Sc2 Gaming History
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Currently, I'm a High Masters Protoss player in season 3 of the ladder. I was Grandmaster in season 2. As a player I feel like I've gotten better overall, but I struggle heavily dealing with all-ins and having inconsistent practice habits especially when playing on ladder.
I've played at 2 MLGs, play for my Universities CSL team, and played in a few online tournaments (very few of late however).
Current stats
Yeah I know, terrible win ratio.
I've played at 2 MLGs, play for my Universities CSL team, and played in a few online tournaments (very few of late however).
Current stats
Yeah I know, terrible win ratio.
Reasons for Switch
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I have always tried to play a style based heavily on Economy Management and Macro. I like to take calculated economic risks. Micro is not my strongest point but I'm not terrible at it.
Considering all of this I think Protoss as a race doesn't particularly play to my strengths. Protoss bases are the hardest to secure, and the hardest to protect. This translates into more easily getting punished for trying to get ahead on bases and economy. Protoss is extremely reliant on higher tech units and spell casters as the core of their army. In comparison to Roach/Ling and Marine/Marauder, I feel like zealots and stalkers just don't match up for the costs. I do feel like Protoss is rather supply efficient, making their largest armies, or "death balls" very strong; however contrary to popular belief I hardly think they are unbeatable. Protoss is also the most rigid and least reactive of all the races. Each Protoss tech route is very far apart and unrelated to the others, and takes a long time to fully develop. Again, this leads to having really strong late game armies, but with lots of trouble getting there.
In contrast, I believe Zerg to be the better choice for me. Expansions are much easier to take and utilize. Zerg is very reactive, and allows the player to play very economically. Zerg units are quick, mobile, and cost efficient (generally). Zerg also has the easiest time with tech switching rapidly. I believe Zerg is more rewarding of good mechanics, and more punishing of bad mechanics than the other 2 races.
So with this in mind, I'm going to give Zerg a try!
Considering all of this I think Protoss as a race doesn't particularly play to my strengths. Protoss bases are the hardest to secure, and the hardest to protect. This translates into more easily getting punished for trying to get ahead on bases and economy. Protoss is extremely reliant on higher tech units and spell casters as the core of their army. In comparison to Roach/Ling and Marine/Marauder, I feel like zealots and stalkers just don't match up for the costs. I do feel like Protoss is rather supply efficient, making their largest armies, or "death balls" very strong; however contrary to popular belief I hardly think they are unbeatable. Protoss is also the most rigid and least reactive of all the races. Each Protoss tech route is very far apart and unrelated to the others, and takes a long time to fully develop. Again, this leads to having really strong late game armies, but with lots of trouble getting there.
In contrast, I believe Zerg to be the better choice for me. Expansions are much easier to take and utilize. Zerg is very reactive, and allows the player to play very economically. Zerg units are quick, mobile, and cost efficient (generally). Zerg also has the easiest time with tech switching rapidly. I believe Zerg is more rewarding of good mechanics, and more punishing of bad mechanics than the other 2 races.
So with this in mind, I'm going to give Zerg a try!
Step 1: Reforming the Keyboard:
The first thing I'm going to do is re-do my entire hotkey setup on my keyboard. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while, but didn't think was ever entirely necessary. But now since I know zerg larve injects greatly benefit from having a good hotkey setup, and I'll likely want more hotkeys to control my army. Right now I'm just using the standard hotkeys in game, and the setup shown below for my control groups.
Obviously this isn't the most efficient setup, and is a by-product of my BW days (though I did use all 1-10 at the top then). So since I've decided I'm really going to give this a legitimate shot, I might as well go for broke and remake my entire hotkey + control group setup into something clean and efficient, though I suspect it will be a much harder task than I'm currently thinking, and will definitely take some getting used to in-game.
Process
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So the first thing I did was get a huge image of an empty keyboard. I'm definitely going to need it to visualize how the setup will work.
I actually put the little numbers in myself, (part of the reason why some of the keys are blank. My next step is to get a full list of hotkeys from the game, and try to arrange them on the keyboard in the best way I could. I have no idea how this is going to turn out...
...and it was at this point......
That I realized I need to first make a list of what I really wanna get out of my keyboard. What are the goals I want to accomplish
1. I want to have easy access to multiple control groups. I'm thinking 1-5 being army, and q-t being base/queen type control things.
2. I want all my commands to be relatively close by. Attack is very important as well as shift and control (both of which I can change, as long as the current functionality of those keys is assigned elsewhere).
3. I specifically want the larve inject method to be really easy, so this means putting the current backspace key and the "v" key somewhere close.
4. And I think I could accomplish all of this fairly easily, the problem is I have to find somewhere to put all of my building hotkeys that I'll be able to remember.
Well this is gonna be fun *roll eyes*. I hope to have it finished before I sleep tonight.
I actually put the little numbers in myself, (part of the reason why some of the keys are blank. My next step is to get a full list of hotkeys from the game, and try to arrange them on the keyboard in the best way I could. I have no idea how this is going to turn out...
...and it was at this point......
That I realized I need to first make a list of what I really wanna get out of my keyboard. What are the goals I want to accomplish
1. I want to have easy access to multiple control groups. I'm thinking 1-5 being army, and q-t being base/queen type control things.
2. I want all my commands to be relatively close by. Attack is very important as well as shift and control (both of which I can change, as long as the current functionality of those keys is assigned elsewhere).
3. I specifically want the larve inject method to be really easy, so this means putting the current backspace key and the "v" key somewhere close.
4. And I think I could accomplish all of this fairly easily, the problem is I have to find somewhere to put all of my building hotkeys that I'll be able to remember.
Well this is gonna be fun *roll eyes*. I hope to have it finished before I sleep tonight.
Results:
And Wala! In about 3 hours I was able to remap my hotkeys. Now my control groups look like this
This caused me to have to change a few hotkeys for specific units. At first I took a little too much of a gun-ho approach to it. I was remapping things left and right. Then I decided it would probably make the transition easier on myself if I only remapped the things I had to because of the new control groups, while leaving most of it the same. Overall, I like the way it turned out
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The hardest changes for me to get used to will be the buildings/infestor I think. The baneling/overseer had hotkeys I had to change that I didn't really know anyway so they won't be too bad. I think it'll take 2-3 days but I think I'll be able to get used to it. I'll be spending my next gaming sessions getting used to this new feel playing vs computers mostly, but once I get used to it I'll post my next entry on the first games going into transition.
Overall, remapping was not as hard or drastic as I thought it would be, but I'm fairly certain now it's not worth doing unless you are switching races; I am hopeful though that it makes me just slightly faster on the keyboard. It should be noted that I left a lot of unbound hotkeys for T/P with this setup (because when I play T/P I plan on using just the standard once again).
On a final note, I'm not sure if anybody will read this, but if you have any (serious) suggestions for me changing for P to Z, or if you just have any general comments or questions I'd really like to hear it. I do plan on updating this (again, once I figure out how the TL blogging stuff works) so hopefully I'm entertaining to at least someone. Until next time though, toodles!
David "ExO" Hart