(Part 2) Best products from r/OverwatchUniversity

Hi there! I know you mentioned you had a standing mic, so a microphone isn't a must for you, but I've had my Hyper X Clouds for about 6 months and I've really, really enjoyed them.
 

The mic is detachable so if you don't need it, you don't have to use it. The sounds are very distinguishable, (footsteps, both light and heavy) and I can definitely hear the direction they're coming from. Another plus is that they are indeed very comfortable and light like advertised. I wear glasses, and they don't press into my ears like other headsets.
 

From a less 'gamer headset' standpoint, I would recommend Bose. Either something like this or this (since you said you'd like to spend $100 or less)
 

I've had a pair (the one in the first link) of Bose headphones for about 5 years and they've been wonderful. They're comfy, and have good sound. I used them to game with in between the time my Turtle Beaches broke and I was pleased with them.

I hope this helps some! Please feel free to ask me any questions :)

I usually get compliments on my voice in game like "Wow announcer voice" or "Is that God" or "I want to make love to your voice" and I don't use super high-end equipment, so I thought I'd share my mic settings and some mic tuning tips. Also, just throwing it out there: I use open mic/toggle mute and love it. Even if you get keyboard clacks, people will tolerate it while you're making important callouts. You can get into a habit of toggling mute off right before you get close to enemies and toggle off as soon as you respawn. Another thing that I think helps is to keybind your mute to a button on each hand if possible, in case you need to use an ability with your PTT finger. I keep it set to ~ and configure my mouse button 4 to ~ as well.

As for testing the sound, I use the windows voice recorder when I get a new mic and I first physically adjust the boom of the mic so the mic rests about 3/4" to the left of my mouth, then set the gain on the mic itself for clarity (if yours has it, usually a little screw dial you can turn to pot up or down your gain) so it doesn't pick up breath, and practice saying lines while typing and clicking at your regular voice volume (talking without putting extra effort to control the volume), tune the gain so my voice is as loud as possible (it may still be very quiet if you don't touch OS mic gain) without picking up constant clacks (you'll still get some clacks so don't obsess over it) and quiet enough so you don't get the ceiling when you're making aggressive calls (try saying "GET THIS MEI OFF ME!" and if you get crackling or distortion, your gain's too high). Once I have the gain set physically on the mic, I change the mic boost/gain on the OS, as long as you set the gain physically for clarity, this part is just to equalize the volume level so its loudness is in line with the rest of the sounds, so I make sure my voice is as loud as my regular listening volume to music.

It takes a lot of fiddling and lots of recorded voice clips but eventually you get the perfect combination for picking up your voice. Once I'm happy with how I sound in voice recorder, I usually pull in a friend on discord who I trust with audio and test a regular conversation.

My typical script for testing is:

• This is me talking normally
  
• This is me talking while typing
  
• This is me talking while typing and clicking
  
• This is me talking quietly after a ten game losing streak
  
• GET THIS MEI OFF ME!
  
  Hope it helps!
  
  P.S. this is my mic not the most comfortable and pretty ugly and can't notify you when the battery's low, but it lets me use any headphones for the game sound while giving a decent sounding mic for voice calls.

Headphones I've used the past 10 years.

• ATH-AD700 - Discontinued now, but cheap used, open back, under $50, one of the biggest soundstage, but lacks bass
  
• ATH-AD700X - updated revision of the ad700, under $100 on sale, tiny bit better bass. The stock pad made my ears sore since it touches the driver. I replaced it with memoryfoam BrainWavz pad, and they feel much better. Puts less pressure on my eyeglasses too.
  
• ATH-M50X - My go-to music headphone, but I use it for travel gaming too since they fold up nicely and closeback for noise isolation.
  
• ATH-AD900X - Better version of AD700X
  
• Philips Fidelio X2 - About $200 on sale, a little bit less soundstage than AD700X, but much better bass. If you can splurge, I highly recommend this. They are balanced type headphones. Basically replaced the the M50X for music listening and AD700X/AD900X for gaming. It feels really nice, pad fits much better than the AD700X. I forget I am actually wearing headphones. If this is too expensive, SHP9500, is a cheaper alternative at 1/3 the cost.
  
