OverSky's Mouse Guide-How to improve your mouse speed - GGGLHF WarCraft3 WC3 WC3L DotA RPG

Hello everyone!

This article is a revision/extension of an article I wrote a couple months ago about the things I have learned from switching from using my mouse with my right hand to my left hand as well as being someone who strives for perfection in all controllable aspect of the things I try to do well.

I did also actually write an article about switching handedness itself, shortly after the date I switched, December 2nd, 2008. If you are interested in that, feel free to check it out here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessag...?topic_id=83501

I'm sure many of you know me for the high definition first person videos I make on the RTS I am currently playing to practice for SC2. In the interest of establishing credibility, I am going to quickly ask you to take a look at the first 5 seconds of the introduction to one of my videos, which is a mouse accuracy game. You can find one of my videos here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Yfz_eJ38E

If you are interested in trying out that game yourself simply go to the video comments and you'll find a link.

I should acknowledge that a mouse accuracy game is not the same as an RTS, I am very aware of that and in fact do not use the same accuracy that I am best at on that game but more on that later. It was VERY helpful while I was figuring things out and is still a great way to improve you mousing speed.

Alright, with all of that said, let's get started!

To begin, I'm going to list the four things that can affect you while you're using your mouse, this will also outline the 4 sections of the article.

1. The mouse
2. Arm positioning
3. The mousepad
4. Mouse sensitivity

We're going to assume things like tracking and DPI are sufficient since those are kind of obvious. Also omitted is the possibility of mouse acceleration, this should be off at all times. Not surprisingly it's just too hard to be consistent with any acceleration.

(Note: Acceleration is when the sensitivity varies depending on the speed at which your mouse is moving from point A to point B) - In modern OS's it's called enhanced pointer precision, turn this off.

The most important category is the last one, sensitivity but if you are doing something very wrong in any one of these categories it can have a hugely negative impact on how good you are with your mouse.

On to our first category.. The mouse!

I'll start off by stating the easiest things you can look for to take a mouse out of ones that you are considering.

The first thing is cordless mice. Cordless mice are bad simply because they require batteries which make them too heavy and they are often weighted heavily towards the back which makes moving your mouse laterally in a straight line very difficult. I have also heard there can be problems simply due to them being cordless and thus having less than perfect communication with your computer.

Avoid mice that have buttons that you may accidentally hit, this is obvious but there are a surprising amount of mice out there that have this problem. Even if the button you hit does nothing, it will certainly throw you off.

Again it's not too big a deal what mouse you use unless you are using one with a major flaw.

You should make sure of three things when you are using your mouse and that is that:
A) You are not resting the weight of your palm on the mouse, you should be using a finger tip grip style.

B) Your fingers are not dragging along your mousepad, if they are try to pick them up and if you can't do it after a week of trying it's probably time for a new mouse. The friction of your fingers on the pad will not be consistent thus giving you an unknown variable to contend with when mastering your mouse which is bad for obvious reasons.

C) In your default playing position, there is no direction that the weight of your arm favors due to your mouse. Some mice have your hand rotated slightly which can give your arms weight a favoring towards one direction. This happens more often due to poor arm positioning but make sure it's not your mouses fault too.

I'm now going to review the good and bad things about 7 mice, some of the reviews may be short or seem unnecessary but I think it will give me an opportunity to just start talking about the features of mice and will help me remember to mention things I may of otherwise forgotten.

Important:
For reasons I'll discuss later, vertical mouse movement is extremely important when picking out a mouse, it has a huge influence over how sensitive your mouse should be.

Having said that, one thing I'm going to talk about in my review of each mouse is its shape, all mice will have either an oval shape or an hourglass shape. I don't want to go into too much detail about this,(it's not hard to figure out the reasoning for what I'm saying on your own once you fully understand what I've written here) but this causes basically 3 levels of potential vertical movement for any given mouse.

1. Lowest possible vertical movement - This happens when the vertex of your thumb is inside the nook of an hourglass shaped mouse.

2. Average possible vertical movement - This happens when your mouse has an oval shape and the vertex of your thumb is below the vertex of the oval.

