Introduction
So hello there readers, if you are reading this , you are probably grinding in CTB. So for the start , this topic will be focused on CTB but some concepts, strategy and techniques may be also applied in Std.
If you are a player who just joined a minute ago you need to read this: https://osu.ppy.sh/wiki/Performance_Points and https://osu.ppy.sh/help/wiki/Welcome
If just a regular std, mania or taiko player and just want to pursue CTB then good for you!

First, why pursue playing osu!CTB?
let me enumerate my reasons of pursuing CTB:
1. stucked in osu!std or not improving
2. osu!ctb is underrated and there are few people playing it so it's easier to climb the rankings unlike osu!std
3. I can't play osu!std properly with regular rubber dome keyboard, so playing CTB without mech keyboard is not a problem
4. pp rewards in CTB is inflated unlike in STD

if your reason of playing CTB is not like mine, then I will assume you just want to play it to be versatile not only focusing in a certain mode.

New CTB player?
so if you are a newbie and no idea how to play it then read:https://osu.ppy.sh/help/wiki/Game_Modes/osu!catch/

Let's skip the basics, now where do I start??
Step 1a. Download ranked CTB maps (I recommend to download all existing CTB maps)
use this to download: http://osusearch.com/ and filter maps by ranked and CTB. As of now, 300+ of individual mapset are with CTB.
Step 1b. You need a lot of beatmaps. Download beatmap packs: https://osu.ppy.sh/p/packlist I recommend to download the maps from latest to earliest because old maps is considered "low quality maps".
Step 2. choose your key that suits you , of course the default are left & right key , and L-Shift for dash, you can change it to what comforts you.

TIPS
1. always aim for 99~100% accuracy, in CTB accuracy has great impact in pp
2. Don't spam retry a certain map over and over again. I'm not saying to give up, if you think you can FC it, you may retry but don't waste time, be smart.
3. Always aim for top play, don't push yourself too hard to FC a map that will not give you pp.

NOW LETS PLAY AND IMPROVE!!!!
since starting from 1 star maps are easy , I suppose you can 1 try FC a certain map and get PP , and yes you can climb up to 5-digit rank in your first day of playing!
You will just play and play until thing getting slightly harder.

I reached 1k pp and everything is a lot harder
Yes, I also noticed that, after having 1k pp, lot of maps you played for pp is not 1st try FC, you need to use dash and hyperdash quite often and you must to learn to to play with that. Just PRACTICE.

Yay!! 2k pp club and also 4-digit in ranking!!!
Let's assume you already farmed 2k pp and there are things and questions in your mind.
Let's say you think:
1. OMG fuck this, it's already 1 week and I only increased 5pp!!
2. Why I can't catch that fruit? even with dash this catcher is very slow enough.
3. Are there CTB maps that gives a lot of pp like Daidai Genome in STD????

I know the feel of being stucked in the rank and let me give some advise:
1. In 2 star ~ 3 star maps, using dash is a must in every maps and that RED FRUIT also appears frequently. In this case, the playing mindset of reacting to when to use dash will changed into when not to use dash.
2. Also practicing to read AR=9 maps is a must because majority of beatmaps are AR=9.
3. If you can read AR=9 very well , then practicing AR=9.1 to AR=9.5 is not a problem. DON'T PRACTICE AR=10 too soon because it is unreadable yet for you and may result epilepsy!!! LOL just kidding , just don't jump from AR=9 to AR=10.
4. Learn to catch the uncatchable: If someone in the score leaderboard can FC that map, then it is possible for you too. What makes the maps harder is how close the snapping between notes and you need a faster reflex to catch that beat.
5. Improving in playing in CTB and almost in all other osu!modes can be done with self-learning, practice and patience. There are many things in playing that is impossible to teach verbally and it is self-learned by the player.
Keep it up and play well!!!