• All of the headphones listed above are low impedance meaning you don't need an amp to get good sound output.
  
• Most gaming specific headphones aren't that good for the price. You're paying mostly for the marketing. Get any decent audiophile headphone and it will be much better.
  
   
  
  Virtual surround sound I've used
  
  
• Xonar U3 - Got this to replace my broken mobo sound, but found out it does virtual surround sound. Basically simulates 5.1/7.1 sound on a 2 channel headphone. Used it for many years gaming. Sounds awesome with good headphone that has big soundstage. Nice to hear directional audio to know here footsteps are at in games. Also acts like an amp with boost mode for high impedance headphones.
  
• Razer Surround Sound - free, but the worst virtual surround sound I've heard. Things sound muffled.
  
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi - Upgraded to this, it has better virtual surround sound technology.
  
   
  
  Hate wired headphone?
  
  
• How to convert wired phones into wireless gaming one
  
   
  
  Microphone
  
  
• ModMic - Used this for many many years, but got tired of wires dangling around
  
• Blue Yeti - Audio quality is so much better than the modmic, but it is big. Use a mic stand or arm.

thanks a lot for taking the time to watch. and thanks for all the tips. All are noted and i'll work on all of these consciously. i couldn't reply early coz i was going through everyone's comments. Just recording the game and posting here has been more helpful than maybe playing 20 games.

I have a question though. This is about sensitivity and aim practice.

> You might want to increase sensitivity - it looked like there were a couple of times your beam lost lock-on because you couldn't turn fast enough to follow the target

What is the deal with sensitivity? I have recently started to start training my aim consciously and have set a single mouse sensitivity for all heroes. I use a simple Dell office mouse. This one. Dell MS111-P. I did some checking up on it and it has a sensitivity of 1000 DPI. And I play at an in-game sensitivity of about 4.5 for all heroes. THis comes to about 31 cm length of a full 360-degree turn on all the heroes. I found this number (in-game sensitivity) from this Overwatch sensitivity calculator. It's more or less accurate. I know it's not high-end gear. But I don't think about it as it will just hinder my game.


So my question is, is it a good thing to play all heroes on the same sensitivity? or is it better to change depending on thhe hero?. Like obviously, you saw i missed the beam with symmetra. I hadn't noticed that until you pointed it out. Should I change my sensitivity slightly on different heroes? For example, let's take soldier. He's a hero i have been consciously trying to better my aim on. And i have been using the settings that i just mentioned in the last paragraph. But when i play with tracer and mccree with those same settings, my aim is all around the place. I'm guessing it's due to their movement speed? So I had an idea, but i was not sure if it was the right thing to do.
Since tracer moves so faster than soldier, maybe i should lower my sensitivity on her even more? And because mccree moves slower than soldier, maybe i should increase sensitivity on him a bit? Both of these to compensate for the movement speeds. Same goes with symmetra. BUt then again I think that maybe because heroes like symmetra and winston dont need aim, turning the sensitivity a bit higher would not cause any problems at all.

What do you think? Should I change these on different heroes, or just train myself on one setting?

thanks

That's a very interesting insight, thank you for taking the time to write it out and share it.

You definitely make a good point about intelligence and capacity to learn. Probably the most important natural talent one could be lucky enough to possess, but I still assert quality and dedicated practice time is the most important factor in improving skill, and I would also assert that learning itself is a skill which can be improved, like any other.

I would really reccommend reading a book called 'Bounce' by an English Olympian called Matthew Syed. It's a great read into the topic and well written - https://www.amazon.com/Bounce-Federer-Picasso-Beckham-Science/dp/0061723762

I have a similar mouse. My side buttons are push-to-talk and melee. My mouse may be different from yours, but the button under the scroll wheel is kinda out of the way, so I don't use it for anything.