3. Highest possible vertical movement - This happens when the vertex of your thumb is aligned with the vertex of the bottom portion of an hourglass mouse(common) OR when the vertex of your thumb is parallel to the vertex of an oval shaped mouse(uncommon).

Alright I hope that's easy enough to understand.

The first mouse I'm going to review is the..

Logitech Mini Optical
As I'm sure a lot of you know, most of the top progamers in Korea use the Logitech Mini Optical. Now I'm not saying that makes it the best automatically but it truly is one of the best options.

It's a really good weight and has a very centered feel to it. Another great thing about this mouse is the buttons are very solid and just feel good to push. They also don't go that far down and it's really easy to perform repeated clicks quickly.

The one major flaw with this mouse is the cord is stiffer than a 13 year old in a stripclub. That is the reason you will find every progamer who uses this mouse also uses something to hold the cord in such a way that will afford them adequate slack so that the mouse doesn't pull itself in any direction.

This mouse is an oval shaped mouse with a center that is too high to align the vertices of your thumb and the mouse, using this mouse will give you average possible vertical movement.

The next mouse on the list is the..

Logitech LX3

This mouse bother me.

It looks like it might be ok but this mouse fails terribly in all categories.

It's too long, which restricts downward vertical movement. It's hourglass shape is top heavy which puts your thumb right in the nook of it which restricts upward vertical movement. The "grip" on the side (which is normally a feature I like) is actually more slippery than regular plastic. The mouse 3 button is incredibly hard to push(this button has a valid function in WC3 and SC2). The Mouse1 and Mouse2 buttons look solid but are actually pretty flakey and make noise when you tap them but not hard enough to click.

Hopefully enough said.. This mouse sucks, period.

The next mouse on the list is the..

Logitech MX518

This is the only non symmetrical mouse I'm reviewing and I'm doing it because this mouse has some things I really like about it.

The first thing that rocks about this mouse is the buttons, this mouse definitely has one of the nicest feeling buttons out of all the ones I'm reviewing.

Generally speaking, I have a problem with mice that use only one piece of plastic for the shell and the buttons but this one is definitely the exception.

The grip on this mouse is pretty good also.

However, not only is this mouse too big but it also is ergonomically designed to put the vertex of your thumb in the nook. This mouse was clearly designed to have people move their whole arm to move it and that is straight up just not how you play RTS.

The next mouse is the..

Logitech LS1
This mouse is pretty similar in size and shape to the Logitech Mini Optical but fails in many categories where the Mini succeeds.

The buttons suck, it uses one piece of plastic which is almost synonymous with loose and ugly feeling buttons. The mouse 3 button is also very stiff.

The grip/sides of this mouse just don't make sense, there's two black bars that look like they are the area they intended to have contacting your fingers but they are slippery and too high so they just do nothing.

This mouse has great grip. This mouse still sucks.

The next mouse is the..

Random $15 mouse with some good features

Ok I probably don't need to review this one but I just wanted to point out that even though this company probably put no thought into this mouse they actually did a lot better than most Logitech mice.

The grip is awesome, the important part of the shape gives you great vertical movement.

Unfortunately this mouse is a bit too long, has one piece buttons and you can kind of tell you got what you paid for. it's really light though which is great.

The final two mice are the..

Razer Salmosa and the Razer Salmosa Asian Edition

These are the best RTS mice on the market today.

In addition to not having any major flaws in the sections I've been discussing, they also have by far the smoothest mice feet of any other mouse out there. By a lot.

You guys already know what I think is important so rather than tell you how great these mice are in those areas I'm just going to tell you the differences between them and also a couple things that could be improved.

My only major complaint is that there's no grip and the plastic they use that touches your thumb/pinky is actually pretty slippery.

However, this is countered well by the perfect shape this mouse has. When you use this mouse your fingers have perfect support and so they have no reason to want to go anywhere.

The thinner frame of the smaller one combined with its shortness gives you quite a bit more vertical movement which again is extremely important as I'll discuss in the sensitivity section.

