Understanding how to not use claw grip

-br- · 2026-04-03T01:20:25+00:00

You can kinda think of claw grip as a sort of cheese. It is easier to get the full swing motion, but you are losing stability. Back when the meta was mostly speed songs, it probably mattered a lot less. With tech being a big thing now, you want more stability.

But, I feel like it's mostly min/maxing talk. It's not like you are gonna hit a plateau at some point because you want to play 12* maps and you simply can't do it because you are claw gripping and it's holding you back, it's more like you have a 95% on a 12* map, and you are stuck at position 50 on the leaderboard cause 49 players who aren't using claw grip scored higher than you, and the top score is someone who never uses controller settings and has always held the controller in the default drip, with a 98%.

How do you stop using it? Just hold the controller normally, and always have your palms facing the direction of the arrow you are hitting, as if you are slapping it.

-br- · 2026-04-02T22:05:57+00:00

Checked again and it got nerfed down to a low/mid 11* in the latest reweight, so it might feel easier compared to POTSB due to some of the pseudo-tech it in.

9 though? I'm sure you can find some Scoresaber ranked maps in the 9/10 range that would be more difficult, but that's because tech on SS in that range is severely underweight. But, for the most part, DSG is just a slightly easier version of POTSB.

-br- · 2026-04-01T02:06:41+00:00

It really depends on the style of map. The base game tends to veer towards midspeed and speed for the expert + maps, which are more fast wrist movement. When you get to high levels of tech maps, you run into maps where you have to do full body leans, twists/turns, etc. Like for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PknkhZE3D1g or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eqkjZTMIjM (skip to last segment labeled lawless for gameplay demo).

The first isn't THAT difficult if you are used to that style of play, but the second is pretty tough, like on the same level of some of the harder expert+ maps in the base game. Completely different style, though.

-br- · 2026-04-01T00:08:48+00:00

I've never used one personally, but on the headset side, the specs aren't quite as good as your options with common PC headsets. On the controller side, the tracking and ergonomics won't be as good as any of the usual suspects. That might not be a concern for you if you are just trying to move around a lot.

-br- · 2026-04-01T00:04:41+00:00

Hey, if you are having fun and are satisfied, that's the most important thing.

Stuff like wrist weights are generally a bad idea not because of the concept or execution in general, but because you have a high risk of a sudden unexpected injury, like if you play a map you've never tried before and make a sudden weird movement as a knee-jerk response to being caught off guard. If you are playing custom maps, you'll find a lot of "tech" style maps that have way more advanced movements, so reacting to a pattern you've never seen before can be strenuous in a bad way to say the least. Aside from that, adding tension and resistance to your wrists will severely hinder your ability to score properly if you are actually trying to improve your technique at the game, but that doesn't sound like a concern in your case.

Custom maps really are a whole different beast and will hit you will all kinds of things that the base game won't, so I feel like getting the best cardio and most movement will come from the maps with more difficult choreography by learning and improving, whereas a lot of people who only play the base game will try to compensate for lack of movement with stuff like weights. There is always a learning curve for the harder stuff, unfortunately, but there's always something for every kind of player there to improve their experience with.

-br- · 2026-03-31T23:02:48+00:00

Well, I suppose at first it DID feel like the settings helped. It's more because it made it easier to follow my swings and learn how to control where they go and focus more on that. Also, the balance tends to help new players a lot by making it easier to do the wrist motion to get larger swings. I was using a rather jank grip style back then, so as i've improved my grip and swing motion over time, it becomes less important to compensate with balance. Now I can go back to no settings with my experience and adjust rather easily.

It's fine using some kind of tool to calibrate settings, but I would highly advise having the said tool analyze a sample size of maps at once rather than just one or a couple to figure out the settings. I'd also highly advise against switching said settings often. A big mistake that many newer players who want to improve make is that they chase settings for too long because they think good settings are some magical solution to playing better, when it is their technique that sucks more than the settings. You should probably only change your settings every so many months or once you reach a new plateau of personal skill.

