taps. It's not always necessary, but being able to do some rudimentary alternation can greatly increase your survivability with this style. Also, you'll find that it helps you get used to switching hands when playing streamy maps with sliders switching into streams and single beats. Always remember, however, that your clicking speed will increase over time, even if the gains are small. This is just a good way to round out your play.
Your left hand will generally never get tired with this style, so you're going to want to focus your energy on your right (Assuming you are right handed). Make sure to pay close attention to how your muscles tense up as you play, as sometimes too much tension on your mouse hand can lead to bad clicking rhythm. There is a certain amount of tension necessary, however, to maintain control on very fast clicking sections.
When switching between a slider and a hit circle there are about three ways that you can do it: you can singleclick the slider and then singleclick the following beat to lead into a stream or to then follow with another click for a following stream; you can switch hands on the hit circle, and then back again for the next slider or to continue a stream; or you can hold down your keyboard key after clicking the middle beat until it is needed to be depressed again. That last one may sound odd, but it can really help you with timing when done correctly. Just be ready in case you need to depress the key quickly. It's best used when a stream ends in a slider. Learning to do all of these is recommended, but you do not need to be as good with all of them as maybe you are with just one. They are tools in your click/x toolbox, and they will get you through sections with a lot of alternating.
4. Practice
Your practice routine will generally be the same as any other, but remember that your mouse hand is going to do a lot of work, so don't be surprised when that hand gets tired fast. Push your limits without injuring yourself. A tired mouse hand can still play, as long as you pace yourself and are careful. Your clicking finger will get tired faster than a keyboard player's fingers might, because you cannot aid your clicking with arm strength, but make every effort to push this limit as well. You're going to need to get a lot of muscle strength in your forearm, hand, fingers, shoulders, and even upper arm. It really is a muscle intensive style, as so much precise control is needed to keep steady. You'll need to start small and work your way up. Your fast streaming ability may make you feel like you can do anything fast, but don't neglect slow maps, because you can learn a lot from them. Your main areas to work on will be alternating, slow streaming, and fast clicks. Don't get discouraged!
5. Why Doesn't Everyone Play This Style?
The honest truth is that most of the time a keyboard clicking player who has a tablet is going to have a higher skill ceiling than a click/x player, simply because he can tap faster than you can click. If he can learn to stream as fast as you, and can firm up his jump control through practice, then he's probably going to outplay the majority of click/x players. However, this style is not a bad style by any means. There are very successful click/x players who can do amazing things, and you can learn to overcome the shortcomings while exploiting the strengths. Attaining reliable results at very high to ultra high speeds (210-240+) can be hard this way, but it's not impossible.
Aside from the difficulty in attaining high speeds with this style, many players do not play it because they hear right away that playing with keyboard taps only is better, or because they notice that the majority of players play that way. Also, it's impossible to do this with a tablet, and many players will get a tablet right away, because they believe it will make them play better. If you play this style, you'll have to be aware that you are in something of a minority. Many players who play this way also play other styles. I personally only play click/x. There is a related style played by tablet users, which is called tap/x, but I will not go into that here.
This style is something of a neurological niche, in my opinion. Some people cannot feel comfortable playing it no matter what they do. It's similar to how coordinating one hand can be much easier than coordinating two at once. Some people feel more awkward doing it than others.
Closing
I hope that this guide is useful to new players who want to experiment with this style, or maybe are using it, but want to know more about it. I have experience with the style, and wanted to share my feelings and opinions about it. I have attempted to organize the guide as best I could, but I will make changes to it if I think of anything later.