you can embed youtube videos btw

oh and you should learn the spawns btw. at the beginning of the game you time 40 "dont know", but it was obvious that the ra wasnt picked up by your opponent cause he dropped down to shaft at 04 or something;)

The way you do the math is kind of slow, and repeating all those different numbers will make you forget other item times which happened several times in the video. Instead of doing +10+10+5 i would suggest memorizing all the 0's and 5's(00-25, 05-30, 10-35, etc) and the last numbers+5(0-5, 1-6, 2-7, 3-8, 4-9)so if u pick an item up at :X7 it will spawn on :X2 and vice-versa.

using this, say you pick up RA at :48 I would round down to nearest 5 or 0 so 45-10, 8-3 spawn = :13. Using this I would say 10-3-13 in my head and have the time in about a second compared to saying 48-58-13 out loud.

just something to try, might work better for you.

I've definitely thought about this. I actually made a page to help memorize timings: http://deadmen.us/quake-timers.html to help focus on just that. I think your method is better though, once you get the hang of it. What I like about it is you don't try to "readd the shaved seconds" from when you rounded down. You just remembered the last digit, and had the +5 timings memorized (8 -> 3). I will practice this for sure, thanks.

I think I'm going to update that timing page to point out some of these math tricks too.

memento mori wrote a good timing guide btw, might wanna have a look http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=2028953

Yeah, when I first started I played with a chart open on my left monitor that just had all the 5 second intervals (something like :25 :50 :00) that I could glance at as needed. Eventually I just had it memorized without really trying to.

The most clever arithmetic tricks in the world will never be as fast as just flat-out knowing the answer before you even think about it.

allways +30 and then ± 5 (obv depending on what item you just picked)

so you have less numbers flyn' around :)

I think my timing is pretty good and fast, it took a while...
what i did:
Memorize every 5 and 0 combinations just for RA.
Learn all the pairs (1-6, 2-7, 3-8, etc)
Afterwards, i just timed RA with those 2 techniques together, i perfected it and always could time the red no matter the enemy)
I did this for a few months.
Later i decided to start timing mega, and i found it incredibly easy to time both items, when i grabbed a mega, i timed it as a normal RA (which i do pretty fast) and just sum up 10.

So once you learn by heart every pair of numbers, it becomes really easy to time the red, and time mega as red+10 is what works best for me.

As regards timing both at the same time, (it's really kind of stupid but it actually works like a charm); when you pick up a RA at 13, i imagine a big red 38 in my head, and when i time a mega at lets say 25, i imagine a blue 50 and then a blue 00. It may not be the best way but for me it is excellent, i almost never mixup the times for the items and i can hold them together.

And what do you do if you are out of control and miss the pickup? I'm just curious as I think this is the biggest flaw with your strategy.

Erhm... it's not a strategy, its a personal technique, also, that's a flaw in every other technique , it's not particulary in mine... so it's kind of a dumb question xD Anyways i would stack up my armor with shards yellow, and depending in my stack and my enemy status i would either

1) contest a major item if i think i will win.
2) do damage using the item as bait and escape, while getting the time.
3) see/hear the pick up, while getting the time and continue to stack.

I wasn't trying to attack you. The thing is you don't really time as you just see the numbers hence you probably have no fucking clue when someone picks either ra/mh uncontested. So do you go after the timetable like ~ 2:30 mh?

I don't seem to understand your question. Like having absolutely no idea when mega or ra will spawn because of not having seen/heard the pickup?

Then i would camp from a safe position till it appears and watch for the pickup,for example in ztn i would wait behind rail @ teleporter and watch the mega pickup, so now i have the time for a major item, and an exit near me. idk if that's what you were asking..

Might be closer to " you don't pick the item yourself and couldn't hear/see it, do you assume it's gonna spawn 35-40 seconds after what you had in mind or *insert any other idea I don't have * "

oh.

No, i don't do that because i tend to play with some good players that will delay a lot or mess with the timings so as to confuse the starters who time by the classics 35 1:15 1:50 2:25 3:00 etc so i just end up roaming and getting killed, i did that a LOT before some time...

I do the same thing with visualizing the spawn times in the color of the item. works quite well.

I always keep them in my mind in the order they're spawning in, doesn't really cause me problems personally. What helps a lot is thinking of it in terms of actions and how long it takes to get from one to another. Say, if I know RA is up at :12 and MH at :22, I might think of as grab RA at :12, 5 seconds to fight or grab weapons/ammo, then go to MH. That way even if I forget the exact time I have a plan and I'm generally in the right place at the right time.

If I realize I have no idea when something is coming up, I try to take a decent guess at it judging from where the enemy is and the last time I know for sure it was picked up. As long as they don't do any tricky delays I can usually guess it to within 5 or 6 seconds.

I also use time-stamped item pickups, which is helpful when picking up items during a fight because it stays up on your screen for a few seconds. Idk if that's considered to be lame or not, I think I remember reading about it being banned from some competitions at some point. Its not as if I'm running off to go win some LANs anytime soon anyway though.

/edit Just finished watching it. Another great video as usual, but I would urge you to just outright memorize timing. Its really not as hard as it sounds - even without trying it will just happen eventually. The 10+10+5 thing is viable, but it seems really cumbersome. There's just no substitute for not even having to calculate it because you already know. It should be instant: 16, 51; 22, 47. Once you can do that the actual timing itself becomes secondary and you're free to focus on things like avoiding the sync and know where the opponent is all the time.

Doing it on ztn is too easy, bots are barely capable of making the RA jump. :D

I agree that flat out memorization is best, and that's definitely the goal I'm headed towards. Keeping track of the timing of the 2 major items still requires its own effort though, so it doesn't hurt to practice that now, even if I'm doing the math manually.

And yeah, ztn is definitely way too easy with the bot. One thing the video fails to show is getting the timing when the OTHER player picks up the item.

IMO your technique confuses me but each to their own.
If it works for you that's all that matters.