YOU JUST NEED TO PLAY OVER AND OVER AGAIN!!!!!
If you aim to beat player like ExGon and Dusk, you need to play at least 1000 hours or more to be like them.


osu!strategy
Now let's discuss the strat for improvement:

HERE IT IS HUNTING FOR PP.
If you are finding a map that will give EZ pp then these links are helpful for you:
https://grumd.github.io/osu-pps/
http://pp.ofmc.me/
these websites evaluates the overweightedness of a maps.

CTB pp calculator: https://pakachan.github.io/osustuff/ppcalculator.html
I recommend you to save this pp calculator as a html so you can use it offline.

If those websites that evaluated overweightedness of a map is not enough for you , then I recommend you to stalk someone's profile.
Stalk someone's profile that is slightly higher rank than you and check for his/her TOP PLAY. Download that map and there is possibility that it is very easy to FC that's why it is his/her TOP PLAY.

let me give you an example, this map: The Ghost Of 3.13 - Forgotten is TOP PLAY of many players because it is overweighted and EZ PP.

There are some player in CTB or even in STD who just play TV SIZE MAPS or MAPS like GRANAT.
Playing these kind of maps can be played by muscle memory and does not require too much reading and they just retry and retry until they FCed it.
I highly recommend you to also focus on long beatmaps and try to FC it. Being able to FC such long maps require sustained focus and it makes you to improve. You may also notice that long beatmaps has easier patterns than TV SIZE maps. It is the nature of it, making the game balanced so in conclusion:

MAPS UNDER 1 MINUTE/ TV SIZE MAPS
pros: very short, can be memorized, can be retried until you FC
cons: harder patterns, , farther jumps, give slightly lower pp, 1 droplet miss can decrease the pp a lot

LONG MAPS 2-minutes and above
pros: easier pattern, gives slightly higher pp, can be passed with good accucary even with a lot of miss
cons: 1st try FC TOP PLAY is unlikely to happen, requires lot of focus and 1 single miss can result no pp at all, results in depression

That is why many players avoid to play LONG maps. But in reality, focusing in LONG maps makes you improve faster.

Don't stay in the same difficulty bracket. If 3-star is comfortable for you and FCed some of it, try to play slightly harder, difficulty that you can at least get a rank A. You need to learn a lot of patterns and play it over and over again.

Also using local offset is very helpful in CTB. Read more about it here: https://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/516874

How many hours per day do I play?
In average, playing 4 hours per day constantly is enough for fast improvement. However, there are some times that you're getting tired playing because your pp is not increasing by 1. So I recommend to play until get tired and rest afterwards and play again when your body feels like you need some daily dosage of osu!

Playing patterns
It is very recommended to play as many song as you can. In this way, you can discover new patterns to practice. Don't expect a 1st try FC. But if you're retrying a song, make sure you get higher combo/better accuracy unless your play is a waste.
Also using the collection feature is very helpful , for example organizing the maps you need to improve acc/to FC/to HR/to DT/overweighted, etc. anything you want to organize.
Also, remembering mappers is helpful too, because every mapper has their own style of pattern making.


THINGS THAT WILL MAKE YOU THINK YOU'RE NOT IMPROVING/STUCKED

Chasing the pp
we know that pp = skill, and pp is the main reason why we play osu! but many people farm pp in different ways, so there are some things that DT-farmer is less skilled than a HR/no mod farmer. If you really need to be the best, don't chase pp, let the pp chase you. Practice to pass higher difficulties than spam retry a certain song. There is a hack. If you can't FC a certain song with 50 retries, set it aside and try to play harder songs, and come back to it when you feel playing comfortable on harder song. You can even FC unexpectedly. Always move ahead and practice hard maps until it became comfortable to you then go up again until you can play 6 star and beyond maps.

osu!choke
Choke is very different from misread. Misread is when you actually can't play that certain part
Yeah, everyone hates it, even if you can SS the maps, choke always appear.
1 slip of a hand results in wasted effort and makes negative emotions. We just hate it