The one thing better about the larger one is it has nicer feeling buttons, although this may not be true anymore as I got my asian edition one very early, before the design was final I believe.

As for which one I think you should use out of the two.. I'll leave that up to you.

My honest opinion is that the smaller one will be better for most people.

Alright that's all for the section about mice, as you probably guessed, I use the smaller Salmosa and I ordered two more from Singapore yesterday. I may update this thread with how the buttons are when they arrive.

Ok what's next..

Arm Positioning

Alright, for arm positioning, above all things there is one thing you MUST avoid and it is something I mentioned in the last section.

You cannot under any circumstances allow your mouse arm to favor movement towards any direction. If you're unsure of what I mean just sit far from desk with your hand on your mouse and notice that the weight of your army and the bodies desire to return to its natural position is pulling your arm towards you.

There can also be lateral tugging if your are rotated for any reason or if your arm is pointed either right or left instead of going straight from your shoulder to the desk. Your mouse arm should be straight, parallel to the armrest on your computer chair if you have them.

Ok so what can you do to make sure there is no tugging towards your body?

It basically depends on the height of your table, if it is exactly parallel with or just below the height of your elbow then you can just sit up straight and let your hands rest on the table without any support on your elbow but make sure you are sitting close enough that your arms are being dragged towards you.

If your table is above your elbows which is usually the case, you should either rest your elbows on your armrests(preferable if possible) or be pushed in towards your computer table with your whole arm resting on the desk.

Having your whole arm on your table can be bad depending on the size of your arms and whether you think the unavoidable arm friction variability will affect your consistency.

I should mention that I don't think any progamers play with their whole arms on the table but doing so is still much better than possible dragging.

Just remember, the key is to have a natural position that leaves your arm completely at rest, and be able to maintain this feeling throughout the game as well as keep consistent friction between your arm and any surfaces it is touching.

And now forrr..

Mousepads

You need a low friction mousepad.

High friction mousepads should only be used for FPS gamers need to move their whole arm while playing.
Razor markets high friction mousepads as "control pads" designed for RTS gamers and this is just the opposite of what is effective.

Beyond that it's not a big deal what mousepad you use.

I personally use this:
http://www.steelseries.com/us/products/sur.../sx/information

I wouldn't trade this mousepad for any other in the world (which is good because it was like 70$).

Also a lot of people think they have low friction mousepads when they don't.. the destructor is often called a low friction pad but it's not. Make sure you've experienced a really smooth pad before you make your decision.

Also a mousepad is something really easy to dismiss because of unfamiliarity, you need to get used to something before you can have an opinion about it.

Mouse Sensitivity!

Ok this is the big one.
Mouse sensitivity is not only the most important, it is also the one with the biggest misconceptions. People know progamers have high apm, they know progamers are fast, you can't really blame anyone for assuming they have mastered the highest sensitivities humans have ever conceived.. but this is the opposite of what they do and it is not at all what allows for the highest potential of a player.

I would say probably 90% of people reading this need to lower their sensitivity and probably over 30% need to cut it literally in half.

There are 3 ways to use your mouse.

Move your whole arm:

This is what you do when you're playing FPS games such as CS etc, you need the sensitivity very very low so you can make all the important shots.

I once asked a top fps player at a LAN what the hell he does when there is someone behind him and he simply replied "I don't let anyone get behind me" They sacrifice being able to do a 180 quickly to just have perfect accuracy with short movements.

This emphasizes a point that you can NOT be as accurate with high sensitivity as you can with low sensitivity.

What he had is lower sensitivity than you want when playing RTS because you still need to get to the minimap quickly and often.

Move just your fingers:

This is what I'm sure a lot of you do, if you are able to do this and play an RTS, your sensitivity is simply too high.

I did this for years. It sucks and the reason people put up with it is because they think it allows for the highest potential of a player and then they just get used to it and if they ever go down they dismiss the consideration of trying to for more than 30 seconds because they feel restricted.

This isn't a preference thing, it's just bad to have high sensitivity.. Hand eye coordination potential works basically the same throughout all humans and though you can be a bit more or less sensitivity than some other guy you should be pretty low generally speaking.

