my left hand isn't what it used to be, and i'm looking 2 do anything to reduce fatigue + pain.

i have a few rests that suffice for regular typing, but i don't deal with the same issues because i can pace myself while working as opposed to gaming. i think my biggest weakness is that my desk doesn't really support my elbow at all, and my chair's arm rest, while it can go over my desk, is a bit too exaggerated & i lose the overall arm support that i would get by planting my arm on the desk. my current setup is to switch between this and that, but i'm looking for something that supports my whole arm + elbow, or can accompany the two.

ideally i'd like to not replace my keyboard, as i love my wooting 60he for gaming, but if there's any equivalent hall effect gaming-focused split keyboards, would love to know.

since tf2 is a pretty intense game & lots of us are getting older, wonder if anyone else here has been trying to fix their ergonomics & has worked against RSI problems with special equipment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tOXxuLcaog

here's another great resource; viscose took the time to measure the dynamic & static frictions of many popular pads:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ix0RN4WDgRIn9uSUMy2smG_vWR3FTnZHgNpumChfHM0/edit#gid=0

lamzu
energon
pro

i had to do a few things to get the party functionality to work & to be able to queue into games in the first place, and that included updating my embark tag (https://id.embark.games/id/profile) & enabling crossplay. i have a feeling that crossplay-enabled servers run better than pc only ones -- i played about 16 hours without empty servers or lag -- so i'm curious if that alone fixes your problems, since i don't think crossplay is enabled by default if you played the betas & didn't delete your old config file.

https://youtu.be/DiSDlPc7r0g
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2073850/THE_FINALS/
LET'S FUCKING GOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvxENEi1mDI

i really hope your work gets more exposure. it's incredible to me how few people, relatively speaking, even use your mastercomfig presets. tons of pubbers still complain about their networking, their FPS, hitches, and various other bugs that have been known about & worked around for years by the competitive scene. this custom build would exactly solve these problems, and would objectively translate to more money to valve through, simply enough, longer play sessions without the game catastrophically failing because someone played too long & ran "out of memory" on a modern computer, didn't reload their custom HUD elements, gave up from dealing with chronic hit registration problems, etc. literal no brainer given that you've done all this hard work basically for them (barring whatever trivial merge conflicts that have arisen since your custom game build). wish you nothing but the best.

ngmi

wagmi

when you do things you like, you won't be bitter and angry.

all the MGE and aim trainer hobbyists i know are basically gym bros; they play to improve their dexterity and to think about the interplay between mechanics and strategy.

it's usually people who feel forced (or rather, force upon themselves) to play MGE who are rancorous and projective. if people are acting incredulously because they lost and/or you played into their passive playstyle to practice your aim, i highly recommend just removing and not playing into their sore loser/winner behavior. some people can't be helped & are pitiable; there are unfortunately enough sore losers/winners that it can make public MGEing miserable, but they're not representative of people who i consider to treat MGE as a hobby.

the EU/RUS MGE scene is a lot more "cutthroat", but the "bad actors" are so over the top that it's funny & hard to take seriously. some people have fun playing to win at any costs, and/or trying to play the metagame of shit talk -- as long as they clearly telegraph early on that they're playing to win, they don't hog arenas, & they're sufficiently good enough to warm up your aim, it is what it is.

unfortunately, there are very few games which have sufficiently high TTK and movement expression, so of course people will keep coming back to MGE. most competitive FPS games nowadays are either catered to controller/casual play, to strategizing via team compositions, and/or to pure/precise aim which minimally rewards actively dodging shots in an open area.

FEED THE SEAL

i've had some free time for the last few months, so i got a bunch of mousepads.

and of all of them, this is the best one i've ever owned:
https://lamzu.com/collections/lamzu-energon/products/lamzu-energon-mouse-pad

my only wish is for it to be in deskmat size, but this is worth the tradeoff. it's comparable in size to any XL artisan pad anyway, which is fine for most setups.

this is the only cloth pad i've tried that does not benefit in any way from an arm sleeve. most cloth pads require a careful consideration of their stitching angles in order to find a compatible cloth sleeve that doesn't add additional friction to the X and/or Y axes. unlike every other mouse pad i own, you don't even need to worry about a sleeve. with about 3 weeks of heavy usage, this has not degraded out of the box with sweaty palm + arm contact; it does not get muddier as intense play sessions continue. with that said, if you do need to use an arm sleeve for some other reason, i haven't found any that works well with it (including turning them all inside-out).

the lamzu energon is, in every way, a better artisan raiden (mid; didn't try the softs).

compared to the raiden:
it has better XY symmetry (raiden has slightly more Y friction than X; this has slightly less than the raiden -- i usually play with my mouse pad vertically rather than horizontally for any vertical aim scenarios, like tf2 or tile frenzy/gridshot stuff, and while both do well vertically, this manages to be just a bit more comfortable);

the raiden has some sort of powdered coating that wears off & adds a muddied feeling during a play session, which causes my arm to stick to it slightly & the initial friction of my mouse skates, glass & ptfe, to stick a bit more. i haven't replicated that feeling on the energon mousepad yet.