Reasons of choking are:
1. osu!nerves - this is the shaky feeling of a hand when you are aware that either your play is good, you nearly FC the map, or you are aware that you are almost having a TOP PLAY. Also choke suddenly appears after the moment you beat your previous score. 90% active players also experience this.
2. EXTERNAL FORCES - For example, a mosquito bite. Anything that is disturbing you while in the middle of the game also results choke.
3. SYSTEM LAG - this happens if you have a Low-end PC sometimes it occurs. So you need to take action if this is your problem.
4. UNEXPECTED DIFFICULTY SPIKE - this always occur in kiai section of the map.
5. POST-SPINNER NOTES - this also happens when spinner(bananas) appeared in the ending, let down your guard and unexpectedly noticing that there are extra hit notes after the spinner(banana).
6. TRYING TO LOOK AT YOUR ACCURACY or COMBO
7. Your friend or any random person sent you a private message
8. Random people suddenly spectating while you play
9. Your play suddenly scrolled up to top 50

The tips I can give you to avoid this is to:
1. use SHIFT+TAB , hide entire UI while playing.
2. Don't look in your accuracy, except in breaks.
3. Always active and don't let down your guard as mentioned above, expect POST-SPINNER NOTES.
4. Don't blink your eye (if possible). Just blink your eye without choking.

EXTRAS

learning Hidden is optional and its possible for someone to get in the top 100 global without using it. But this it a great advantage for a player to be able to play hidden.

learning HardRock is self explanatory. smaller fruits and Higher AR. You need to be able to read up to AR=10 to do Hardrock. There are maps that gives a lot of pp with HR. Just practice.

learning Double Time is a must because everything is 1.5x faster. Like the catcher. There are maps that becomes overweighted with DT.
For example: Sonata Arctica - Black Sheep

Lastly, some maps designed for CTB is easier than STD converted maps. That's why you need to Download every existing CTB maps in osu!

There are many things in osu! you just need to play in order to discover these things. PLZ ENJOY GAME.

Thumbs up! :O

First, why pursue playing osu!CTB?
let me enumerate my reasons of pursuing CTB:
1. i genuinly enjoy furiously hammering down on my keyboard to make a waiter that moves at mach 10 catch fruits to the beat

frexcuadillera wrote:

That's why you need to Download every existing CTB maps in osu!

Yeah I can smell some shits from CLSW fags no problem

That is really cool guide. It motivated me and I finally passed Adularescence, toybot's overdose. In first try after I read this!

This post is very nice

Thank you guys for appreciating my post, this is still unfinished and I will add more to this in my free time.

I really like this post.

Well, my tablet is almost dead, enjoying CTB, looking forward for this.

Whole CTB is difficult when you spent years on danmaku shooters avoiding things Q_Q

Kurtsi wrote:

I really like this post.

I really like you

Congratulations for the post :O Loved it

I think I need to update this.

Nice post. My first motivation to play Osu!Ctb was unlocking some medals such as FCing a 10 min long map.
For my very first Ctb plays, I FCed a 1* 10min map with EZ and I ranked low 6 digit. Then I noticed that few people are playing it at high level, so I decided to play more for fun and eventually becoming a low 4 digit player.
Using correctly the Dash is painful, I hope it will feel smoother after some practice.
Thanks again for the tips

Playing CTB without mech keyboard is not a problem. BUT you really need a good keyboard with low latency connection. It really makes a huge differences. You will stuck at 4-5 star forever if you try to use a notebook keyboard to play this mode.

U gave so good tips for starters.

Kurtsi wrote:

I really like this post.

jep

Great post there!

For me, the fastest ways to improve were:

1. learning that there is a dash button
2. fixing the universal offset in the options (from -12 to 9)
3. playing the maps you barely cannot play yet, then move on to play the map you actually want to beat
4. trying to catch fruits at the CENTER of your character (it is very rare that you have to adjust this to catch fruits at the very edge of your plate while dashing or hyperdashing)
5. listen more to hitsounds and how they play with the music
6. Challenge yourself, but you are allowed to make mistakes at any stage of the game. Everyone makes them.
7. mapping your own maps. This will let you see a map from a mappers perspective, understanding certain patterns faster.
8. play more
9. Enjoy the game

My definition of improving means to constantly play better at harder maps, usually indicated by the star difficulty. It does not necessarily mean to gain a lot of pp, while this IS a side effect of it.


