nrl wrote:
B1rd wrote:
Your whole post is just conjecture. Once you've practiced enough alternating will become as natural as singletapping, the extra hand coordination factor will be reduced to near zero. Alternating is not a streaming motion, only beginners in alternating feel like it makes everything into a super hard spaced stream because they are only used to using two fingers with streams.
So, alternating is a very useful skill to have, it allows you to do super high bpm stream patters and increases your finger control. If you continue to full alternate once you've mastered it or singletap low bpm maps, it really doesn't make that much of a difference.
My post isn't conjecture, I'm speaking from a position of experience, albeit somewhat limited experience. I routinely alternate maps that most people would singletap, and I have decent FCs on a few of them. And it's not like your post isn't conjecture as well; even if you do alternate (I don't know whether you do), you're certainly in no position to claim from a position of experience that alternating helps anything, let alone high bpm technical maps. We're both arguing from largely theoretical positions.
And yes, alternating is a stream motion, at least in a physical sense. If you're completely resetting each finger before moving the next one you don't gain any extra speed from using the second finger, you might as well just be single tapping. In order to see tangible speed benefits you need to start moving the second finger before the first one resets.
I'm really not arguing that alternating is a useful skill to have, and if you look through my post history you'll find posts where I actually recommend it under certain circumstances. The fact of the matter is that for most people it's just faster and more reliable to bring their single-tapping up to speed than it is to learn to alternate, and there's certainly no solid evidence that players who do alternate have advantages on certain types of maps.
And even if you're right, there's still no benefit to strict alternation over non-strict alternation.
I'm speaking form a combination of personal experience as well as a combination of observing pro players. I've went through stages where I alternated everything. I didn't get to the stage where I could avoid double tapping on stacks and streams, but I set some good scores on maps with spaced streams that I'm proud of that I don't think I could have done if I had been singletapping.
Saying that alternators have no advantage on certain maps is quite silly, how many people can singletap 360bpm? If you see a player who can SS Chevron DT whilst singletapping let me know. Alternators clearly have an advantage on these type of maps because it is extremely physically difficult to singletap them. Besides people like WWW, thelewa and Rucker who have amazing finger control and can execute weird spaced stream patterns like Kirby maps or maps like Shotgun Symphony, I'd also like to bring attention to DJ Fuduji. Look at his #1 nomod play on Speed of the Link, it shows how alternating can give a big advantage when trying to hold combo on extremely hard nomod maps which I supports my personal experience with alternating. Especially on maps with lots of short sliders, repeat sliders and spaced stream patterns. When you singletap, you have to release the key and then reactivate it, but with alternating, you don't even need to take your alternate finger of the other key before you can activate the other key. This makes you can execute super short repeat sliders without requiring a super fast release and reactivation; it reduce the chance of releasing at the wrong moment and breaking combo. It also gives you an 'emergency backup' if you stuff up your tapping and tap in open space; with singletapping you wouldn't have enough time tap again, but with alternating you can just slam down your other finger.
Basically you can spam with alternating to reduce chances of breaking combo, this is actually a bad habit of mine as it reinforces bad finger control habits, but it sometimes gives me an edge in multiplayer.
Anyway, I'm not saying that strict alternation gives an advantage over non-strict alternation. What I'm saying is that 1: Strict alternating is good way to learn opportunistic alternation, as to alternate properly you need to be able to start and finish streams and stacks without double tapping, and making sure your keystrokes are equal at the end of the map is a good way of doing this.
2: Mastering alternating will greatly improve your finger control as you are consciously aware of which finger you start and end a stream on, and this finger control will be beneficial even when you're singletapping. For example I find that with streams, especially with sliders mixed in, I don't know which finger I started and and don't know which finger I need to end on, and this results in me spamming a bit at the end of the stream and possibly doing extra keystrokes so I don't do a one less keystroke, which results in lower streaming accuracy. Learning alternating isn't the only way to get good finger control, but mastering alternating will guarantee you have good finger control.
3. Strict alternating isn't inferior to singletapping on slower maps, though it does take more time to master.