Biggest issue will be finding your sensitivity. I use 1600dpi, 5 sens in-game. But I've been playing FPS's with a mouse for a couple years. I recommend picking up Aim Hero or CS:GO and some workshop maps to practice on until you find something that works. Aim Hero has a setting where you can just directly enter your OW sensitivity, so if you find a sens that works for you on it, you can just copy it over to OW. It's a decent buy, for $5.

Adding to what PiggyMcjiggy said, I use toggle scope on Widow, but not on Ana. I'm constantly moving and scoping/unscoping as Ana, so it's just easier for me.

DM mode will probably be your best friend for a while.

I don't know if console has them, but there's a ton of crosshair options on PC, so be sure to check them out.

Welcome to the PCMR. What's your build?

Being bipolar definitely doesn't help (I'm bipolar, too, actually), as it means you are much more susceptible to tilting. Meds can definitely help, depending on what kind you are on. I'm currently not on any, as the side effects were too much for me.

The best advice I can give is to learn to recognize how you are feeling at any given moment and anticipate when you are about to lose control. Then, make sure you have a plan in place for how to calm yourself down.

Some things to try based on some college psychologists and practicing therapists I've talked to:

1. Take a 15-30 minute break. A quick walk, or even small exercises can make a huge difference. I have a pull up bar that goes in the door frame that I use in between gaming sessions.
   
2. Visualization strategies. If you've ever seen Happy Gilmore, then you know what this is. When Chubbs tells Happy to "go to his Happy place", he's telling him to use visualization. People are more susceptible to their own thoughts than they think they are. If you spend your time thinking about good things, you will generally feel good; if you spend your time thinking about bad things, you will generally feel bad.
   
3. People with anxiety and problems with negative thoughts generally get lost in their own heads. One thing that helps is having a way to ground themselves back in reality—think the "totems" from Inception. Some girls use hair bands tied around their wrists that they'll snap if they start feeling anxious; others have squeeze balls or something similar. I've been considering getting something like this.
   
   The most important change you can make is a gradual one: changing how you view the entire process of competitive gaming (and self-improvement in general). Failure is absolutely necessary to being good at anything worthwhile, but we heavily stigmatize it. You've probably heard people say that "perfect is the enemy of good" or "perfect is the enemy of done" and both are absolutely true. People with anxiety fret so much about doing things perfectly every time that they scare themselves away from ever actually finishing anything. In the creative world, you are much better off trying to produce a large breadth of work than spending all of your time making that one masterpiece—Stephen King's On Writing talks about this quite a bit.
   
   The ultimate goal is to divorce your performance in these discrete skills from your self-worth and recognize that the mark of a truly successful person is persisting through failure, not never failing.

Sorry I just noticed that the Dell you linked actually has a pretty bad harddrive, is recommend this one instead, but it's a few bucks extra https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06XFGDD8P/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1520295735&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=dell+gaming+laptops&dpPl=1&dpID=41zfabBnrLL&ref=plSrch

Also if you really wanna stay on the cheap side, this is the best I could find in just a few minutes of searching, but this laptop had 1 tiny fan vs the 2 giant fans in the Dell (And more cooling/fans = better performance) https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B075FLBJV7/ref=psdcmw_13896615011_t1_B01K1IO3QW?th=1&psc=1

I highly recommend the Dell though as it has all better parts + wayyy better cooling so it's miles better for only $150 extra

I got the BenQ XL2430T and it's amazing. (The Zowie is the same model under their new gaming brand)

144hz with configurable blur reduction is such a smooth gaming experience. At least all the reviews I've read beforehand said that this BenQ line is the only 144hz line with configurable blur reduction, which makes it kinda special.

Blur reduction does exactly that - make movement smoother and even less tearing than 144hz already does - but it takes away a lot of brightness at 100% intensity. Other monitors apparently only offer 100% or 0% on this, while the BenQ has the full range between. So I have brightness turned up a lot and use blur reduction at like 30% and it's still a bright picture.

Also the ergonomics are top. Fully turnable and pivotable in any direction, and a really nice "mouse" that rests on the stand where you can use the menu with.

It also has colors almost as true as an IPS panel which was important for me since I work a lot on the desktop too.