Some comments on star difficulties:

Reaching the star difficulties 1-5 is often highly dependent of AR increase, so you might focus on reading these ARs here. Reading higher ARs becomes somewhat exponentially more difficult though, that's why it is MUCH harder to read AR10 than it is to read AR9 and almost impossible to play AR10 with DT or NC. Be aware that it will take you approximately exponentially more time to read the next highest AR (at least that is the case for me).

While it is indeed possible to play 2* and even 3* maps without dashing, you should learn to dash at these difficulties. Dashing should be used when it is impossible to reach a fruit with normal speed. Dashing usually emphasizes a strong note in a song or the first note after a slightly longer break so you might focus on hearing "loud" notes here.

3* maps introduce Hyperdashs. Don't be afraid of the Hyperdash, just act as if they are a normal dash, with even more space between fruits. You do NOT need to move your fingers faster, only your eyes! Eventually you will get used to the Hyperdash-Speed. Note that at high star difficulties of 6* and above it is rare but possible that you should not use dash at Hyperdashs.

4* and 5* maps do have more and more Hyperdashs and Dashs, more notes and faster patterns. Being able to read at these ARs gives away most of the difficulty though.

5* is often the highest difficulty of a map set. To improve further, you have to learn a lot of specific patterns like hyperdash-hyperdash-hyperdash jumps, fast zigzag-wiggles, hyperdash-doNotMove-hyperdashs or streams. To make this even worse, your life points will reach zero if you do not hit these patterns or even one note at some 6*+. Try to understand which notes are emphasized by the mapper in the specific map to move accordingly, hitsounds being a great help there. Focus on learning specific patterns which seem to occur in a lot of maps by playing maps which do have a lot of this one type of pattern in them. From now on, higher star difficulties basically just mean harder patterns. Also, try to follow each fruit with your eyes if you miss a passage constantly (at higher levels it is often sufficient to estimate where and when a fruit will appear by just listening to the song).

Eventually it becomes easier to determine how "sharp" a hyperdash or a normal fruit is mapped. That is, how much time you do have after catching the fruit to move on to the next one. Speaking about split-seconds and different hyperdash speeds here. This will give away a very own emphasizing for each mapper on each different map and understanding their way of seeing a song in this certain way lets me enjoy this game.



Some more comments

While aiming for a FC with 99~100% accuracy is great for pp, set your personal goals and get satisfaction if you reach them instead. For example it should not be a personal goal to FC your first 6* map ever. It should be a goal to beat a 6* map first. Getting better leads to more map-specific goals like getting a Top50-Score, the first score with specific mods or even hitting specific patterns in a certain map.

4 hours a day is a lot. I usually play less. I hope.

Low latency is GREAT, but you absolutely can beat 8* maps with a notebook keyboard.

HR is NOT just an increase in AR and smaller circle size. Most difficulty comes from changed distances or patterns, thus leading to an unintended different emphasizing of the song, most likely not fitting the song as good as before.

LyronXXX wrote:

Great post there!

For me, the fastest ways to improve were:

1. learning that there is a dash button
2. fixing the universal offset in the options (from -12 to 9)
3. playing the maps you barely cannot play yet, then move on to play the map you actually want to beat
4. trying to catch fruits at the CENTER of your character (it is very rare that you have to adjust this to catch fruits at the very edge of your plate while dashing or hyperdashing)
5. listen more to hitsounds and how they play with the music
6. Challenge yourself, but you are allowed to make mistakes at any stage of the game. Everyone makes them.
7. mapping your own maps. This will let you see a map from a mappers perspective, understanding certain patterns faster.
8. play more
9. Enjoy the game

My definition of improving means to constantly play better at harder maps, usually indicated by the star difficulty. It does not necessarily mean to gain a lot of pp, while this IS a side effect of it.