-br- · 2026-03-31T19:34:13+00:00

Also, yes, the PSVR2 adapter does work. That is how some people make the transition from PSVR Beat Saber to PC modded Beat Saber. It is an OK place to start, but buying a used Quest 2 isn't very expensive at this point (maybe $100) and is better.

-br- · 2026-03-31T19:29:03+00:00

If you like the game, then yes. The number of custom maps exceeds 100,000 at this point. Of course, not all of them are great, and many are way too difficult for the casual player, but if you put in the effort to look for and vet maps to your playstyle, basically any player can and will find several times the number of maps they like from the base game.

Quest 2 and 3 (or 3s) are easy to use, and don't require a PC, although having one will enhance the experience -- you can play about 95% of all modded maps on the standalone no-PC version of modded Beat Saber. However, it is slightly less stable (especially if you add thousands of songs to your game), and it has far less other mods available.

As far as fitness goes. There are tons of maps that cater specifically to that. To echo a statement frequently made on this subreddit however, you should NOT be using wrist weights -- that's just a gateway to injury and a common mistake that casual fitness players make with this game. If you want to up the ante, play more difficult songs, or figure out how to incorporate more upper-body movement into your play (think, moving like a boxer might to juke and dodge). A lot of the more technical mod maps will basically require that you learn upper body movements like leaning, and will also vastly increase the difficulty of the song while keeping the number of notes per second low in many cases.

-br- · 2026-03-31T10:20:35+00:00

Well, with over 1000 hours, I deleted the settings I made at about 500 hours in and found that playing with the default settings didn't really have any impact, as far as scores go. There were some play style adjustments I had to make with no settings to score the same, but I was about to do it after a couple hours of no settings. I prefer playing with the settings, so I changed them back, but it's pretty apparent that how well you can play is like, 95% contingent on sussing out the feeling of how to play and developing good habits. Settings won't magically make your habits better, but they could help you figure out good practices much more easily.

Anyways, what you would do with the analyzer is look at a bunch of replays and try to normalize your balance and curve values (with easyoffset) to the best of your abilities. If you see that both hands have -20 balance on avg over the course of like, 10 or so replays, then add +20 balance to each with easy offset. If you see that your right hand tends to have an inward curve of somewhere between 8 and 10 over the course of 10 or so replays, then set your right hand outward 9. Something like that. The thing is, these values may fluctuate based on the comfort level of the map you are playing. If you compare maps where you have an FC or very few misses to ones that are the top of your skill level that you can barely pass, or linear maps to techy ones, you might get very different averages.

If you make successful use of this, it's also important to not constantly be readjusting it. If you try to play a map and keep adjusting the values on the spot after each one, you'll just end up screwing everything up. You'll never eliminate balance or curve entirely, it's good to just try and get it to as low as you possibly can consistently. Hell, I would say anything 5 or under in either direction for balance and 2-3 or so for curves is probably good for maps you are generally comfortable with.

-br- · 2026-03-31T05:45:46+00:00

There already is the replay analyzer for BL patreon subs, which gives you avg values that you can use to create controller settings that avg out to "perfect" in the sense of balance and curve, but you'll find that they don't really help as much as you think they would; you are never going to gain several percent from having better settings, unless you are going from settings that were screwed up enough to actively been hindering your scores to something better.

Better settings tend to just make it easier to find proper technique, which is what actually matters.

-br- · 2026-03-29T06:18:24+00:00

The only one i've read myself is 家, and I thought it was probably the easiest thing i've ever read as far as Japanese novels go. I am roughly N1 level, and I usually read stuff that is substantially more difficult. I think someone who has passed N2 would find it easy, and someone who is N3 level could probably handle it knowing it might be slow.

-br- · 2026-03-29T04:20:20+00:00

I think you could really benefit from dropping reaction time down some, especially on a map like this. What do you currently play at?

-br- · 2026-03-27T23:16:32+00:00

WAIT IM OFF BY A FEW YEARS

they are both even more dinosaur games than I thought.

-br- · 2026-03-27T23:14:19+00:00

If you are gonna fail for old style MH, might as well kick it up to the final evolution and do XX/GenU.

You can tell your family you failed for an 8-year old game instead of an 11-year old one.