There is a right way and a wrong way. You can disagree with what I'm saying at face value and I'll try to convince you over the next few paragraphs but if you dismiss it you are destined for mediocrity.

Move your wrist and your fingers:

Ok, this is where it's at! You use your wrists for large lateral movement and your fingers at the same time to pinpoint the location you want to click. The wrist doesn't help with vertical movements much but luckily modern screens aren't as big vertically as they are horizontally. This is how almost all progamers play, this without a doubt is what you should be practicing to maximize your potential as an RTS gamer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roek7iHyCGc

Look at his wrist go, Nada has VERY low sensitivity and has one of the highest actions per minute out of all progamers.

Important:

Ok so as promised I'm going to go into why vertical mouse movement is such an important factor when choosing you mouse and sensitivity.

The thing you must first accept when going into this topic is that the lower your sensitivity is, the more fast and accurate you will be when microing, or just clicking on any point on your screen unless of course your hand cannot physically reach the place where you are trying to click.

This is something I have spent many hours learning and many hours verifying for myself. It's not really all that surprising when you are trying to figure out why.

The underlying reasons for this are simply that:

A) The difference in time it takes to move the mouse a half of an inch compared to a full inch is almost nothing.

B) The lower your sensitivity is, the greater margin of error you have for moving your cursor from point A to point B with reliable consistency. This is true for both small targets(a small unit or a minimap location) and big targets(a building).

A big difference between clicking a minimap location or a building is that for a building you will not need to verify that your mouse is in the correct location before clicking.

For clicking on a building it is something I call 'snap clicking', basically any target that is so large that you know you will click on it without using your eyes to check, it is something you can do with your peripheral vision, you do not need to focus on the building to click on it.

For clicking on a minimap location you have to be using your eyes to verify the click, you will focus on the location and then click on when you are right on it(OR you can click somewhere close on the minimap and then move the cursor to where you want it, but essentially it is the same) *Note: The second way of minimap click I just mentioned has the added benefit of using your peripheral vision to find your location.

Ok so given that lower mouse sensitivity is better for fast and accurate clicks, what is the threshold that keeps us from using the lowest sensitivity available?

This is obviously the bounds/limitations of what our hands can reach without moving the arm.
Now simply because humans have wrists that allow for much greater lateral movement than or fingers afford us vertical movements, it can be concluded that minimum vertical movements are the deciding factor when choosing a sensitivity. This is also the reason why a mouse that affords you a high degree of vertical movement is so important, because it allows you to have your mouse sensitivity that much lower.

Alright! I think that's everything I wanted to talk about, in case I've inspired you to re-examine the aspects of your mouse I will write down what I think the order in which I think you should do that.

1. Arm Positioning - The order of this first one doesn't matter too much but if you can you should
start with it just so you are more confident in the conclusions you come to afterwards.

2. The Mouse - This is the factor that depends on other things the least.

3. Sensitivity - This one depends almost only on your mouse.

4. Mousepad - This one depends on your mouse/sensitivity, it can also be said that it is the one with the most room for preference. I prefer a very slick mousepad because there is no grabbing feeling from your pad when you are changing directions.

Also for greater control over your mousse sensitivity which helps a lot with gradual changes I highly suggest this program: http://download.cnet.com/Mouse-Speed-Switc...4-10880983.html
It's free, it's tiny and it won't ask you to install any toolbars.. it's main purpose is on the fly sensitivity changing but it also gives you twice as many option to choose from when picking your sensitivity as windows does.

If you have questions please send me a message on either youtube or facebook, my youtube profile is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/PerfectionistEmblem my name is Toby Svelnis.

One last thing I wanted to mention is that if any of you are planning on playing SC2 when it comes out you should definitely take a closer look at my youtube profile page, I am planning on having HD FPVODS with commentary out during the first week of beta. I am currently doing the same thing for WC3 but you can certainly take a look at my work and see if you think you'll be interested in them when I switch over to SC2. If you think you'll like it be sure to subscribe and tell anyone you think might enjoy them!

This post was edited by a forum moderator @ 18 hours ago

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