Some comments on star difficulties:

Reaching the star difficulties 1-5 is often highly dependent of AR increase, so you might focus on reading these ARs here. Reading higher ARs becomes somewhat exponentially more difficult though, that's why it is MUCH harder to read AR10 than it is to read AR9 and almost impossible to play AR10 with DT or NC. Be aware that it will take you approximately exponentially more time to read the next highest AR (at least that is the case for me).

While it is indeed possible to play 2* and even 3* maps without dashing, you should learn to dash at these difficulties. Dashing should be used when it is impossible to reach a fruit with normal speed. Dashing usually emphasizes a strong note in a song or the first note after a slightly longer break so you might focus on hearing "loud" notes here.

3* maps introduce Hyperdashs. Don't be afraid of the Hyperdash, just act as if they are a normal dash, with even more space between fruits. You do NOT need to move your fingers faster, only your eyes! Eventually you will get used to the Hyperdash-Speed. Note that at high star difficulties of 6* and above it is rare but possible that you should not use dash at Hyperdashs.

4* and 5* maps do have more and more Hyperdashs and Dashs, more notes and faster patterns. Being able to read at these ARs gives away most of the difficulty though.

5* is often the highest difficulty of a map set. To improve further, you have to learn a lot of specific patterns like hyperdash-hyperdash-hyperdash jumps, fast zigzag-wiggles, hyperdash-doNotMove-hyperdashs or streams. To make this even worse, your life points will reach zero if you do not hit these patterns or even one note at some 6*+. Try to understand which notes are emphasized by the mapper in the specific map to move accordingly, hitsounds being a great help there. Focus on learning specific patterns which seem to occur in a lot of maps by playing maps which do have a lot of this one type of pattern in them. From now on, higher star difficulties basically just mean harder patterns. Also, try to follow each fruit with your eyes if you miss a passage constantly (at higher levels it is often sufficient to estimate where and when a fruit will appear by just listening to the song).

Eventually it becomes easier to determine how "sharp" a hyperdash or a normal fruit is mapped. That is, how much time you do have after catching the fruit to move on to the next one. Speaking about split-seconds and different hyperdash speeds here. This will give away a very own emphasizing for each mapper on each different map and understanding their way of seeing a song in this certain way lets me enjoy this game.



Some more comments

While aiming for a FC with 99~100% accuracy is great for pp, set your personal goals and get satisfaction if you reach them instead. For example it should not be a personal goal to FC your first 6* map ever. It should be a goal to beat a 6* map first. Getting better leads to more map-specific goals like getting a Top50-Score, the first score with specific mods or even hitting specific patterns in a certain map.

4 hours a day is a lot. I usually play less. I hope.

Low latency is GREAT, but you absolutely can beat 8* maps with a notebook keyboard.

HR is NOT just an increase in AR and smaller circle size. Most difficulty comes from changed distances or patterns, thus leading to an unintended different emphasizing of the song, most likely not fitting the song as good as before.

Thanks for your additional tips! I highly approve your feedback.

I'll share more experience with my time playing to improve.

1. Know your comfort zone. In my case, 5.5~7 star maps would be my comfort zone to play. Meaning 5.5 star and below maps can be easily FCed with first try and not challenging anymore and does not worth pp and 7 stars is the maximum because I can pass most of the maps with either S or A rank in this range.
2. Using No Fail mod for maps I can't pass yet because of diff spike but I can get S or A rank.
3. Focusing to catch red fruits. Because most of the time, red fruit miss occurs and insta-fail will happen.
4. Playing any AR. I noticed that playing on the same AR every time loses my reading with lower AR. That means it is important to play comfortably with either AR10, AR9, AR8 etc.
5. Watching how other people play the map. This will give you idea how to execute a certain pattern.
6. Training how to Edge Dash and predicting when it occurs. Some maps uses edge dash to emphasize a sound so it is important to train Edge Dash.
7. Playing Converts. This is very helpful to train weird patterns.

Nice post, but one correction: ExGon cannot be beaten.