I've been playing osu on and off, just for fun, over the past 2 years or so. Just recently I've decided to try and get a little bit more competitive with it. I immediately began looking up guides for improvement and the likes and starting doing what I thought was necessary, which was increasing the speed I play at (based on AR) and playing those songs. However, I've always had, what I believe is the right term, an accuracy problem and I want to fix it before I get too ahead of myself.

And what I mean by accuracy problem is that while I can hit the notes, keep up with the speed of the songs, not fail, etc. I seem to get a lot of 100s and 50s. All of my beaten maps are normally ~85% and while I know I'm so superstar or future superstar, I watch the pros play and see their insane accuracy and assume that they started out playing the less difficult songs with that kind of accuracy as well and moved their way up and hopefully I'm right in thinking that's the way I should plan to do it as well.

The things I've seen to help is to really watch the approach circle and time it with your eyes and ears with the song and to play slower songs to oerfect your accuracy and slowly increase the bpm. The other thing is hitsounds. I've heard mixed comments on them, some being that they should always be used and others saying it's only to help timing if you can't sync it with the music in your head. For the record, I've always had mine off.

So I'm coming to you guys for some tips and to clear up what I've read elsewhere. And hopefully I'm using the right term and not sounding like an idiot, so my apologized if I am :p

Note: I'm currently practicing AR:8-8.5 and the sounds that I can beat are normally around 80-85% C-B ranking.

You should ALWAYS play with hitsounds.
What is up to discussion is the hitsound-volume. It's commonly agreed within the community that you should have the hitsound volume roughly as loud as the music volume or louder - many top players have their hitsound volume a lot higher than their music volume. Personally I have them equally loud and I have good accuracy so uh, guess it works.
Aside from that all the information you gathered is pretty much correct. The only thing you're wrong about is practicing AR. There's no need to specifically train high AR at your level as it is a perception thing that automatically gets better regardless of what AR you play. I guarantee you that you can learn to play AR9 without playing any AR above 8. It's different for AR10 but who even needs AR10.

So yeah, turn hitsounds on and work on your accuracy over anything else. It doesn't have to be stellar but 95% weighted accuracy should be your minimum standard.

If you're interested, here's some statistic stuff how playing more and getting S-Ranks correlates with your pp and how accuracy correlates with your pp:
t/397055

Ok, I'll start practicing like that then, bump back down to AR7 and work my way back up over time. Also, I just remembered, I've heard HD, HR, and/or SD help as well assuming I know the beatmap well enough? It that something you'd advise or no?

lvl 32 with 1,612 plays . I think you might be playing maps that are too hard for you, try to focus on playing maps you are able to fc and gradually improve your acc on them.

honeybobkins wrote:

Ok, I'll start practicing like that then, bump back down to AR7 and work my way back up over time. Also, I just remembered, I've heard HD, HR, and/or SD help as well assuming I know the beatmap well enough? It that something you'd advise or no?

Don't use SD. HD can help since it forces u to listen to the rythm instead of depending on the approach circles. HR helps because of the higher od but I wouldn't recommend using it on your level since it also increases the ar.

And also play a lot of low bpm streams / low bpm streamy maps. I was able to improve my accuracy a little bit after I was able to gain some finger control from playing low bpm streams.

https://osu.ppy.sh/s/46936

That map is a good place to start.

Edit: I didn't see you rank sorry. You can try this map a little later then. Its a good map to help you gain finger control nonetheless.

Accuracy maps are also good for PP so get that going
High OD gives more pp in general afaik.

When will you people learn that you learn to play HD AFTER you learn no mod? Hidden gives absolutely NO feedback except if you look at the hit error bar all the time but you dont, do you?

HK_ wrote:

When will you people learn that you learn to play HD AFTER you learn no mod? Hidden gives absolutely NO feedback except if you look at the hit error bar all the time but you dont, do you?

There's still audible feedback through hitsounds and it can cure the awful behaviour of snapping to the note and clicking immediately instead of waiting for the correct moment.
My first HD maps were AR7 and ~2.58* and it didn't hurt me the slightest, quite the opposite. Important for a beginner is only to be able to clear the map at a decent level with nomod before trying it with HD. If you know the song well and the map decently enough, HD is beneficial to play, even at an early level.

xinfuzionx wrote:

honeybobkins wrote:

Ok, I'll start practicing like that then, bump back down to AR7 and work my way back up over time. Also, I just remembered, I've heard HD, HR, and/or SD help as well assuming I know the beatmap well enough? It that something you'd advise or no?

Don't use SD. HD can help since it forces u to listen to the rythm instead of depending on the approach circles. HR helps because of the higher od but I wouldn't recommend using it on your level since it also increases the ar.

I dunno... SD and PF mods have worked wonders for me.

Minhtam wrote:

I dunno... SD and PF mods have worked wonders for me.

SD and PF require a specific mindset though.
I wouldn't tell anyone who wants to use it to not use cause well, their choice, but I wouldn't recommend to anyone either.
Either you're made to use these mods or you aren't, they don't have an immediate correlation to the average player's improvement curve.
There's a reason why Raniemi doesn't use SD/PF and still has SS only.

Minhtam wrote:

I dunno... SD and PF mods have worked wonders for me.

SD and PF won't help you improve, it doesn't change how you play the map it only forces you to restart every time you make a mistake(wich can be done manually). Even if i go for a fc or 99+ acc play I often prefer to not instantly retry after a mistake. Especially at op his lvl he shouldn't consider using these mods imo.

xinfuzionx wrote:

Minhtam wrote:

I dunno... SD and PF mods have worked wonders for me.

SD and PF won't help you improve, it doesn't change how you play the map it only forces you to restart every time you make a mistake(wich can be done manually). Even if i go for a fc or 99+ acc play I often prefer to not instantly retry after a mistake. Especially at op his lvl he shouldn't consider using these mods imo.

Perhaps, but part of the beauty of forced restarts is that your brain snapshots the location in which you made a mistake, which forces you to learn that specific pattern. AKA, you have to adjust your play style in order to hit the sections that you are struggling in. I can guarantee that if you are being forced to restart on the same section of the map, the pattern in which you are dropping is probably going to be a pattern that you struggle with in every map that has similar patterns.

But Endaris is right. SD and PF do require a specific mindset. That is, if you made a mistake that forces you to restart, you have to instantly figure out what your mistake was and adjust accordingly, which requires a lot of musical theory and understanding of the game mechanics. Ergo, any player that doesn't have a strong background in musical theory or rhythm gaming should stray away from SD and PF.

Play more OD10

xinfuzionx wrote:

Minhtam wrote:

I dunno... SD and PF mods have worked wonders for me.

Now if only I could hold a combo let alone SS...

Having your hitsounds volume equally loud or higher than your music volume really helps you get a sense of rhythm in a map. I also keep a mindset of how fast/slow I'm supposed to be tapping according to the BPM of the song; to do that I just played a lot of maps varying in BPM. As for AR, I wouldn't focus too much on it as reading higher ARs will come with time. I didn't have much of a challenge getting up to AR9. The real challenge now is AR10. :l

SD and PF are mods for the aspiring masochist. I have my hit sounds pretty loud compared to the music. This might sound basic, however really follow the flow of the song. If you're having trouble with a certain part, go into auto and listen to how it's played, I normally tap along with it.