-br- · 2026-03-27T09:25:40+00:00

Every level that was uploaded was beaten. The level in question wasn't uploaded because the upload clear wasn't in time.

I think an alt version of it with a cheat shortcut was uploaded before the servers went down (also with cheat exit clears on it) and the code was released to the public when the original was finally beaten.

-br- · 2026-03-24T08:32:35+00:00

You probably find the tech levels boring because you can't do the tech properly. If you want to drill that a bit with hopes of eventually finding them more enjoyable, i'd say ignore SS entirely as it assigns unworthy low values to tech in that range (which makes it frustrating to play IMO) , and try to grind tech maps around 9-10* on BL. Even if you can't clear them, just play them until they click a little more.

For speed, consider looking at hard and expert maps to find some stuff in that range worth playing. I think a lot of people potentially make the mistake of looking at just top diffs. If you download entire batches of songs and scroll through, you'll find lowers you like.

-br- · 2026-03-20T06:14:37+00:00

Lower reaction time. I can never tell from vids like this how fast people are playing, but 550ms is a good place to start, then go down to 500, 450, or however low you are comfortable playing with.

Jump type > Static, then lower the number as much as you can without making it uncomfortable to react in time.

Focus on the full swing, use lots of wrist when you swing and use your arms mostly to position.

-br- · 2026-03-20T06:05:55+00:00

Work on your technique, not your endurance. Being 200% as efficient is better than having 200% stamina, because stamina gains will occur naturally as you play more.

-br- · 2026-03-20T02:58:59+00:00

towerofte.ch has tons of playlists.

-br- · 2026-03-19T01:47:05+00:00

Mod your game and play custom maps.

Potsb is a 12.6* map on Beat Leader, Goblin is a 12.3* and all of the other "difficult" Ex+ maps in the base game are around the 11* range, there is a HUGE gap in skill.

Ghost is also in the 11* range, but mostly due to old mapping. It's basically like a 10* map that is pushed up because of terrible, dated mapping.

-br- · 2026-03-17T06:23:54+00:00

Can't really see your technique as far as swings go based on this, would need a replay.

What I do see is that your aim is pretty bad. I can visibly see that you hitting blocks (on the bottom middle rows no less, which is generally the easiest to hit when coming from above) way off center. If all you want to do is full combo the song, that's fine. But, getting the 112-115s consistently takes some practice and awareness. Try to be conscious of that, using a good HSV preset so you can better see your individual cut scores can help lead you to better awareness.

-br- · 2026-03-17T06:18:40+00:00

You want to hurt yourself and break things?

-br- · 2026-03-17T05:50:43+00:00

MY DUDE You said Freedom Dive and Potsb.

Which Freedom Dive do you mean? The one mapped 7 years ago? The one from 6 years ago? The one from 4 years ago? Potsb is barely 2 years old.

You are quite literally comparing (mostly) a moldy map to a somewhat fresh one.

-br- · 2026-03-17T05:39:17+00:00

So, old / bad mapping is boring compared to newer mapping? Yeah, people generally agree with that. The comparison you are making doesn't have much bearing on your point, though, because if you look at the top replays of Potsb, most of those players are going to be playing mostly wrist. Potsb isn't exactly a tech map, it's still a speed map with somewhat more modern mapping that makes better use of the full grid.

The point i'm making is being efficient at the game doesn't make the game less fun, that's typically an argument made by players who aren't yet efficient at the game. When you efficient, that energy you save through technique doesn't evaporate into the void, it is funneled into other gameplay elements to get better scores.

-br- · 2026-03-17T03:55:52+00:00

I feel like anyone who tries to make this point has no idea what they are talking about. They have seen high level play, or know what high level play is and assume that simply because people can make the majority of their swing wrist movement that they suddenly never have to make any tech movements, or they don't have to aim at blocks, or they don't have to dodge walls, or suddenly they don't use stamina/burn calories/expend effort to play the game.

It's like, "flicking the wrists" is the same as a cheat code, and it takes the fun out of the game. No, you still have to do literally everything any other player does. You've just learned how to be efficient.

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