Plus azer has universal offset 0, don´t want to make assumptions but he is one of the most accurate players and he wasn´t fooling around with that, just playing, you should do that.
Well actually he was dealing with delay problems as well and he told me that for him this issue went away after he had a new pc.
t/119238Aside from that, i can tell you a bit about my personal experience with UO.
A good friend of mine once came to my house and watched me play. He told me that as an osu!mania player offset is important. So after watching my Hit Error meter, he put my UO around +7-14. Now i didn't get at all what this UO really did (that was a year ago) and he didn't really either (for example why not -7 or -14) but i just stuck with it. But then i kept tinkering with UO trying to understand how it affects my gameplay and why it works better than 0 etc.
My logic for the last few months was that i have a keyboard delay, and this delay messes with my acc. When i played without hitsounds and listen to my keyboard, my hits are all around 60ms too late. So i thought, to counter this, ill go negative with the offset. Problem with this is that after a certain point, the timing of the hitsounds are off. So i put the UO to the end of the point where it would be off timing, if that makes any sense. Also on some days i was super pissed and kept reducing UO, turned off hitsounds, only to want them back after a while. So i just left it at 0 again.
Now after reading this post yesterday, i tried going up with the UO and it turned out better than expected. Let me remind you though that im changing the offset only so far that the timing isn't off.
So right now where I'm at: I figured out that it wasn't the delay that hit me off. I mainly play HDHR and with Hidden, it just feels way snappier and more to the beat when i have my UO at +5-20 (still tinkering with it).
It might be difficult to understand. Let me just try to go through my thought process. The problem on my setup with UO 0 is, that the Hidden notes appear too late. When you imagine a 4/4 beat: 1-2-3-4 and every number is a hitcircle, then the optimal time when a hidden note should appear is on the "-" parts, so right in the middle between the notes. When the notes appear too late, i have a mental problem. The information i will get first is the auditive feedback. In the song i hear "There comes a triple" and then the notes of the triple appear. Only if it's a few ms later, it's a problem for me. I'd much rather have the visual feedback first, so i can anticipate what will come in the song, like a pianist who looks at his notation sheet.
So notes appearing too early is better than too late (for me at least). The thing is, with a UO more than 0, it is not even too early. It sits right in the middle, like i want it to.
As an additional note, i tuned in for some osu twitch streams yesterday and Rafis was streaming. What i noticed is that he often sets his local offsets to -15;-20 etc. I think he has the same reason as me: To get the visual feedback before or right where it should be. I tend to have a way easier time playing 10.3 with a higher offset than 0.
Hope that made any sense to you guys. I just wanted to throw this out to see what you guys think about my reasoning. Don't be afraid to completely diminish my arguments. As of right now, it works for me.
As OP already said:
You have to build up confident tapping and then you will be on the road to success.
This is still the most important factor!
I believe that i have an easier time becoming confident when i have my notes in sync with the music. Higher UO doesn't make me better in any way, but it gives me better grounds to improve and make me, if only, feel like i have better settings than before. Feeling is what counts in the end, am i right?
Welp, maybe tomorrow im doing that -128310818 UO but we'll see.