I'm going to go on a little rant here because I see such stupid advice such as 'go improve your snapping' or 'go improve your flow aim'. There's no such thing! Whenever I try argue my point, people misinterpret everything I'm saying so I'm going to try lay out the facts in a more clear and organised manner so hopefully there's a lot less confusion.
To start with, let's discuss reading. Everyone seems to think reading is only knowing what to do (for example). That's wrong. Reading is knowing what to do and doing it. Besides, if reading was only about knowing what to do, then unless you're playing something like this it wouldn't be that important a skill since it's generally straightforward. People tend to confuse that second part as being aim but it's not, it's part of reading. Aim is simply your ability to move your cursor from point A to point B within certain time constraints with a certain margin of error (circle size). We aren't even talking about even playing a map yet. Let me illustrate with everyone's favorite pattern, the square.
A square is a very basic pattern that we can all recognize immediately upon seeing it. There is no issue here in knowing what to do. Even a monkey could look at it and know what to do. But when many newer players try to execute this pattern, they tend to either draw some awkward looking circle, slightly miss one of the circles or forget about one of the circles altogether. Is that a problem with aim then? Well if you were to give the same player each jump individually (A -> B, B -> C, C -> D), they would tend to be able to hit it no problem. It's only when the circles are put into that sort of shape do problems arise. Then where do does the problem lie? In the reading!!! It doesn't matter if you know what to do if you can't actually do it. It's like understanding a language but not being able to speak it yourself.
Now we have that basic definition of what reading really is out of the way, let's get to the crux of the problem. Elitists seems to think that you have to train to move your cursor in a straight line and pause slightly on the circle when doing jumps (snap aim). So to begin with, there's no real need to train specifically to move your cursor in as straight a line as possible. If you read correctly, then it's automatically part of the process. I've written a guide on how to read correctly before but in short, to read correctly you simply just look directly at the next circle you need to hit. For example, if you have a jump from circle 1 to circle 2, then to read it correctly, you would first look directly at circle 1, tap, then move your attention to circle 2, tap. In this process, all you have to do with your cursor is move it from circle 1 to circle 2. Automatically without even any training for it, you'll move your cursor in as efficient a path as physically possible between both points. And that efficient path is.... a straight line. Magic.
Obviously, it's difficult to get a straight line in a reality because there's a lot of other variables in play to throw you off. Again, I outlined all this in my guide but as an example, you look too quickly at the next circle you need to hit before you're done with the current one causing you to swing your straight line into a more curved shape which causes you to miss the current circle.
Now onto the pause. Everyone pauses on the next circle, you don't have to train for that either. If you were to slow down the map enough, you'll have ample time to pause your cursor. The only times you don't pause your cursor on a circle is when the map is simply just too fast for you or you're playing something where pausing really doesn't make any sense at all (like on streams). The basic remedy for this just to get used to playing faster maps (not in terms of finger speed though they tend to require that anyway).
Now onto 'flow aim'. It boggles my minds that people think something like 'flow aim' even exists and it's even used on https://syrin.me/pp+/ as a skill! What the hell does having better flow aim even mean? Does it mean that you can move your cursor at a more consistent speed compared to everyone else? Or does it mean that you can move your cursor in a more 'fluid' manner? Reading streams is done in the exact same way as reading everything else, you look directly at each circle as you're about to hit it. Since most streams you see tend to have very small gaps in between each circle, you're basically drawing lots of tiny straight lines and the overall outcome makes it look more fluid or curved.
I'm going make this last point nice a bold so everyone can see it. I'm not saying aim doesn't matter. Aim is important in the sense that you need to a have certain level of ability to actually even clear whatever you're trying to play. It doesn't matter how good your reading abilities are if you can't aim. That being said though, most people tend to have the problem of poor reading ability but higher aim skills. That's why you get so many people complaining about their inconsistencies and why they pull their cursor away too early or whatnot. It's reading, not because of 'flow' or 'snap' aim or whatever nonsense you want to call them.
I think I got through all the points I wanted to go through but if you still have criticism, I don't mind lending an ear.
Rant end.
Common criticisms
I feel like a bit of a broken record as the same criticisms of what I am suggesting keeping coming up so I'm just going to give a breakdown of the problems here.
1. Snap movement is for jumps and flow for streams...
I will admit that the title of this post is a little misleading... I appreciate that snap and flow movements are apt descriptions of what the movements look like but my argument is that they aren't specific skills you can develop.
2. You can know what to do and still miss because of aim...
Yes, I even have mentioned this multiple times as well. Here is a flow chart I made to illustrate what I mean by what causes misses:
As you go down the flow chart, you can see that the aim component is necessary. It's the question "Can I consistently hit each individual jump in this pattern?" That's the way to test whether or not you have the aim skill required to execute the pattern or not. If you still miss even if you can consistently hit each jump individually, then it's because of poor reading. This poor reading is not in the knowing what to do but in the actual doing of things. This is what I was elucidating to in my description of the player struggling with a square.
3. Just because you have good aim to do jumps doesn't mean you can also aim streams too...
This is true but not because of specifically being better at snap aim or flow aim. Though the basic methodology for reading both jumps and streams are the same, the skills aren't exactly transferable between the two. The timing aspects as well as the spacing between circles are completely different. You have to practice both to get good at both. The flowchart given earlier can also give you the same insight for streams also (just change the 2nd question to "Can I consistently hit 2 consecutive circles within this stream?").
