Playstyles

Within the Mouse-only playstyle there are a lot of differences on how players play the game. This article tries to give an overview of those.

Clicking Styles

• Singletap/-click

You click 1/2 patterns (usually called "jumps") with a primary key (usually M1) and alternate with both keys (M1 and M2) for 1/4 patterns (usally called "streams").

• Hybrid

Hybrid players do not have a pure clicking style. They change their clicking style depending on the map and pattern.

• Perfect Full Alt

"Alt" stands for alternation. You perfectly altenate between pressing M1 and M2 for all patterns in the map. This is sometimes just called "Full Alt". The prefix "Perfect" is added to distinguish it more clearly from hybrid styles.

Singletapping is said to be the easiest playstyle to learn and to get good accuarcy with. Perfect Full Alt is on the opposite end, being harder to learn and achieve high accuarcy with.

All three of these clicking styles are extremely viable and there is no widely considered "best" playstyles as all clicking styles are represented by at least one top MOON player.

Mouse Grips

In the First-Person-Shooter (FPS) community the following naming convention is widely used:

You count the amount of fingers you place on the left side, top side and right side of your mouse and write the three numbers down in order. For example "122" means, thumb on the left side of your mouse, index and middle finger on top, ring and pinky fingers on the right side.

The most common grips are:

• 122 (clicking M1 and M2 with index and middle fingers)

It is by far the most used mouse grip. It is also the MOON equivalent of the "index middle" keyboard playstyle.

• 131 (clicking M1 and M2 with index and ring fingers )

It is far less used than 122. It is also the MOON equivalent of the "index ring" keyboard playstyle.

The main reason why 131 is used in FPS Games is that you do not need to take a finger of M1 or M2 to access your mouse wheel which can be very important in games like Apex Legends with heavy mouse wheel usage. Since osu! does not have such use case, 122 is by far the more dominant grip style.

Playstyles beyond Mouse-only

• Clickx

Instead of using M1 and M2, Clickx players use only one mouse button and one keyboard key.

It is the mouse equivalent of the tapx playstyle.

• MOON hybrid styles

Examples of MOON hybrid styles include

• Keyboard for streams, MOON for jumps
• Clickx for streams, MOON for jumps

For further reading consider looking at the osu!wiki. It features a whole list of other playstyles including non mouse playstyles and playstles for the other gamemodes.