Generally for less tearing its: 250Hz >> 144Hz Gsync/Freesync > 144Hz >>> 60Hz Freesync/Gsync > 60Hz

IMHO neither Gsync nor freesync is worth it though since they bind you into a fixed graphic card choice for ages (how often do you upgrade monitors compared to pcs) and have drawbacks too (for example making a lot of strategy games actually worse than VSync depending on the engine) and most importantly only work on a specific FPS range, while more Hz are always better.

Late to the party, but I use V-Moda M-100's combined with Creative Sound Blaster E5 High-Resolution USB DAC 600.

At $299 (for the bluetooth headphones; 199$ for the non bluetooth) and $170 (DAC) definitely busts your budget, V-Moda does sell a pair for ~$100 -- the V-Moda M-80, which might be worth checking out.

While the M100 and M80 audio drivers (50mm vs 40mm) aren't the same, the quality of manufacturing "should" be. My headphones are amazingly comfortable and solidly built with metal parts and a kevlar braided cable (that will disconnect from the headphones if you accidentally snag it on your desk/chair). I've broken a few pairs of chinsy plastic headphones in my day; I never feel like I'm going to do that with the M100's.

One thing to note and I think it's worth mentioning; M80's are "on ear" headphones, where the M100's are over the ear. Even so, I still think the M80 will be comfortable because the leather ear padding is super comfortable; like sitting in one of those $5000 leather lazy boys that you sink into, comfortable.

Last thing, I'm by no means a audiophile/snob, but sound with a DAC was noticeably better than using my mobo's sound card. IMO, might be worth considering in a future purchase.

Personally, I've gotten the best benefit out of the Logitech G500s. I've used the Raptor, other Logitech mice, a basic Microsoft one, a few different Razer mice, and another one I'm blanking on right now.

What I've found is, that as long as you have a decent mouse pad (big and clean), it really comes down to a basic quality of a mouse (high polling rate, wired, etc), and your preferences for mouse weight, grip, and button feedback.

That being said, after lots of experience using many mice over a long period of time (over 8 years), the Logitech G500s is a clear winner for me. I'm a bit of a gaming mice enthusiast and I'd like to try a lot of other ones. I'll probably add the EC1-A to my list of mice I'd like to try out. Thanks for your post. Good luck with your aim training!

I upgraded many months ago to a Logitech G403 (wired version): https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-910-004796-Prodigy-Gaming-Mouse/dp/B01KUAMCV4

Its got a "top of the line" (according to Logitech) sensor, up to 1000hz polling rate and customizable DPI up to some ridiculously high number. Other than the specs, the size and shape of the mouse is perfect for my large hands.

Basically the way i went about choosing a mouse was I looked at what the pros use and chose the one I liked the best. Seagull uses the Logitech G Pro. So i went with the G403. Its the same exact specs as the G Pro, just with a larger and non ambidextrous design.

Why did I decide to spend more money on an expensive mouse? Smooth tracking/aim and no pixel skipping. IMO the difference between a fancy top of the line mouse and a basic shit tier mouse is night and day.

I also recommend buying a super big mousepad to go with a new mouse. I use 1600 dpi and 2.77 in game sens. My aim is super silky smooth and precise. Here's a link to my 18 x 16 inch mousepad that i love: https://www.amazon.com/Glorious-Extended-Gaming-Mouse-Mat/dp/B00NOD04CY?th=1

As for keyboard i have an older Razer Black Widow Ultimate that I've used for many years. So i recommend a solid mechanical keyboard. However if you had to choose between upgrading your mouse or your keyboard, I think your mouse is a way more important upgrade since thats what you use to aim.

Can't really speak to low priced chairs but something like this would probably be best.

Note that the armrests fold back instead of adjusting down, meaning you won't have to worry about them bumping into the bottom of your desk. I've also found mesh office chairs tend to have better back support than cushioned ones, unless you're getting one with an adjustable back support cushion, like you see on all the DxRacer gaming chairs.

Any pair of open headphones will give you more directional audio than a closed back set. These are typically considered some of the most open for a reasonable price: AudioTechnica AD900x