it has slightly more discreet edge stitching than the raiden, which means there's no real bump on the edge of your arm that lightly irritates me. this is namely true when using the mousepad horizontally, but it is slightly better vertically than the raiden too.

very low static & dynamic friction with any skates. it works great with ptfe, glass, and sapphire.

this basically does everything i wanted glass pads to do; it provides a fast glide without feeling like my arm sticks to the surface. the only pads i've used that are "faster" are the artisan shidenkai & the fnatic jet, but they both have some significant downsides.

the shidenkai has a glass coating which wears out pretty quickly, and then it basically degrades to a soft hien with all of its XY/friction tradeoffs.

the fnatic jet is really cool, but it muddies very badly if you sweat, and its glass skate support is poor. it also barely works with a few mouse sleeves, with specific cloth stitching & material structure; all the mouse sleeves i have add friction. the only way you could really justify it is if you don't sweat, or if you use a deltahub carpio g2.0 or a flashe gaming glove/sleeve to ensure purely ptfe contact on the pad.

some other mousepads i do not recommend:
xraypad's thor (a worse version of the fnatic jet)
xraypad's aqua speed (poor XY symmetry, better arm feel than the artisan hien but very poor arm sleeve support so it is hard to manage the added friction)
skypad 2.0/3.0 (if you live in a clean room &/or neurotically keep your glass pad clean at all times, it has slightly less static friction than the energon/raiden/jet with more dynamic friction -- otherwise, the scratchy feeling of ptfe skates hitting against any dust/debris/skin oils/hair makes it virtually unusable)

some other mousepads that i like/have justifiable tradeoffs:
artisan hayate otsu (my previous favorite mousepad; more static & much more dynamic friction, amazing XY symmetry & skin feel, and manageable arm sleeve support)
artisan raiden (more expensive & worse version of the lamzu, but great pad all around -- similarly very poor support for arm sleeves as the energon)
odin infinity v2 2xl mousepad (basically a deskpad artisan hien with a slightly better arm feel, but still a bit scratchy/"pokey" out of the box)
artisan hien (poor XY symmetry, but good control & good arm sleeve support by virtue of easily identifiable XY stitching -- irritates my arm otherwise, so very very weakly recommend)

-------------------

even though my glass pad experience has been very poor, i'm still interested in the following if anyone's adventurous enough or, by coincidence, has tried them & could share their experiences:
https://www.machinaultima.com/
they supposedly can texture their glass with varying degrees of friction, to mimic an equivalent cloth experience.

the xenics titan ge air is so comfortable that it makes me regret the last years of mice i've bought/tried.

an important caveat is that its mouse feet (+ the replacements that ebay buyers tend to bundle with it) are very low quality & will likely be dented, bulged, and/or peeling off the mouse. also, if you fingertip grip by holding the back end of the mouse, you will be holding onto the holes of the honeycomb. thankfully, there are corepad skates for the mouse & the coolermaster mm720 grips and/or truegrip's mm720 grips resolve any comfort issues trivially.

i have to change my hand grip depending on what i'm doing -- fingertip when vertical aiming is equally important to horizontal, and relaxed finger/claw/palm for endurance aiming or horizontal-only aiming -- and this is the only mouse i've ever had that lets me switch between them on the fly without cramping up my ring and pinky fingers.

there are merits to going with a mouse that purely maximizes fingertip grip, like the gwolves hsk plus and pro (still reserving judgment for the m2k that i'll receive at some point before the heat death of the universe), but i believe it's difficult to maintain good performance, or maximize horizontal precision when necessary, with just fingertip. and while they "helped" me in some aim training scenarios & could be used for precision aim, they were never comfortable to play with for any period of time, especially if you're actively moving/using a keyboard + flick aim + lift up the tiny mouse frequently to readjust. if it isn't comfortable for your pinky and ring to be tightly pressing together, if your pinky needs relative elevation to your ring finger, and/or if you're not used to a "1-3-1" grip to circumvent the aforementioned ergonomic problem, stay far away from small box mice.

to note, the gwolves hsk pro 4k does come with a variety of grips, including these dot-shaped grips meant to be stacked on top of one another to serve as a makeshift pinky rest & alleviate some of the ring-pinky strain, but the adhesive sucks & by the time you've adjusted them to figure out something that "works", it'll likely be peeling off already. i never really felt confident using my pinky as an anchor point on the makeshift rest either, due to its give/flexibility vs the firm side of the mouse.

also the wooting 60he is the current GOAT of gaming keyboards.

IT IS FRIDAY
HAVE A FRIDAY SONG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjDdTM1dkMM