To start with, let's discuss reading. Everyone seems to think reading is only knowing what to do (for example). That's wrong. Reading is knowing what to do and doing it. Besides, if reading was only about knowing what to do, then unless you're playing something like this it wouldn't be that important a skill since it's generally straightforward. People tend to confuse that second part as being aim but it's not, it's part of reading. Aim is simply your ability to move your cursor from point A to point B within certain time constraints with a certain margin of error (circle size). We aren't even talking about even playing a map yet. Let me illustrate with everyone's favorite pattern, the square.
A square is a very basic pattern that we can all recognize immediately upon seeing it. There is no issue here in knowing what to do. Even a monkey could look at it and know what to do. But when many newer players try to execute this pattern, they tend to either draw some awkward looking circle, slightly miss one of the circles or forget about one of the circles altogether. Is that a problem with aim then? Well if you were to give the same player each jump individually (A -> B, B -> C, C -> D), they would tend to be able to hit it no problem. It's only when the circles are put into that sort of shape do problems arise. Then where do does the problem lie? In the reading!!! It doesn't matter if you know what to do if you can't actually do it. It's like understanding a language but not being able to speak it yourself.
Now we have that basic definition of what reading really is out of the way, let's get to the crux of the problem. Elitists seems to think that you have to train to move your cursor in a straight line and pause slightly on the circle when doing jumps (snap aim). So to begin with, there's no real need to train specifically to move your cursor in as straight a line as possible. If you read correctly, then it's automatically part of the process. I've written a guide on how to read correctly before but in short, to read correctly you simply just look directly at the next circle you need to hit. For example, if you have a jump from circle 1 to circle 2, then to read it correctly, you would first look directly at circle 1, tap, then move your attention to circle 2, tap. In this process, all you have to do with your cursor is move it from circle 1 to circle 2. Automatically without even any training for it, you'll move your cursor in as efficient a path as physically possible between both points. And that efficient path is.... a straight line. Magic.
Obviously, it's difficult to get a straight line in a reality because there's a lot of other variables in play to throw you off. Again, I outlined all this in my guide but as an example, you look too quickly at the next circle you need to hit before you're done with the current one causing you to swing your straight line into a more curved shape which causes you to miss the current circle.
Now onto the pause. Everyone pauses on the next circle, you don't have to train for that either. If you were to slow down the map enough, you'll have ample time to pause your cursor. The only times you don't pause your cursor on a circle is when the map is simply just too fast for you or you're playing something where pausing really doesn't make any sense at all (like on streams). The basic remedy for this just to get used to playing faster maps (not in terms of finger speed though they tend to require that anyway).
Now onto 'flow aim'. It boggles my minds that people think something like 'flow aim' even exists and it's even used on https://syrin.me/pp+/ as a skill! What the hell does having better flow aim even mean? Does it mean that you can move your cursor at a more consistent speed compared to everyone else? Or does it mean that you can move your cursor in a more 'fluid' manner? Reading streams is done in the exact same way as reading everything else, you look directly at each circle as you're about to hit it. Since most streams you see tend to have very small gaps in between each circle, you're basically drawing lots of tiny straight lines and the overall outcome makes it look more fluid or curved.
I'm going make this last point nice a bold so everyone can see it. I'm not saying aim doesn't matter. Aim is important in the sense that you need to a have certain level of ability to actually even clear whatever you're trying to play. It doesn't matter how good your reading abilities are if you can't aim. That being said though, most people tend to have the problem of poor reading ability but higher aim skills. That's why you get so many people complaining about their inconsistencies and why they pull their cursor away too early or whatnot. It's reading, not because of 'flow' or 'snap' aim or whatever nonsense you want to call them.
I think I got through all the points I wanted to go through but if you still have criticism, I don't mind lending an ear.
Rant end.
Common criticisms
I feel like a bit of a broken record as the same criticisms of what I am suggesting keeping coming up so I'm just going to give a breakdown of the problems here.
1. Snap movement is for jumps and flow for streams...
I will admit that the title of this post is a little misleading... I appreciate that snap and flow movements are apt descriptions of what the movements look like but my argument is that they aren't specific skills you can develop.
2. You can know what to do and still miss because of aim...
Yes, I even have mentioned this multiple times as well. Here is a flow chart I made to illustrate what I mean by what causes misses:
As you go down the flow chart, you can see that the aim component is necessary. It's the question "Can I consistently hit each individual jump in this pattern?" That's the way to test whether or not you have the aim skill required to execute the pattern or not. If you still miss even if you can consistently hit each jump individually, then it's because of poor reading. This poor reading is not in the knowing what to do but in the actual doing of things. This is what I was elucidating to in my description of the player struggling with a square.
3. Just because you have good aim to do jumps doesn't mean you can also aim streams too...
This is true but not because of specifically being better at snap aim or flow aim. Though the basic methodology for reading both jumps and streams are the same, the skills aren't exactly transferable between the two. The timing aspects as well as the spacing between circles are completely different. You have to practice both to get good at both. The flowchart given earlier can also give you the same insight for streams also (just change the 2nd question to "Can I consistently hit 2 consecutive circles within this stream?").
